When people misuse words

[Thipu1]

Disorientated is not a word. I'm also quite weary of everything being "awesome." Ice cream is awesome. That TV show last night was awesome. Getting a "B" on a test is awesome. Look at my awesome new jeans! And isn't my new haircut just awesome?

No. No. No. No. No.

Not everything is awesome. Some things are nice, some things are funny. Some things are good news. Not everything is awesome!!!!

Agreed. 'Awesome' should be reserved to describe someone's first view of the Grand Canyon or the Giant's Causeway.  It does not apply to ice cream, jeans or a TV show. 

[athersgeo]

*snip*
"Can I lend your pen?" is incorrect, when what you should really say is "Can I borrow your pen?"

There's a difference, though, in the sentence structure.

"May I borrow your pen?"

vs

"Will you lend me your pen?"

Eh, yes and no. What Scotcat60 is talking about (I think) is the dialect of English that uses the construction "Can I have a lend of" for "Can I borrow" - the teacher wasn't (I don't think) saying lend is never right; just that particular use.

(I should note it's not a construction I've ever heard anyone use, but I've seen it in books written in the 1950s [the character was from Hampshire and was described as having a "Hampshire" accent])

That's not what scotcat60 wrote, though.

scotcat60, will you clarify, please?

Whoops - you're right. Reading comprehension - it's not just for other people!

Although what you wrote wasn't what Scotcat60 wrote, either!

*joins MentalMagpie in asking Scotcat60 for clarification!*

[Mental Magpie]

athersgeo, I wasn't trying to copy what scotcat60 wrote, I was just showing how to use both borrow and lend...

Let's just start over and wait for scotcat60 to come back with clarification, as it seems we keep confusing each other 

[athersgeo]

athersgeo, I wasn't trying to copy what scotcat60 wrote, I was just showing how to use both borrow and lend...

Let's just start over and wait for scotcat60 to come back with clarification, as it seems we keep confusing each other 

Sounds like a plan *grin*

And, just to be vaguely near the topic while we wait (!), another one of my favourite "typos":

He put his hands around her waste.

vs

She threw out the waist paper.

The mind boggles.

[Mental Magpie]

athersgeo, I wasn't trying to copy what scotcat60 wrote, I was just showing how to use both borrow and lend...

Let's just start over and wait for scotcat60 to come back with clarification, as it seems we keep confusing each other 

Sounds like a plan *grin*

And, just to be vaguely near the topic while we wait (!), another one of my favourite "typos":

He put his hands around her waste.

vs

She threw out the waist paper.

The mind boggles.

Did you hear about the guy who made a belt out of cardboard?  It was a waist of paper.

[athersgeo]

Did you hear about the guy who made a belt out of cardboard?  It was a waist of paper.

And that was my coffee very nearly into my sinuses - tyvm! (*giggling*)

[jaxsue]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHYYkZpZGjo

 

[jaxsue]

Another pet peeve: pregnate. Blech!

[RebeccainGA]

My department, until very recently, had a director that used the word "magnanimous" in place of "enormous". i.e. "We have a magnanimous amount of work that's overdue".

This has spread, as has her use of "irregardless" and "I could care less".

I am now known as the grammar nerd on the team, because I understand that words mean things!

[Shalamar]

I heard a teacher - a TEACHER - say "Did he borrow it to you?"    I was eight years old at the time, and my mouth fell open.

[jaxsue]

I heard a teacher - a TEACHER - say "Did he borrow it to you?"    I was eight years old at the time, and my mouth fell open.

Wow.

[WillyNilly]

Oh, and I musn't forget another one that makes me stabby. The word is temperature, not tempachur.

On the other end of the spectrum is a former friend who always went out of her way to overpronounce words, to the point of being ridiculous. When saying February, the "r" is usually silent. Some people do pronounce it. But ex-friend would always overdo it; FebROOOary. Samething with raspberry...she always overemphasized the "p" to a ridiculous extent (rass-PUH-berry).

I asked her once why she did that and her response was something along the lines of her having superior intelligence and some other nonsense. She always did have a superiority complex.

Two mispronunciations/misused terms that used to get my father's goat (and that I cannot hear now without hearing the echo of my father's ghost!):

Vun-ra-bul instead of Vuln-ra-bul

Train station instead of railway station (he was a railways enthusiast which probably helps explain this particular bee in his bonnet)

And a case of a mis-used word (or two):
An apostrophe, a double quote, a comma and an exclamation mark all mean vastly different things in most contexts, but when you're writing programming, getting the right one in the right place can be the difference between your code compiling and not. One of my former coworkers used to frequently (but not always) say comma when she meant apostrophe and apostrophe when she meant double quote and then used to get VERY upset if you attempted to clarify which she meant. I got accused of being pedantic more than once because "I OBVIOUSLY knew what she meant" - uh, no, no I didn't; that was why I was asking.

I wonder what he would do with me?  I pronounce it "VUL-ner-uh-ble".

There is a world of difference over being annoyed at the wrong word being used and being snobbish about how a word is pronounced.
A person might not like, or be used to VUL-ner-uh-ble but it actually is a perfectly correct pronunciation (I just looked it up - of 4 dictionarys 2 had"vuln" and 2 had "vul" as the opening syllable). As is Feb-roo-ary or Fe-broo-ary... in fact I'm struggling to even imagine it with a silent first "r", of course the "r" is pronounced! And several other pronunciation/dialect/accent complaints on this thread are equally grating. Head over to the "how to you pronounce things" thread to nitpick on those, please, as pronunciation is not the same issue as word choice.

[LazyDaisy]

One that gets me sometimes is using "past" instead of "passed". I know when said out loud the two sound very similar but written out it is obvious.

"The white car past me on the right" -- NO!  past is not a verb, it is a noun or an adjective. Usually having to do with time
"The white car passed me on the right" -- Yes, pass and passed are verbs. The past tense of to pass is passed.

[Barney girl]

There was a garage near me once which had a sign saying

"Your driving passed [the cheapest petrol]"

At least I think it was cheap petrol, but I must admit the first part used to get my brain in such a twist I couldn't swear to it.

[Shalamar]

There's a series of print ads appearing in our local newspaper that all say "See your denturist I did."   For the life of me, I can't help reading them in Yoda's voice.