Great Moments in English Usage, Care of the Dollar Store

When Prescriptive Grammarians Go Cuckoo

I admire the gusto, and the adherence to principles, but someone needs to get a girlfriend.

Mr Gatward…will not join the ‘five items or less’ queue at the supermarket, in protest that the sign should read ‘five items or fewer’.

He also gets annoyed when people-neglect the ‘Royal’ in ‘Royal Tunbridge Wells’, and was vexed when he saw a major chain store advertising sales with signs saying ‘until stocks last’ rather than ‘while stocks last’.

‘I fought for the preservation of our heritage and our language but some people seem happy to let that go. I’m not,’ he said.

‘I feel very strongly about the English language.

Words That Changed Their Meanings

This stuff makes prescriptive grammarians shudder. My personal favorite is could care less.

This is an easy mistake to make. The correct phrase, of course, is “couldn’t care less” – as in, “I don’t care at all, so it wouldn’t be possible for me to care any less about this.” But over the years, that’s morphed into a new phrase (with the same meaning), and even though the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage criticized the change in 1975, saying it was “an ignorant debasement of language,” “could care less” seems to be around to stay.

Language historian say “couldn’t care less” was originally a British phrase that became popular in the Untied States in the 1950s. “Could care less” appeared about a decade later. No one knows exactly why the incorrect form came into being, since it doesn’t make sense.

I’ll throw in my own mini linguistic pet-peeve while we’re on the subject: use of the word irregardless, as in, “irregardless of what my boss told me, I’m not coming in on Saturday.”

Maybe it’s a blend of irrespective and regardless. I’m not sure. But it’s not a word folks. Regardless is the proper term.

Idioms From Around The World

A book called I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears… examines idiomatic parlance from over the globe.

A few examples:

Not hanging noodles on your ears: Russian – not kidding

To live like a maggot in bacon: German – live in luxury

To reheat cabbage: Italian – rekindle an old flame

Like fingernail and dirt: Spanish, Mexico – well suited

Bang your butt on the ground: French – die laughing

Plucked like a chicken: Yiddish – exhausted

To bite the elbow: Russian – to cry over spilt milk

Smoke from 7 orifices of head: Chinese – to be furious

To become naked: Japanese – to go broke, poor

An ant milker: Arabic – a miser, tight wad

Give it to someone with cheese: Spanish – to deceive

Squeezer of limes: Hindi – self invited guest, idler

To break wind into silk: French – live the life of Riley

George Will Has Gone Crazy

First it was his unfactual statistics aimed to refute global warming, then his tirade on jeans.  But what gets me most is the inane opening of his recent column:

“I,” said the president, who is inordinately fond of the first-person singular pronoun,”…”

Of course, everyone knows if there’s one negative thing to say about the President, it’s his use of “I.”  Sheesh.

This Week in Foreign Slang

A two-for-one deal utilizing the lexicon of our neighbors to the north, Canada. This week we have “hoser” and “take off”

MEANING: “Hoser” is a moderate insult invoking a lower-to-middle class male.  ”Take off” is disagreeable response levied against the claim of another, or a command for another to leave.

EXAMPLES:

“Look at this hoser; drving on the wrong side of the road.”

“You thought the new Wolverine movie was good?  Take off!”

The Joy Of Exclamation Marks!

Notice people using them more?  I have!!!!

Shipley and Schwalbe argue that in the internet age, a dash of sensation is just what is needed. “Email is without affect,” they write. “It has a dulling quality that almost necessitates kicking everything up a notch just to bring it to where it would normally be.” Shipley and Schwalbe are merely offering a post-hoc justification of what already happens online. OMG!!!

And are women more likely to use exclamation marks than men?

Carol Waseleski’s unexpectedly diverting paper, Gender and the Use of Exclamation Points in Computer-Mediated Communication, found that women used more exclamation marks than men. But why was this? Are women more excitable? Some theorists (notably D Rubin and K Greene in their paper Gender-Typical Style in Written Language) had argued that the exclamation mark was often a sign of excitability, and that “a high frequency of exclamation points can be regarded as sort of an orthographic intensifier signalling ‘I really mean this!’”  They also argued that this might convey the writer’s lack of stature; that, in fact, a confident person (read: man) could “affirm their views by simply asserting them”.

This Week In Foreign Slang

A new regular feature to Intelligence Whim, encouraging an exploration into cultural phraseology.

Our first entry, the British phrase: dog’s bollocks.

MEANING:  The apex of pleasure or delight within a situation or event.

EXAMPLES:

“Best concert I’ve EVER seen.  It was the dog’s bollocks.”

“My new iPhone is the dog’s bollocks.”