Inconceivable!

[Aiwe]

I live in an area where the locals frequently use 'lend' to mean 'borrow' and visa versa. Also they use the word 'ignorant' to mean 'rude'.

 

[Graustein]

I live in an area where the locals frequently use 'lend' to mean 'borrow' and visa versa. Also they use the word 'ignorant' to mean 'rude'.

Ironically, rude originally meant "simple", "undeveloped" or "crude", which isn't that far away from "ignorant" if you think about it.

 

[BlindTom]

Two of the favourites I hear in college all the time are 'Robbed' to mean 'Stolen' And perhaps strangest of all; 'Writ' instead of 'Wrote'

 

[BlindTom]

Doctor horrible FTW!

 

[Graustein]

To be fair, nobody uses decimate like they should anymore...

 

[BlindTom]

To be fair! Some people have an amazing ability 'To be fair' whenever they need thinking time in spoken conversation... Seems 'Err' isn't good enough anymore.

 

[Graustein]

To be fair! Some people have an amazing ability 'To be fair' whenever they need thinking time in spoken conversation... Seems 'Err' isn't good enough anymore.

Really? I've never heard that before

 

[jim_doki]

I am a skeptic people.
SKEPTIC, not CYNIC

what this means is that I am NOT close minded to the posibility of the supernatural, paranormal phenomina, god or aliens, I just need evidence before i'll accept it. If you claim to be able to read minds or see the future, then demonstrate on me, under my test conditions, and i'll believe you.

 

[BlindTom]

Yeah, there's one or two who've really adopted 'To be fair' as a universal prefix, especially before spouting highly UNfair opinions about people.

"To be fair though, he is an idiot."
What's fair about that?

 

[Moravich]

50 cent..
thinks "toast" means handgun..
enough said.

EDIT: to anyone who doesn't know, toast is NOT a handgun, but crispy bread.

 

[zen5887]

EDIT: to anyone who doesn't know, toast is NOT a handgun, but crispy bread.

Thanks for clearing that up!

 

[karmapolizei]

The word literally has been bent over a table for quite some time now:
"He literally carried that team to victory!"
"I literally froze my balls off"
"He literally moved the world"

IT"S figurative!!! figurative!

You don't watch How I Met Your Mother, do you?

 

[Knight Templar]

What about the word 'Epic'?

I mean, most people use it as if it means 'Awesome'.

Don't they realise that it's short for 'Episodic'?

I do not think that means what you think it means.

 

[000Ronald]

My sister continuously uses the word "Inconspicuous!" as an exclamative (hope that's a word). It bothers me, because she obviously doesn't know what the word means.

Then there's the use of the word "Redundant". She has no idea what the word means, examplafied by this;

"I HATE YOU!"

"That's rather unfortunate. I can't say I know why you would say something like that, however.

"SHUTUP! I WANT YOU DEAD!"

"Now you're just being redundant."

"YOU'RE REDUNDANT!"

"No, I'm not, and I refuse to belittle myself by appearing as such; Now get out before I throw you out."

Such a loving family.

Apologies Abound

 

[werepossum]

I say we stubbornly use the word literally to mean literally. Might not save the word, but I'm not going down without a fight.

...Damn. Wiktionary notes the widespread usage of Literally as an intensifier. It's a losing battle, this one.

It's a losing battle BECAUSE of things like Wiktionary, where any idiot can be an instant expert. Instead of buying dictionaries, we look for free on-line references which frequently are worth what we pay for them.

I worked with a man who thought "redundant" meant "stupid", because he saw on a Britcom a man say he had "been made redundant" and for some unknown reason decided it meant "stupid".

I worked with a guy who said he thought his carburetor wasn't working and he wanted me to look at it. So I looked at his carburetor. And he says "No, this thing, the carburetor, that keeps the battery charged." ME: "That's the alternator." HIM: "Well, I call it a carburetor." ME (in loud voice): "You can't call it a fucking carburetor, there's already something called a carburetor a foot from it!"

Then there are the expressions - "It's a doggy-dog world." "It's six of one and half of another." "We can't count on our chickens until they roost." "You can't lead a horse to water." Our old folksy truisms are being made into mush. Grrr. These are the people whom Scott Adams refers to as "obliviots".

The crowning idiocy is Al Gore, who in the course of defending a multi-lingual society during one debate gave a stirring little speech about how our (the USA's) strength is in our many diverse cultures, saying "It's in our motto, 'E Pluribus unum' - out of one, many." Here's a man who served as vice president, and was running for president, getting our national motto ass-backward.