Oops
Apparently, I don’t know what negative reinforcement is. Tom tells us. It’s been a while since I’ve had a psychology class.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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October 28th, 2003 at 4:40 pm
I’m not sure that it was really worthy of its own post. 🙂 It’s just one of those common misuses of language that makes my skin crawl a bit, like when somebody says something is “very unique.” (There can be no degrees of unique. Something is either unique or it is not. It’s like “dead” that way.)
But that would be a good jumping-off point for discussion: which linguistic foibles drive you nuts? (I’m pretty sure I just misused “foibles” there…)
October 28th, 2003 at 4:48 pm
I hate when people pronounce et cetera as exetera. I hate when a point is mute. I hate bi-weekly (which really means twice per week, not every other week, which is what people use it for). There really are many.
October 28th, 2003 at 6:54 pm
I hate “try and do” something. It’s “try to do” something. You either try *or* do. Not both.
October 29th, 2003 at 1:10 am
Actually, bi-weekly does mean every other week. Semi-weekly would be twice per week. Looking at my trusty dictionary, it appears that it can also mean twice weekly, but that’s a definition based on popular misuse. After all a bi-cycle has two wheels, not half a wheel. The prefix “bi-” means “two” or “coming or occurring every two.” The “semi-” prefix means “half.”
Exetera bugs me, too. As does “axing” a question, and the aforementioned misuse of “unique.” There’s no such thing as a “mute” point, and there’s no such word as “irregardless.” The “i” in foliage gets pronounced, dammit. People who say “pacific” where they mean “specific.” A pitcher holds beer; a PIC-ture goes on the wall.
Traipsing into quasi-racist territory, it really bugs me when white Americans say “wiff,” (with) but it doesn’t bug me very much when minorities do it, or when Brits/Aussies/Kiwis do it. That may be because prior to moving to the South, I’d never heard a white American say “wiff,” other than in jest. I’ve gotta work on that.
In written communication, it absolutely drives me up a friggin wall when people put “your” where they mean “you’re.” As in:
Good God, do I hate that.
October 29th, 2003 at 8:55 am
No biweekly as you defined (much like irregardless) was a recent phenomenon. Years of misuse lead to biweekly being defined as you said. Irregardless, which was only recently made a word, was made a word because it was repeatedly used incorrectly.
I also expect to see seperate become part of english instead of separate 🙂 You heard it here first.
October 29th, 2003 at 10:04 am
Oh one more: Insure vs. ensure. I hate that one.
October 29th, 2003 at 4:13 pm
So, according to you, we should have been celebrating the bicentennial in 1826?
I repeat the definition of the “bi-” prefix. It means coming every second one. On further review, however, it seems that either use is “acceptable,” which, to me, is unacceptable. 😉 Without “bi-weekly,” we wouldn’t have a word to mean “every other week,” while we would still have a word (“semi-weekly”) to mean “twice per week.” Therefore, it would seem to make sense to eliminate the redundant definition.
What I find interesting is that “biannual” is listed as “occurring twice a year,” while “biennial” is listed as “occurring every second year.” Apparently, the “bi-” prefix alone doesn’t help us much. According to dictionary.com we see this:
Looking at m-w.com, it’s less clear:
Unfortunately, I can’t find any definitive answer as to which came first. Although it seems that your claim that the confusion is a “recent phenomenon” isn’t quite accurate, unless you think a century and a half ago qualifies as “recent.”
October 29th, 2003 at 4:24 pm
1.5 centuries in the whole of english language isn’t that long. Oh, that would be tricentenially.
October 29th, 2003 at 6:22 pm
According to this, what we’re dealing with in “biweekly” is called a contronym.
The highly accredited Buffalo State University (who?) agrees with me. 😉
October 29th, 2003 at 6:26 pm
But it might not be a contronym after all. A contronym is a word that has two meanings, one of which is the antonym of the other — that is, one meaning is the opposite of the other meaning. But that doesn’t apply here. This is simply a word that has two contradictory meanings, but they’re not truly opposites.
October 31st, 2003 at 2:57 pm
By the way, “tricentennial” would be 300 years. 150 years is sesquicentennial. 🙂
[/word geek]
October 31st, 2003 at 3:13 pm
I realize that, It was a joke.
October 31st, 2003 at 4:50 pm
Kind of figured, but I just couldn’t take it any more!
Plus, how often do you get to use the word “sesquicentennial?”
😉
November 20th, 2003 at 5:23 pm
I would like to know what is the correct meaning of bi-monthly.
May 5th, 2004 at 7:03 pm
Please stop talking about the same words…it gets really annoying looking at the same things all the time.
Oh, and doesn’t it annoy you when people say “deskes” instead of “desks” I know it annoys me…a LOT!!!