Get Your Idioms Right!

Wednesday 11 November 2009 - Filed under Uncategorized

NO, I’m not talking about the various ways people screw up miserably in C++, which must be the language most steeped in idioms of them all(out of necessity, I might add; you’ve got to do something to avoid constantly shooting yourself and your team-mates in the foot…)

In fact, this is about English idioms and their misuse by the unenlightened plebs well-meaning but clueless people who seem to surround me.

It’s without further ado, not without further adieu. Look it up. “ado” means “fuss” or “delay.” Makes sense, hmmn? “Adieu” isn’t even a noun. It means (roughly) “goodbye.” So unless you’re trying to cut a goodbye short (escaping from extended family, perhaps?), you’re failing miserably.

Of course, some of these misuses are just funny. Here’s a few which have high value and are probably best explained by purely-aural meme propagation, combined with today’s ubiquitous sloppy pronunciation:

For all intensive purposes. (…intents and purposes)

We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. (cross)

Water over the bridge. (under, you’d hope)

Let’s nibble this in the butt. (nip, bud; unless you mean something very different from what we think you mean)

I don’t want to sound like a dead horse. (… flogging a dead horse; a pointless activity)

Don’t jump to contusions. (conclusions, although you can have a contusion too if I hear this one…)

A sorted affair. (sordid, usually, unless you’re a computer scientist, in which case sorting is of great interest.)

I think I’ve given enough examples, so a final word (which, idiomatically, is not merely one word at all, but that’s just tough:

Dear Internets, please try to appear literate. Look things up when they don’t make sense, rather than assuming the illogical is for some reason idiomatic.

2009-11-11  »  admin