Misused words in the office - propogating bad word use!

[kckgirl]

Just thought of this one.  It doesn't really concern anything in the workplace, but I suppose it could.

I read fanfiction (and write some) and one thing I see a lot is that writers use the word 'defiantly' in place of the word 'definitely', as in "You are defiantly the right person for the job."  Huh?  I mean, really, sound it out.  If you do that you can see that it's the wrong word!

Drives. me. crazy!!!

[mrs_deb]

This thread has brought up memories of my childhood! My mother would pronounce things wrong and absolutely *insist* she was right.  Think oregano pronounced like the state with an o at the end:  Or-ee-gon-o or the city of Kiev pronounced as one syllable: Keev.  To this day, I always ask for the correct pronounciation of something if I'm not sure.

My mother's favourite was "al-blum" for a record album.  She passed on before CDs became popular...wonder what she'd have called those  .

[Charliebug]

I worked with a lady back in the early 90s, around the time Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure came out. She consistently used "bogus" to describe things she felt were actually "awesome" and I didn't have the heart to tell her that she had the wrong cool terminology of the day.   

[msulinski]

A lot of people here really are criticizing pronunciation not bad usage or grammar.  That seems rather unfair - who's to say the way any one person pronounces a word is the right way and others are wrong?  Unless its your personal name, pronunciation is going to vary and several variations are correct in different places and with different accents.

The dictionary?
Despite the fact that some words can be pronounced correctly in multiple ways, a particular pronunciation can still be incorrect and not a result of an accent.

[msulinski]

My boss does this often. For example, when he talks about tooltips he calls them 'hoover statements'. This caused quite some confusion when he discussed 'hoover statement design' with an interface designer. The designer thought he was talking about the hoover states from the buttons (where the color changes when you mouse over it, or click on it) and proceeded to redesign the buttons in that interface.

But my boss gets a lot of things wrong - an 'overlayer' can mean a tooltip, a popup or an actual overlayer. A header & footer means stuff that is on the top of an interface and bottom of an interface (header and footer are usually used on the context of text makeup). He says roadmap instead of backlog, upscaling means 'improve the quality', clickpaths mean links, 'the road is ending' means that something is a dead end.

Conversations with him are quite tiring because he keeps making up new words on the spot or use words in an incorrect manner. I keep correcting him, or play clueless and ask him what he means. I tried to be nice about it first but now every time 'hoover statement' crosses his lips, I immediately say 'tooltip'. He is hurting his own business by confusing the people who work for him, but is very resistant to learning...anything.

Does he actually say "hoover" (like the vaccuum cleaner) or "hover?"

[Elfmama]

A lot of people here really are criticizing pronunciation not bad usage or grammar.  That seems rather unfair - who's to say the way any one person pronounces a word is the right way and others are wrong?  Unless its your personal name, pronunciation is going to vary and several variations are correct in different places and with different accents.

The dictionary?
Despite the fact that some words can be pronounced correctly in multiple ways, a particular pronunciation can still be incorrect and not a result of an accent.

Yep.  My MIL was the only person I've ever heard who pronounced 'difficulty' as 'dih-FEW-cul-tee.'

[Diane AKA Traska]

A lot of people here really are criticizing pronunciation not bad usage or grammar.  That seems rather unfair - who's to say the way any one person pronounces a word is the right way and others are wrong?  Unless its your personal name, pronunciation is going to vary and several variations are correct in different places and with different accents.

The dictionary?
Despite the fact that some words can be pronounced correctly in multiple ways, a particular pronunciation can still be incorrect and not a result of an accent.

Yep.  My MIL was the only person I've ever heard who pronounced 'difficulty' as 'dih-FEW-cul-tee.'

And now I'm thinking of National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1.  "Where is... the mee-cro-feelm..?"

[Mikayla]

In honor of football season (in the US):

For the love of all that is football, please do not pronounce the Jacksonville team as the "Jag-wires".

There is no wire. They are not made of wire.  There is not even the letter 'I' anywhere in the word.

Jag-wahr.  It's not hard.

(And no, the Jaguars are not 'my' team, but it still bugs me when I hear this.)

The other one announcers are famous for has already been mentioned:  using adjectives in place of adverbs.

"He broke off that pattern really quick". 

[GrammarNerd]

Oh, just thought of another one, and I can't believe I haven't remembered it before now.

Nuclear.

New-clee-ur.  Not Nuke-U-lar.

Drives me up a wall.  DH likes to say Nuke-u-lar.  I correct him every time.  And I've tried to teach the kids the right way to say it.

But, like 'definitely', just sound it out, for goodness sake.

[LadyJaneinMD]

That's what happens when you trust spell-check.  Type "definately" (sic) into your word-processor and see what happens. 

For a very long example of why you don't trust spell-check, google for "Ladle Rat Rotting Hut."

Oh, that just made my brain hurt.  a LOT.

[Elfmama]

That's what happens when you trust spell-check.  Type "definately" (sic) into your word-processor and see what happens. 

For a very long example of why you don't trust spell-check, google for "Ladle Rat Rotting Hut."

Oh, that just made my brain hurt.  a LOT.

  I will note that I made a small error.  That should be Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.

[squeakers]

Unthaw... I have a friend who always says "dethaw". Never really understood the reasoning behind it but I never bothered to correct her, probably because I've known her since we were kids so who knows how old we were when I first heard her say it.

I will usually correct someone on the misuse of a word if it's egregious or if the misuse can potentially lead to embarrassment for the user. I tend to say something like, "magnanimous, do you mean enormous?" Or "Magnanimous, I'm not sure what you mean by that".

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with correcting someone on word usage, as long as it's called for (a situation where it actually makes a difference, not just for the sake of trying to prove that I know more than someone else) and as long as it's done politely.

I agree with your stance on when to correct people, yet I can't resist pointing out that "unthaw" and "dethaw" are both wrong. It's just "thaw."

Unthawing something would be freezing it.

Yes...exactly!  DH would use it and I'd say, "So you want to freeze it again?"  I think the first time I had to explain that 'thaw' meant to go from the frozen state to a warmer, non-frozen state, so unthaw would be to basically refreeze something, but after that, I'd just have to say something like, "Really?" and he'd get it.

Ya! Exactly. Unthaw=Dethaw. Like I said, I never understood why she would say that when "thaw" was the correct word and Un/De impiles refreezing (although I'm pretty sure neither of those is an actual word).

I think they are conflating Defrost and Thaw, hence dethaw.  I do it with "Would you itch my back?" and "The ice truck is spreading ice right now." (Scratch my back and salt truck.)

[Itza]

A former coworker who was an English teacher asked another coworker, "What are you inferring?" I bit my tongue wanting to say, "She wasn't inferring anything; you were. She was implying."

[jaxsue]

In honor of football season (in the US):

For the love of all that is football, please do not pronounce the Jacksonville team as the "Jag-wires".

There is no wire. They are not made of wire.  There is not even the letter 'I' anywhere in the word.

Jag-wahr.  It's not hard.

(And no, the Jaguars are not 'my' team, but it still bugs me when I hear this.)

I lived in Jax for 22 yrs (hence my ehell name). Yeah, the Jag-wire was annoying. 

[Paws]

I had a very magnanimous  boss  who would often make announcements like:  "In lieu of the July Fourth holiday, we will have casual dress all week".   What he meant was "In light of the July Fourth holiday..."   This was a pretty constant misuse from an otherwise well-spoken person,  but since we got both the holidays and the casual dress week, no one ever corrected him on it.