Incorrectly used sayings and phrases (malapropisims and related)

Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

Meaning what should they be?


Fair dues.

Er...crisps ?!

& we'll cross that bridge...

Is this what you're talking about?
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

Caveat said:
Meaning what should they be?


Fair dues.

Er...crisps ?!

& we'll cross that bridge...

Is this what you're talking about?
Click to expand...

Yes. Fair due could be Fair Play couldn't it?
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

A friend of mine uses bearify instead of verify.

Another woman kept going on about singing the national antrim.

Funny thing is I know they are going to say these words so it is very hard to keep a straight face when they are said.

From the first set, don't upset the apple tart - I think that was Bertie?

In anyways, used a lot in west Dublin.
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

"Irregardless" may be in the dictionary, but that doesn't make it right. (In fact, if you type the word in MSWord, the spellcheck will pick it up as an error).
"Normalcy" (a word used by President Obama yesterday) is also in some dictionaries, but the word he wanted is Normality.
It seems that if people use a certain word often enough, the various dictionaries fall over themselves to be the first to have that word included in their lexicon.

A pet hate of mine: "...should have went..." which should be "...should have gone..."
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

Something that grates a bit for me, and I'm not saying it's wrong, is 'I've not' as opposed to 'I haven't'.

Seems to be predominantly an English thing.

Re normalcy/normality, I'm sorry but I would take any English usage that originates in the US with a lorry load of salt.

I mean, they say 'accommodations'.
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

Slash said:
"Irregardless" may be in the dictionary, but that doesn't make it right.
Click to expand...

I still remember one teacher red-lining that word in something I wrote, and I've always believed it to be a non-word since then.

Slash said:
A pet hate of mine: "...should have went..." which should be "...should have gone..."
Click to expand...

This reminds me of a conversation I once had with someone who has studied these matters at a greater level of detail than I have. He is married to a cousin of mine who is from Donegal. He was raised in Carraroe (sp?) and is a native speaker, despite spending the first 3 years of his life in New York. Anyway, we were discussing some of the local peculiarities in sentence construction that he reckoned were a hangover from people of that area of Donegal learning English as a second language and retaining an approach to sentence construction that is more commonly found in Irish. I couldn't disagree with him as I don't speak Irish.

In this part of Donegal, they say things like 'See you that there' meaning 'Do you see that thing over there', or 'Go you there and get you that plate' instead of 'You go over there and get yourself a plate'.

Not necessarily bad or lazy grammar, just that a tradition of language is coming from a different place than mine.
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

Caveat said:
Something that grates a bit for me, and I'm not saying it's wrong, is 'I've not' as opposed to 'I haven't'.
Click to expand...

Something that grates a bit for me, is writing "I have'nt" as opposed to "I haven't".
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

TarfHead said:
In this part of Donegal, they say things like 'See you that there' meaning 'Do you see that thing over there', or 'Go you there and get you that plate' instead of 'You go over there and get yourself a plate'.
Click to expand...

My grandmother speaks the same way - but doesn't have a word of Irish and is from rural NI.

I think it's as much a Northern part of the island construction in the same way that "ye" for "you" (plural) is a South/West thing.
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

Hate people saying or writing should of, could of or would of instead of have
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

Grates with me when someone says 'will you borrow me' instead of 'will you lend me'.
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

liaconn said:
Grates with me when someone says 'will you borrow me' instead of 'will you lend me'.
Click to expand...


Never heard that one.

'Use of it' instead of 'use to it' has always annoyed me.
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

Slash said:
"Irregardless" may be in the dictionary, but that doesn't make it right. (In fact, if you type the word in MSWord, the spellcheck will pick it up as an error)...
Click to expand...
and as we all know Micro$oft decides and imposes the rules as to how English is spoken outside of Redmond.
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

On tenderhooks...
had a pumpture...
He learned me...
 
Re: Incorrectly used sayings and phrases

"thats water over the bridge"
"it was chocolate block out there"
"his wife is a psychotic nurse"
"Garret Fitzgerald was an epidemic before he went into politics"

these were collected in the 80's and 90's by a former colleague of mine.

There is a spokesman for the HSE who constantly talks about a medical LABRATTY instead of Laboratory! Some one should tell him to refer to the place of work of medical scientists as simply "the lab".
 
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