Be Impeccable: Commonly Misused Phrases That Will Make You Sound Ignorant

I remember when I went to high school there was a lot of excessive use of the word "like" among the students. I seemed to gain this habit and after a year or so my parents complained that I seemed unable to make a sentence without including the word "like" in it.
I no longer use "like" so often, but recently I ran into someone who seemed to endlessly use the word "like" and I couldn't help but find it rather funny.
 
These are always good for a (private) laugh, but there's often a sort of logic behind them. For instance, most of the ones involving 'and' instead of 'in' are likely the result of language being passed on verbally. Elocution lessons are as scarce as hen's teeth in America, probably because no one cares about RP (Received Pronunciation - the Queen's English), so people don't enunciate well. This can lead to the assumption that a guttural 'n' means 'and'.

In the case of 'beckon call', the word 'beck' is pretty rare and few people realize it is the name for that crooked-finger gesture a person makes when they beckon someone to come closer.

I, myself, am guilty of the 'coming down the pipe' error. The logic behind that is that I had never heard the expression before coming to America, and since I arrived, I have mostly lived west of the Rockies, where there are few (if any) 'turnpikes'. When I first heard the expression, I pictured a long, thrusting weapon, and thought I must have misheard. It seemed more likely that something would be coming down a pipe than a pike.

When I was young, I was taught that 'all of a sudden' was already bad English and that there was a word for that: 'suddenly'. It tickles me that 'all of a sudden' now has a variant that is considered incorrect.

Despite my laughter, though, the reason these corrections should be made is painfully obvious when people study Shakespeare and need a language key. Will our descendants be able to understand our writings in 500 years, should humanity last that long?
 
Alejo said:
I remember that when I first moved to the USA I had no clue how to spell lettuce, I used to work at a restaurant and one of my clients went: “let me have a cheeseburger with no lettuce” in my ear it sounded exactly like the word “letters” I spend a few minutes trying to find it on the computer screen “where does it say letters? And whatever does she mean by a burger with no letters? Do they mark the burger patty?...strange country this is...” :P
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This is very funny! My Spanish friend used to say he wanted to eat "chicken tights" for dinner and I had to explain to him why that was so funny. It brought up images of a chicken in tights :lol:. He really meant chicken thighs.

I had a good laugh at the lists here, and learned a little too. It makes sense that people get these phrases wrong seeing as many people only use YouTube, watch movies and play video games, so they only hear a phrase instead of seeing it written. I suppose they just fill in the gaps with the words that they do know. I'm nowhere near perfect, but thank golly I read a lot of books when I was younger so I have at least a small grasp on how to use my native language!
 
links are intact, straight to the cia website. I thought the two last ones are interesting for this tread?
The webmaster of Whatdoesitmean (com/index3371pl.htm) wrote:
Standing between you and these mobs of radical socialist revolutionaries preparing to destroy America, along with their leftist social media giant and mainstream propaganda media allies, is President Donald Trump and the overwhelming majority of the over 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances in the United States Intelligence Community—all of whom start their days reading the most accurate and truthful intelligence reports about what is really happening, as opposed to the fairy tales lies published in the leftist mainstream media—intelligence reports specifically written following guidelines established by the Directorate of Intelligence Style Manual & Writers Guide For Intelligence Publications, as well as guidelines established in the Institute for Intelligence Studies instructional The Analyst’s Style Manual—though one of my personal favorites for intelligence report writing is Richard T. Puderbaugh, who’s been designated Chief Word Watcher, Western Hemisphere Division at the CIA.
 
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cope said:
links are intact, straight to the cia website. I thought the two last ones are interesting for this thread?
The webmaster of Whatdoesitmean (com/index3371pl.htm) wrote:
Standing between you and these mobs of radical socialist revolutionaries preparing to destroy America, along with their leftist social media giant and mainstream propaganda media allies, is President Donald Trump and the overwhelming majority of the over 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances in the United States Intelligence Community—all of whom start their days reading the most accurate and truthful intelligence reports about what is really happening, as opposed to the fairy tales lies published in the leftist mainstream media—intelligence reports specifically written following guidelines established by the Directorate of Intelligence Style Manual & Writers Guide For Intelligence Publications, as well as guidelines established in the Institute for Intelligence Studies instructional The Analyst’s Style Manual—though one of my personal favorites for intelligence report writing is Richard T. Puderbaugh, who’s been designated Chief Word Watcher, Western Hemisphere Division at the CIA.
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Here is Richard T. Puderbaugh: Elegant Writing - Report #2

"The following three quotations demonstrate what I have come to call the Puderbaugh Principle of Traumatic Terseness. We all know what a great impact one can achieve by making portentous statements in few words. "Lafayette, we are here." "I cannot spare this general. He fights." Now observe how much greater an impact can be achieved when the short statement describes the totally unexpected — not to say unbelievable":

"Doe and his wife had a daughter of four. When he last saw her she was pregnant."
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"At that time they were in the first stages of a broken marriage."
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"Fulano's wife is in her late twenties and their daughter, Mary, is aged about four. The latter is rather pale and sickly. She doesn't like Graustark very much. She smokes."
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"Mengano was one of seven children, and was raised without a father who was killed by a log in a forest."
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I'm sure some of the readers here are familiar with the idea that there are hidden spells in the English language. One such example would be 'good morning', which you can hear as 'good mourning' as they sound the same. Has there ever been a question asked to the C's about the validity of the claim that there are, in fact, hidden spells in the English language?

Other examples might be:

hello - hell low
weekend - weakened
work week - work weak
work - war-k
week days - weak daze

spelling (how words are written) - to cast a spell
cursive (fancy writing) - to curse

Coincidence? Nonsense? Or some sort of trickery at some level, maybe to induce subliminal messages?
 
Noctu said:
Coincidence? Nonsense? Or some sort of trickery at some level, maybe to induce subliminal messages?
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I’d say more like clues. Laura discusses this in The Wave, Chapter 47: Semiotics and the Content Plane, and other articles (emphases in bold are mine):

The Wave said:
As the Cs dropped word clues and encouraged me to search for the mosaic meaning, I discovered many amazing things. At one point, I stumbled on a little book by a gentleman named Abraham Abehsera. He points out that there seem to be two universal dictionaries in which words from all languages are grouped according to their meanings (synonyms) and sounds (homonyms). That is to say, whenever the same or a similar sound is given to different objects in two or more languages, a precise relationship between these objects is being indicated by the Universal language. He theorized that the sum total of languages forms a puzzle in which the image – the true meaning – may only be recovered through reassembling words having the same sound.
The fact that in English, for instance, morning and mourning have the same sound could have been just a coincidence. When German and English both reproduce this coincidence by using the same sound to say morgen (morning) and morgue (chamber where the dead are laid), Hebrew the same group of consonants BQR, to say morning and tomb, and Chinese the same syllable mu, to say evening and tomb, we may legitimately ask what lies behind this repetition. What have morning and evening time to do with mourning, tomb and morgue? (Abehsera 1991)
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Abehsera then establishes a mathematical model for comparing words, or a “four language unit” that suggests a deep common experience between a certain period of time and death-related themes. And, as it happens, hundreds of other sound-relationships develop these themes, such as dream and drama, traum (German for dream), trauma, bed, bad, mita in Hebrew which means both death and bed, and so on. Words then become the mode of access to the right half of our brain as opposed to the flat and precise use of words typical of the left brain. Speech can then become a synthesis of the “universal content continuum” by a study of the “expression plane.”

[…]In this sense, all languages are necessary because they are all complementary. They all tell us about the extraordinary wealth and diversity and limitless possibilities of the Universe in which we exist. What is more, such study of words enables us to interact dynamically with the surrounding reality itself. Word studies develop hyperdimensional awareness which binds us to higher realities.
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From The Grail quest and the Destiny of Man: Part II, bold emphases mine:
Laura said:
As one begins to study the subject with an eye for subtle “clues,” one begins to understand that the very words chosen in the numerous tales are designed to either lead to, or away, from the central issue. In other words, not only are the incidents clues in themselves, but the very names are as well.[…]
The clues are in the languages, the words, but hidden like little genes coiled up in DNA, waiting for the right chemical or charge of electricity to enable them to uncoil and make themselves know.

And, there seems to be a deep connection between language and DNA. Abraham Abehsera writes in his “Babel: The Language of the 21st Century”:
Matter, Life and Language are three instances where infinite wealth has been achieved with very little. The variety of matter is the product of the combinations of about twenty-six atoms. The innumerable life forms of our planet stem from the permutations of only twenty amino acids. Third and last, the millions of words that make up human language are nothing but the combinations of about twenty consonants modified by some five vowels
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[…]
In the past fifty years, man has made considerable progress in discovering and deciphering the physical and genetic forces that organize inert and organic matter. No comparable advances have been made in the field of language. Why did English-speaking people use the letters L and V to express their LoVe? (and LiVe) What compelled them to designate the opposite feeling by inverting the same two root-letters to form ViLe? (and eViL) Finally why were totally different letters used to express these feelings in the six thousand other languages the earth has known? Our thoughts and our words are thus made of chains of letters, the logic of which escapes us totally.

“Man, the author of speech, is himself made of chains of molecules and proteins the laws of which are well known to us. We may well suppose a strict continuity between these biological rules and those that organize his highest faculty, language.(emphasis, mine) In other words, we may assume that the laws that rule his flesh also rule his speech. Such a biology of word formation, valid for all of man’s languages, …Is situated at the crossroads of not only all of this earth’s tongues, but also all forms of expression, such as art, science [and] children’s stories. (Myths) One of its fundamental rules is that words strictly adhere to the objects, situations or beings they designate. Far from being merely convenient tools of communication, words are thick, multidimensional, densely interrelated structures which contain limitless information.

“During at least one-third of our life, we revert to using words in such a universal language. In our dreams we may be called on by a stone or dialogue with a flower, a bird or a waterspring. Dreams are pieces of a whole language in which words are still connected to the objects they designate. Night is thus the time when man recovers his full faculty of speech.” [Abehsera, 1991, emphasis, mine]
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And for more on this, you can look at the series of videos made by Chu:
cassiopaea.org

Language, Sounds and Intelligent Design

Part 4 - Sounds and Meaning: The molecules of language Hello, and welcome to Language with Chu. This is a series of videos on sounds and meaning. If you haven't watched the first ones, I recommend that you do so, because this is part four, so I've already talked about the other theories and...
cassiopaea.org cassiopaea.org
 
I could’ve sworn there already was a thread devoted to this, particularly when considering @Laura ’s absolute hair-yanking frustration with it!😂

Okay I’ll start: In what English first language country with…I don’t know..a school? do people learn that There’s means There are? Example: “There’s none of those around here.” It’s epidemic! On every tv show created by…I don’t know…professional writers??. Virtually every X post. And saddest to me, on my local Nextdoor app, where presumably most of these illiterate troglodytes attended the very same primary through high schools that I did.

Okay I’m done. Good lord that feels better!

If you find a typo or a grammatical error in the above post, please excuse it to my ongoing recovery from brain poisoning (true fact. I was discharged from the hospital Saturday night!).
 
lies.jpg
:lol:
 
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