On to the words I hate that I was reminded of today. I hate when people misspell the phrase "rein in." I have seen it all too often as "reign in." I can understand the temptation to mistake the homonyms, but being a horsewoman on hiatus it bugs me when equestrian-flavored phrases get disrespected in such a way. With this phrase in particular, it is a real horseback riding term for pulling back on the reins to slow or stop a horse, so it actually makes sense to use it in place of slowing down, toning down, or stopping something, while if you were to use "reign in," that makes no sense whatsoever. A cousin of this expression is "free rein," which often appears as "free reign." The real version of this is, of course, the former, horse-related term, which would mean allowing the horse to go where and as fast as it pleases. (I would only recommend doing this on a gentle horse.) There is no official definition for the latter spelling on Dictionary.com, which leads me to believe it's just a common misspelling, not an acceptable alternative, although it makes more sense that "reign in." Okay, rant over.
Haiku News
Monorail trains crash,
young Disney cast member killed;
no one else is hurt.
Andy Roddick plays
epic four-hour tennis match;
Federer prevails.
"Why is this news?" file:
Costa Rica ranks as the
happiest nation.
7 comments:
Warning!! There's a hidden danger in using the bed for playtime; when my son was a baby, we accidentally caused him to associate the bed with bouncing and tickling. Then came the day that my mother-in-law volunteered to watch him for us so we could have some us time. She thought she was going to lay him down for a nap on the bed, beside her, so she could catch some zzzzzzz's herself. As soon as he hit the bed, his power switch was flipped to on. Needless to say, there was no napping done that day.....
Rain/rein/reign bugs the heck out of me, too. There/their/they're is another one. And there are several phrases miswritten that make me crazy; they aren't coming to mind at the moment (insufficent caffeine in the system, maybe), but they raise my hackles every time. Well, I can think of one of them....per say. *grrrrr*
cicely
Oh, don't get me started on their/they're/there!! I will probably have to blog about that one in the near future. No matter what grade level English I was teaching when I taught, I always made a point to teach that one. Wow, I don't think I've seen someone misspell "per se" yet, but I am sure that would bug the crap out of me too.
I will take the warning under advisement, I will let my husband know we shouldn't do that all the time. Hopefully when he gets his big boy bed eventually he won't automatically remember the bouncing game!
I used to be a proper Holy Terror Grammarian, Orthodox Rite (right/write; arrgh, I can't stop!), though never in Orders (never having professionally taught English, or anything else, for that matter). I had to learn not to rip peoples' throats out, however; it seems that it was having an adverse effect (affect...) on my ability to communicate, since after being corrected, violators of the Laws of Grammar and Spelling would stop listening altogether (all together...), and say nasty things about me behind (but not too far behind) my back. I had to learn to ratchet down my vocabulary, too (to/two). (I never imagined that "stench" was not in common usage; but apparently, not.) No smugness intended.
Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about lolspeak?
cicely
Cicely--I have had the same problem, even if I never showed signs of correcting people in public. Once they discovered I was an English teacher (now on hiatus, but *was*), they had a tendency to either clam up entirely or tease me that I'd criticize their speech. I only do that in my *mind,* people!! ;-)
As a high school and middle school teacher, I discovered a handful of students each year who, even when writing longhand, would "slip" into spellings they used in online chatting/texting, such as "ur" and "cuz". That was unacceptable, of course, and I always pointed that out to them. For lolspeak, I have to say in my limited knowledge of it, it appears to be a self-aware parody of said chatspeak, written by people who are fully capable of writing well and clearly otherwise. It really is like another language since nearly every word has its equivalent in lolspeak. As long as they leave it on the comment threads and lolcats, I have no problem with it and sometimes find it entertaining. If, however, someone were to make the argument that it should be taught in schools or something, I'd draw the line very firmly there. It belongs where it was created, that's it. (Sorry it's long, but you asked!)
No sonnets in lolspeak, then? :D
ha ha...you're welcome to attempt a sonnet in lolspeak if you want, but I'll stick to English. :-D
So far, I'm having no luck with it in English, so you'll be spared my Foreign Language attempts. :)
cicely
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