… of the English language. What oft misused phrases really bother you? I have long since lost count, but one of them struck me this morning. As usual, it wasn’t a direct strike, it was a small domino effect.
A couple months ago now, there was a post on Fanblogs about University of Miami football players being involved in a “brawl” amongst themselves. Quick reading of the referenced article (the only article I could find, even after a Google news search) made it sound a lot more like a scuffle between the O and D during practice. Last night a post titled “Clayton charged with battery; allegedly ran over campus parking services employee.” That was soon followed by text from an article:
Clayton’s car hit parking services employee James Seymour. Seymour wasn’t injured.
Hitting someone with your car is not running over them. I’ll just assume it was a simple mistake and move on. Part of the reason I recently complained about Drudge, is because of the way he tends to make headlines seem overly dramatic for what is often very sedate material.
Still with me? Probably not. Don’t worry I would have quit reading already too.
One word that I absolutely hate to hear used in conversation is “electrocute” or its variations. Electrocution specifically implies death. So when I hear “Bubba got electrocuted last week,” I assume that the state finally put Bubba out of his misery for being a convicted goat rapist. Or I imagine that Bubba decided to change fuses while standing in a flooded basement. Then I’m usually informed that Bubba merely shocked (it has nothing to do with the shocker) himself when he drunkenly mistook the terminals on his car battery for a pair of nips.
And that was today’s language lesson, brought to you by the number threeve.
Wha Says:
Good catch - great point.