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Funquee Werds

Though I am no English language scholar of note, some words and their use or misuse rub me the wrong way. This post will be updated as other words come to mind, and please offer your own additions as I have likely missed a number of obvious, common errors.

Some words are simply mispronounced (there’s no sense in criticizing regional accents, or this list would be MUCH longer).

    • And then – “ah nehn” or “an den”
    • Ask – “ax”
    • Asterisk – “asterick” or “astericks”
    • Can – “ken”
    • Cold – “code”
    • Consultant/Mountain/etc. – “consul-uhnt”/”mau-uhn”
    • Didn’t – “dihnunt” (also “coohnunt”, “woohnunt”, etc.)
    • Duct – “duck”
    • Escape – “excape”
    • Especially – “exspecially”
    • Exactly/Exactness – “eggzackly”/”eggzackness”
    • Foreign – “fahrun”
    • Forward – “fohwerd”
    • Frustrated – “fustrated”
    • Furniture - “fuhniture”
    • Further – “fuhther”
    • Jewelry – “jewlahree” (Thanks H. in ID)
    • Integrated – “innuhgrated”
    • Just – “dis”
    • Literature – “litature”
    • Manufacturing – “manahfacturing”
    • Milk – “melk” or “malk”
    • Nuclear – “newcuelar”
    • Painstaking/Painstakingly – “painstaken/painstakenly”
    • Particular/Particularly – “pahticular/pahticularly”
    • Perfect – “perfeck”
    • Photography – “phortography”
    • Pledge – “play-edge”
    • Probably – “problee” (Thanks T. in WA)
    • Product – “produck”
    • Realtor/Realty – “reeluhtor/reeluhtee” (Thanks H. in ID)
    • Repentance – “repehnunce”
    • Respiratory – “respahtory”
    • Sentence – “senuhnce”
    • That’s – “thas”
    • Worry – “warry”

Some words are illegitimate combinations of legitimate components:

    • Irrespective/Regardless – “irregardless”

Some words are mistakenly swapped:

    • Anecdote/Anecdotal – “antidote” (e.g., “I have a couple of antidotes that illustrate my point.”)
    • Asked – “ask” – lazily the ending is skipped (e.g., “But that wasn’t the question that he ask.”)
    • Orient – “orientate” – both can mean “to point to the east” but “orient” (as well as “orientation” and “oriented”), per www.m-w.com can be more broadly used to mean “to set right by adjusting to facts or principles” or “to acquaint with the existing situation or environment”
    • Scratch – “itch” (e.g., “Can you itch it for me?”)
    • Than – “then”
    • There are – “there’s” (e.g., “There’s tons of people . . .”)

Some nouns (especially in the world of IT) are strangely becoming verbs:

    • Architect – (e.g., “The goal is to ‘architect’ a solution that addresses . . .”)
    • (Re)purpose – (e.g., “Can the old server be ‘repurposed’ as a desktop?”)
    • Sunset – what happens when something reaches a point of retirement or end-of-life (e.g., “This version of the software will be ‘sunsetted’ in three months.”)

Conversely, some verbs are being used in place of longer nouns:

    • Installation – “install” (e.g., “The install was successful.”)
    • Invitation – “invite” (e.g., “She never sent me the invite.”)
    • Spending – “spend” (e.d., “What was your expected spend for marketing in Q2?”)

Some phrases are improperly used:

    • “Begs the question” – mistakenly used instead of “raises the question” (“beg the question” actually describes a circular argument, i.e., one that essentially uses conclusion to prove itself)
    • “Different from” – “different than” (or worse, “different then”)
September 30th, 2006 | Category: Language, Non-Finance

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