Being the fastidious creature I am
20 Feb 2006 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayoraaseiI can usually pride myself for not being victim to misusage of words.
It's good to know you still learn something everyday XD
Deviant vs deviate
The technical term used by professionals to label someone whose behavior deviates from the norm is "deviate," but if you want to tease a perv friend you may as well call him a "deviant"—that's what almost everybody else says. In your sociology class, however, you might want to stick with "deviate."
Deja vu
"It seems like it's deja vu all over again," is a redundantly mangled saying usually attributed to baseball player Yogi Berra. Over the ensuing decades clever writers would allude to this blunder in their prose by repeating the phrase "deja vu all over again," assuming that their readers would catch the allusion and share a chuckle with them. Unfortunately, recently the phrase has been worn to a frazzle and become all but substituted for the original, so that not only has it become a very tired joke indeed—a whole generation has grown up thinking that the mangled version is the correct form of the expression.
Disinterested
A bored person is uninterested. Do not confuse this word with the much rarer disinterested, which means “objective, neutral.”
Electrocute
To electrocute is to kill using electricity. If you live to tell the tale, you’ve been shocked, but not electrocuted. For the same reason, the phrase “electrocuted to death” is a redundancy.
Exalt/exult
When you celebrate joyfully, you exult. When you raise something high (even if only in your opinion), you exalt it. Neither word has an “H” in it.
Judgment/judgement
n Great Britain and many of its former colonies, “judgement” is still the correct spelling; but ever since Noah Webster decreed the first E superfluous, Americans have omitted it. Many of Webster’s crotchets have faded away (each year fewer people use the spelling “theater,” for instance); but even the producers of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, chose the traditional American spelling. If you write “judgement” you should also write “colour” and “tyre.”
et al...
It's good to know you still learn something everyday XD
Deviant vs deviate
The technical term used by professionals to label someone whose behavior deviates from the norm is "deviate," but if you want to tease a perv friend you may as well call him a "deviant"—that's what almost everybody else says. In your sociology class, however, you might want to stick with "deviate."
Deja vu
"It seems like it's deja vu all over again," is a redundantly mangled saying usually attributed to baseball player Yogi Berra. Over the ensuing decades clever writers would allude to this blunder in their prose by repeating the phrase "deja vu all over again," assuming that their readers would catch the allusion and share a chuckle with them. Unfortunately, recently the phrase has been worn to a frazzle and become all but substituted for the original, so that not only has it become a very tired joke indeed—a whole generation has grown up thinking that the mangled version is the correct form of the expression.
Disinterested
A bored person is uninterested. Do not confuse this word with the much rarer disinterested, which means “objective, neutral.”
Electrocute
To electrocute is to kill using electricity. If you live to tell the tale, you’ve been shocked, but not electrocuted. For the same reason, the phrase “electrocuted to death” is a redundancy.
Exalt/exult
When you celebrate joyfully, you exult. When you raise something high (even if only in your opinion), you exalt it. Neither word has an “H” in it.
Judgment/judgement
n Great Britain and many of its former colonies, “judgement” is still the correct spelling; but ever since Noah Webster decreed the first E superfluous, Americans have omitted it. Many of Webster’s crotchets have faded away (each year fewer people use the spelling “theater,” for instance); but even the producers of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, chose the traditional American spelling. If you write “judgement” you should also write “colour” and “tyre.”
et al...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 08:12 am (UTC)I had nfi!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 11:54 am (UTC)A bored person is uninterested. Do not confuse this word with the much rarer disinterested, which means “objective, neutral.”
O_O! I was never aware of that distinction.
I always was told that "judgement" was the wrong way to spell things... so it is acceptable! >_