When people misuse words

[MerryCat]

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.

Agreed. Because those things are epic *ducks for cover*

[jayhawk]

I have to count to ten and go to my happy place if I hear at a meeting, "I motion that we approve [whatever]."

[PastryGoddess]

pronunciation is not the same issue as word choice.

Agreed. WillyNilly you posted before I did.

Different people in different places have different ways of pronouncing things.  As long as they are using the word properly it shouldn't matter how it sounds. 

[Calistoga]

My mother in law keeps talking about having a Vowel Renewal.

One might argue that this is just a pronunciation thing...except that she also writes it out as Vowel Renewal.

She also says and writes "I've got this ideal for something I want to do."

[WillyNilly]

Well, I sort of agree with her. I too am a little weary of "Y"'s inability to commit!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvHzwyzpoM

[SamiHami]

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.

Oh, but see I have rarely heard the "r" pronounced in February (and I've lived in quite a few different places across the US), so it really isn't an "of course" pronounciation. But that's not my point. It's not that ex-friend pronounced the "r." It's that she overprounounced it dramatically. You might say Feb-roo-ary. That's cool. She would pronounced it feb-ROO-ary. Again, in her mind it was some way of showing superiority.

On the other hand, she could never pronounce the word jewelry correctly. She always said joo-lerr-ee. I guess her superiority didn't extend that far.

[reflection5]

There is a separate thread to discuss pronunciation (or mispronunciation).
http://www.etiquettehell.com/smf/index.php?topic=126537.0

[Danika]

I have to count to ten and go to my happy place if I hear at a meeting, "I motion that we approve [whatever]."

I wish I'd had a happy place! I remember being in meetings years ago where I heard this often. And I have no poker face. I would just cringe.

Then, I became like PP's former friend with the supriority complex because when it was my turn to make a motion, I'd say "I mooove that we do X."

And I'm told that in a/the dictionary, you can find the word "invite" as a noun. But I still cringe when I hear "thanks for the invite."

[SamiHami]

Back when I was in college I was part of a study group. In that study group was a very nice man who was terrific with math/numbers, but awful with language. He mispronounced a lot of words and, worse, would substitute one word for another if they sounded kind of alike. If he was trying to make a salient point, he would make a silent point. Generally he would just pick a word that started with the same letter and stick it in there and hope it would slip by.

[turtleIScream]

She also says and writes "I've got this ideal for something I want to do."

My son says that too! But he's 3, and while I think it's cute now, I do hope he will outgrow it.

My contributions to this thread:

A former pastor of ours always got "relative" and "relevant" confused. There was one memorable morning when he emphatically stated that "Truth is not relevant!"

Friend of ours who talks about his self-defecating humor. He also talks about nailing down pacific plans.

My husband's co-worker will send out information, and include the sentence, "I've enclosed the following for your edification."

[LazyDaisy]

She also says and writes "I've got this ideal for something I want to do."

My son says that too! But he's 3, and while I think it's cute now, I do hope he will outgrow it.

My contributions to this thread:

A former pastor of ours always got "relative" and "relevant" confused. There was one memorable morning when he emphatically stated that "Truth is not relevant!"

Friend of ours who talks about his self-defecating humor. He also talks about nailing down pacific plans.

My husband's co-worker will send out information, and include the sentence, "I've enclosed the following for your edification."

He's so funny you'll...never mind

[merryns]

Fulsome.  It's not just a fancier way of saying 'full'. It was hard to keep a straight face when one of the bigwigs at work  described her own speech as giving fulsome details. She was right.

[Venus193]

This is a written one because the pronunciation is identical.  Too many people write

discrete   (adjective)

1.  apart or detached from others; separate; distinct: six discrete parts.
2.  consisting of or characterized by distinct or individual parts; discontinuous.
3.  Mathematics .
a.  (of a topology or topological space) having the property that every subset is an open set.
b.  defined only for an isolated set of points: a discrete variable.
c.  using only arithmetic and algebra; not involving calculus: discrete methods.

when they mean discreet   (adjective):

1.  judicious in one's conduct or speech, especially with regard to respecting privacy or maintaining silence about something of a delicate nature; prudent; circumspect.
2.  showing prudence and circumspection; decorous: a discreet silence.
3.  modestly unobtrusive; unostentatious: a discreet, finely wrought gold necklace.

[TootsNYC]

"Hopefully, he'll get to do that." AUGH! No, no, no! Adverbs are not used like that! It's "I/We hope he'll get to do that."

And on the subject of adverbs, if you (general) say, "I did that right," you may have accomplished your task, but your grammar was not taught to you rightLY.

Do you really think people should say "I did that rightly"?

You need some brush-up on adverbs.

Specifically, the "flat adverb." Try this:
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/do-all-adverbs-end-in-ly.aspx

And this (scroll down just about halfway down the screen, to entry 3)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/right

Also, FYI--
Many, many, many highly reputable authorities accept "hopefully" to mean "it is to be hoped that."

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.

For a minute, I thought the sign said, "Your driving passed gas." I thought it was a joke about farting cars!

[artk2002]

A recent error message:  "Updation of the configuration file has failed."  Yes, "updation."  I think I need to go commit updation on my resume.