"While you were poring over those old manuscripts, I made you jump by pouring soup over your head."
"I baited the hook and waited with bated breath for the fish to strike."
"If you walk straight down that dark alley, you'll wind up in dire straits."
Editors and Proofreaders (ha!) of America, I thank you in advance for your attention to these matters.
Well, it could at least smell like "baited" breath, depending on how often the fisherman brushes his teeth and uses mouthwash...
ReplyDelete;)
--Wes S.
Although I knew the sashimi had sat out all night, I was so hungry I ate it anyway. I await the consequences with baited breath....
ReplyDeletewv "haren": Wolfen meets Night of the Lepus
The paired homophone that's killing me is discrete vs discreet.
ReplyDeleteAlmost no one is using both of those words correctly anymore.
But while we're at it, please spare a chuckle for one I found last week: someone wrote that they'd studied marital arts for several years, and were thus much more prepared for a fight than they might otherwise be. I couldn't help but wonder if they were telling the literal truth!
I took my 3 year old son fishing for the first time and he was fishing with baited breath since I caught him with a night crawler in his mouth.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletePax, I've studied marital arts for twelve and a half years, and I'm a veteran fighter, now.
ReplyDeleteMy best friend got his Aeronautical Engineering degree from Texas A&M. A regular point of humor then was the commonly found discussion of "angels of attack."
Made them think of Michael, rather than foils.
I will not have to plead ignorance on this subject, while most of the media have pled ignorance on the use of the word pleaded.....
ReplyDeleteIt pisses me off that the spell checker says that "pled" is misspelled.....
Using ordinance and not ordnance when referring to weaponry/ammunition etc really puts my hackles up, especially when it's a gunny-type doing it.
ReplyDelete"It pisses me off that the spell checker says that "pled" is misspelled....."
ReplyDeleteThomas, even worse-- all the broadcast news folk now use "pleaded" as the past tense.
Pax, you got me on that one. I had never noticed the difference in the spellings of "discrete", as in "a discrete component, not an integrated circuit", and "discreet", as in "She is discreet about the affair."
ReplyDeleteWhat about the folks that go to a firearms sight on the web and ask questions on how to site in a rifle.
ReplyDeletehootie11bravo
A drilling, if you will - - Not a double barrel confusion, but a triple:
ReplyDeleteTam, can you provide a cite for the model Lyman sight illustrated on your site?
;)
JPG
JPG,
ReplyDelete"A drilling, if you will - - Not a double barrel confusion, but a triple..."
If you only knew how I was racking my brain to pull an additional meaning from the wrack and ruin of my mental flotsam, so as to turn your drilling into a vierling... But I'm all out of homonyms on that front. :o
:D
Years ago I wondered at "bated breath" and checked the always worthwhile OED.
ReplyDeleteShort for abated.
For once, a word derivation that makes perfect sense.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, would the right canon overcome the blast of arrayed cannons?
ReplyDeleteMine is populace vs. populous.
ReplyDelete("The region is very populous, and the populace is diverse in its origins.")
"If you only knew how I was racking my brain to pull an additional meaning from the wrack and ruin of my mental flotsam, so as to turn your drilling into a vierling... But I'm all out of homonyms on that front. :o"
ReplyDeleteTam, it can be done, but one has to resort to acronyms.
The two Vierling heterographic homophones that I can find are carat/carrot/caret/karat, and maybe medal/metal/mettle/meddle, though I've always specifically enunciated the T, when present.
I may have contributed this one before, but "For all intensive purposes" always gets me going. A lot of the homophones--and near homophones, like "regimen/regiment"--could actually be caused by poor spell checker programming in combination with laziness--or an assumption that the spell checker must be correct--but this one is just... dumb.
ReplyDeletebrake/break. grr.
ReplyDeleteI thought that you knew that Nu, the new gnu at the zoo was named in sequence with it's siblings Kappa Lambda and Mu.
ReplyDeleteGrammar. It's not just your momma's momma....
ReplyDelete@Anon 6:51: Ooooooh...
ReplyDeleteHave you snuggled up with The Great Typo Hunt yet?
ReplyDeleteThe best spell checker is the one between your ears. Of course, that works better in other languages than Anglic!
ReplyDeleteWhere the past tense and past participle of plead is both pleaded and pled.
There are times when I pine for the relative simplicity of Latin declensions.
Stranger
Since we're being redundant I am tempted to offer a refined version of my play on this series title from the last episode, on behalf of all the regular peeves out there...
ReplyDelete*******************
"Pet" peeves, eh?
With that title, you're showing your prejudice.
*and*
That title is your showing that you're prejudiced.
*******************
Now if that weren't so sadly apres le fait* it woulda been AT FTW, but now it's just pathetic, so...
I think I'll just pedal my big A on home rather than try to peddle** my candidacy for a Tammy award.
*I don't know how to make one o' them little ack-sent marks, and for that matter don't speak or understand that French shit at all, but it just seemed apropos...
**And why the eff is the term soft-pedal - a play (heh) on the piano's mute pedal - most often used to mean a less strident or more subdued and circumspect making of one's case, rather than the far more logical but apparently nonexistent *soft-peddle*, as antonymic of *hard-sell*? Sometimes you just hafta create yer own grammar.
AT
"Orientate." Grrr.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe nobody's thrown this one out. I see this the most:
ReplyDelete"They're eating their lunch over there."
Or should it be: "There eating there lunch over their?"
'Or should it be: "There eating there lunch over their?"'
ReplyDeleteI reckon that depends on who is eating whom.
I confess!
ReplyDeleteI once used the phrase "To some up" instead of "To sum up"
--- which is really embarrassing to someone who used to be a proofreader (back in the Old Stone Age).
I raise free range peeves myself...
ReplyDeleteIt's worse than you think. Among people who write about team sports on the Internets these days, rhapsodizing about Athlete A's "dominate performance" has become a dominant locution.
ReplyDeleteOOHHH! I hate orientate. Sadly, I've discovered that orientate is the intransitive tense, and orient is the trasitive tense. I will have to direct my outrage elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteFor grammar snobs everywhere:
ReplyDeletehttp://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
Enjoy.
@ Ken,
ReplyDeleteOhhhh, yes! Among handgun shooters, the question is "Which is your dominate eye?"
*shudder*
Almost as bad as someone asking about your training regime.
You need to add rogue and rouge. There's an amazing amount of ne'er do wells that wear blusher apparently. At least from the way everyone spells it!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, contingent versus contingency, as when you read something like, "The legislature has a large rural contingency."
ReplyDeleteMy preferred version says, "With breath that smells like bait."
ReplyDeleteWe were born to be borne to "that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns."
ReplyDeletegvi
WV codyncil (n): trade name for specialized anti-depressant that makes you feel better for writing your no-good nephew out of your will. Ask your doctor if codyncil is right for you.
If the pearl is loose, you will lose it!!
ReplyDeletetract/track. Grrrrrr. I do not think a railroad runs in my innards.
ReplyDelete"On accident" instead of "by accident". Nobody says "by purpose"...YET.
"Supposably"
"I should have came/ran/ate/went/drank..."
That's a HUGE one for me.
And my perennial favorite: its/it's
Tam: Have you seen this LOLCat:
ReplyDeletehttp://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/be0f869b-ebe4-4fba-affc-eff809e6a13d.jpg
What bugs me is the sentences where either discreet or discrete could be used properly, but it's not clear from immediate context which the author meant to use.
ReplyDeleteStrained example - "The other detective was running a discreet/discrete investigation on his own." Was it separate or quiet (or both?)
OTOH, I've been known to use variants of the following sentence when doing new hire training at my shop: "We have a lot of discretion - use it discreetly". This gets far too many blank looks.
I've sure heard a lot of grizzly stories about bear attacks on defenseless hikers.
ReplyDelete(WV: Caling. "Who are you caling illiterate?")