Grammar quirks

[Venus193]

That is almost equal to attempting to sing anything from My Fair Lady without the appropriate class-driven accents.  The very idea!

[mmswm]

Take your time    I love learning new things!

My friend got back to me with a few links that help explain.  I was sort of hoping for one of her technical explanations, which is likely still in the works, but I wanted to post these links for you in the interim.

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-comments.aspx

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-nau1.htm

I'll post again when she can send me a more technical explanation. She's amazing at explaining the most technical grammar concepts in a way that's approachable and understandable by pretty much anybody.

[Bexx27]

OK, I have to chime in on the nauseous/nauseated debate. It is not grammatically incorrect to use "nauseous" to mean "nauseated." Yes, you can make technical arguments for why nauseous should not mean nauseated, but the fact its that nauseous has had that meaning, in addition to the "disgusting" meaning, for centuries and it is considered standard English. From dictionary.com:

Usage note
The two literal senses of nauseous,  “causing nausea” ( a nauseous smell ) and “affected with nausea” ( to feel nauseous ), appear in English at almost the same time in the early 17th century, and both senses are in standard use at the present time. Nauseous is more common than nauseated in the sense “affected with nausea,” despite recent objections by those who imagine the sense to be new. In the sense “causing nausea,” either literally or figuratively, nauseating  has become more common than nauseous : a nauseating smell."

Incidentally, the same is true when it comes to "hopefully" being used to mean "I hope."

[Redneck Gravy]

...not to be confused with ad nauseum; which means repeatedly until it becomes annoying

I heard ad nauseous the other day, 

recently heard adverbatim (which I took to mean verbatim)  who knows if they meant verbatim or ad nauseum ?

[Onyx_TKD]

...not to be confused with ad nauseum; which means repeatedly until it becomes annoying

I heard ad nauseous the other day, 

recently heard adverbatim (which I took to mean verbatim)  who knows if they meant verbatim or ad nauseum ?

Maybe "ad verbatim" means restating a quote repeatedly until you actually manage to quote it correctly? Or rephrasing something so many times that you end up coming back the exact same wording you used earlier?

[Ms_Cellany]

My grammar pet peeve is the word "nauseous".  The relationship of the words nauseous and nauseated is analogous to the words boring and bored. When a person says "I feel nauseous", he or she is really saying "I feel I have a quality that makes others sick to their stomachs."  Instead the speaker should say "I feel nauseated," which means that he or she is feeling sick to the stomach.

Nauseous also means affected by nausea, though, so I don't see why it is incorrect.  Could you please explain?

Actually, no, but the common usage of the word has become so commonplace that most of us who shudder at the use of the word have given up on trying to correct it.  If you look at the words boring and bored, "boring" is the cause and "bored" is the effect.  This is a perfect analogy to nauseous and nauseated.  Nauseous is the cause and nauseated is the effect.

"Poisonous" and "poisoned" also work as analogs.

"A poisonous plant." "A poisoned person."

[Redneck Gravy]

Yesterday I heard a friend refer to a blaring flashlight

now I always think of blaring as in sound and blazing as in sight, but she used blaring several times so I don't think she was confused with the two words, she believes blaring is the correct usage.  I wonder if she was thinking of glaring?

I have also heard blazing used in describing a too loud radio.  Are these terms interchangeable in today's language?

 

[AfleetAlex]

'Ad verbatim' sounds like it ought to be used as such: "I've heard the same political commercials so many times in the last week that I could recite them 'ad verbatim.'"   

[Elfmama]

Something I saw on another forum.  Context suggests that the person meant "prima donna", but what they wrote was "pre-madonna."

[Redneck Gravy]

Something I saw on another forum.  Context suggests that the person meant "prima donna", but what they wrote was "pre-madonna."

I had a flash of "before Christ" 

[cabbageweevil]

...not to be confused with ad nauseum; which means repeatedly until it becomes annoying

I heard ad nauseous the other day, 

recently heard adverbatim (which I took to mean verbatim)  who knows if they meant verbatim or ad nauseum ?

Could I be a really obnoxious hyper-correcting nitpicker and general pain?  Correct spelling of the "ad n." expression, is actually "ad nauseam" (penultimate letter a, not u): the originally Latin word "nausea", is a Latin feminine noun -- so in the accusative case, following the preposition "ad" (meaning here, "to the point of"), the word becomes "nauseam".  If the word beginning with "n" had been a neuter noun, "ad nauseum" would be right.
(Captain Know-It-All signs off, to everyone's relief  )

[cabbageweevil]

Yesterday I heard a friend refer to a blaring flashlight

now I always think of blaring as in sound and blazing as in sight, but she used blaring several times so I don't think she was confused with the two words, she believes blaring is the correct usage.  I wonder if she was thinking of glaring?

I have also heard blazing used in describing a too loud radio.  Are these terms interchangeable in today's language?

I have a friend who sometimes tries his hand at "literary" writing about our shared hobby, railways. He consistently uses "blazing", to describe the sound of locomotive whistles or horns, enthusiastically and prolongedly blown. I've never ventured to ask him whether he really means "blaring", or...?

I had thought almost lifelong, the same as you, " blaring: sound, blazing: sight"; but what with our various instances as above, I'm beginning to wonder...

[cabbagegirl28]

I hear it, or the substitute 'th' here in Maryland, and on professionally recorded music.  I believe that singers and other people who are recorded are taught that 's' comes across the microphone as a very sharp hiss, so they soften it to 'sh' or 'th'.

Which brings me to something that has driven me bonkers for a long, long time: singers using deliberate mispronunciations and fake accents. Why? I don't get it and it's annoying and distracting. Two really big offenders:
- the word "baby" being pronounced bay-bay, and
- the word "want" being pronounced like "won't," apparently in an attempt to mimic a southern US accent. The Rolling Stones sing You Can't Always Get What You Won't, for example.

It's just so fake and affected.

ETA: Awwww, nuts. I though this was the Little Things that Drive You Up the Wall thread. My complaint isn't really grammar-related. (Still drives me batty, though.)

I cannot sing a Beatles song without a fake Liverpudlian accent. I've tried, but I just can't. It's a physical impossibility.

I'm really goofy, because I end up sounding like Elvis when I sing along to the Beatles.

[Julia Mercer]

I'm sure this has been mentioned, but I hate when people want to AXE a question, would it "kill" them to be grammatically correct?

[cabbageweevil]

I'm really goofy, because I end up sounding like Elvis when I sing along to the Beatles.

Nothing at all to do with grammar quirks; but, cabbagegirl28, I see that we've lately had adjacent posts. When I signed up with the forum, I'd not yet become aware that there was a poster called "cabbagegirl". If I'd realised, I'd have chosen another forum name -- had no intention of stealing your "trademark" !