Things Americans Say Wrong
Yes, the title is intentional.
Please take the following grains of salt before criticizing the list too harshly:
- I am a (naturalized) American citizen, and thus a proud American.
- I have no formal training in linguistics.
- These are just some personal pet peeves, so don’t get your panties in a bunch.
| a whole other… | Not “a whole ‘nother…” |
| abercrombie | Not “ambercrombie” |
| across | Not “acrost” or “acrossed” |
| addictive | Not “addicting” |
| all I did was… | Not “all’s I did was…” |
| all of a sudden… | Not “all of the sudden…” |
| alumni | This is often mistaken as the singular form of itself. The correct form is alumnus for singular masculine, alumna for singular feminine, alumnae for plural feminine, and alumni for masculine or generic plural. |
| Alzheimer’s disease (ALTS-heim-ers) | Not “old-timer’s disease” |
| Antarctica | Not “Antartica” |
| anticlimactic | Not “anticlimatic” |
| anyway | Not “anyways” |
| as best as you can | Not “as best you can” (pronoun may vary). Even more appropriate would be “as well as you can.” |
| as long as | Not “so long as” |
| as opposed to | Not “as oppose to.” This one is fairly subtle, since even in the correct pronunciation, the “d” is almost inaudible. However, many people do indeed consciously and audibly omit the “d.” |
| ask | Not “axe” |
| asterisk (AS-te-risk) | Not “asterix” (AS-te-riks). This error is made frequently by low-ranking office employees or people who are beginning to learn computer terminology. |
| beck and call | Not “beckon call” |
| better than the last | Sometimes, to express pleasure toward something, someone might incorrectly say, “every day is better than the next,” or “every bite is tastier than the next,” and so on. If you think about this carefully, you’ll realize that these are actually negative statements. When a person says, “every day is better than the next,” it is equivalent to saying, “every day is worse than the previous.” The person is essentially implying that every day since the beginning has been getting progressively worse. The correct phrase, therefore, should be, “every day is better than the last.” |
| biceps | Not “bicep.” The singular of biceps is still biceps. |
| boisterous | Not “voice-terous” |
| bystander | Not “by-standard” |
| calculate | Not “caculate.” |
| cavalry | Not “calvary.” Of course, if you’re referring to the place outside of Jerusalem, then you’re fine. |
| card sharp | Not “card shark.” A reader contributes: “When someone is good at shooting pool or playing cards, they are sharp. Therefore, they are a ‘pool sharp’ or a ‘card sharp.’ They are not sharks as in ‘pool sharks’ or ‘card sharks.’” |
| chipotle (chi-POT-lay) | Everyone seems to have their own pronunciation of this word. Most commonly, however, people mispronounce it by saying “chipolte” (chi-POL-tay), or “chipote” (chi-PO-tay), omitting the “l” altogether, or even “chipottle” (rhymes with “bottle”). The word itself has its origins in the Aztec language Nahuatl, where the “tl” sound was very common. It is derived from the words chil (chile), and pochilli (to smoke). |
| comeuppance | Not “comeuppins” |
| comfortable | Not “comfterble” |
| couldn’t care less | Not “could care less.” When you think about it, to say “I could care less” really means that you actually do care about something, and it’s possible for you to care less about it. It is more appropriate to say “I couldn’t care less” to indicate that you have reached the rock bottom of carelessness about something. |
| data | The word data is plural. Therefore it is inappropriate to use a phrase like “this data.” It is more appropriate to say “these data.” The singular form of the word is datum. |
| daylight saving time | Not “daylight savings time” |
| drivel | Not “dribble.” Dribble is what one does with a basketball. Drivel is childish or nonsensical language. |
| drowned | Not “drownded” |
| enormity | The word enormity refers to excessive evil or wickedness. It does not, however, refer to general excessive size. For that, the preferred term would be enormousness. |
| espresso | Not “expresso.” I mean, come on. |
| et cetera | Not “exetera.” Commonly abbreviated “etc.,” this is literally the Latin words et, meaning “and,” and cetera, meaning “the rest.” When spelled out, this is two words, not one. |
| exact revenge | Not “extract revenge.” |
| exclamation mark | Not “exclamation point.” Do you ever say “question point”? |
| fateful day | Not “faithful day” |
| February (FEB-roo-a-ry) | Not “Feb’uary” (FEB-yoo-a-ry). |
| founder | Not “flounder.” Founder is what a ship does when it collides with something and sinks in the water. Flounder is a kind of fish. |
| for all intents and purposes | Not “for all intensive purposes” |
| hair’s breadth | Some believe that this metaphor is actually “hare’s breath.” |
| heart-rending | Not “heart-rendering” |
| height | Not “heighth” |
| hertz | This applies to the singular form of the unit, which is still hertz. Some people mistakenly say, “1 hert.” |
| how many feet are in a mile? | Not “how many feet in a mile?” (Units may vary) |
| I’d just as soon… | Not “I’d just assume…” An example phrase might be, “I’d just as soon not go to the park today.” |
| I’m not sure | Not “I’m not for sure” |
| I’ve seen | Not “I seen” |
| in other words | Not “another words” |
| infinitesimal | Not “infintesimal” |
| instant messaging | Not “instant messenging” |
| integral | Not “intregal” |
| inverse square law | Not “invert square law” |
| jewelry | Not “jewlery” |
| kielbasa (kil-BA-sa) | For some reason, this is commonly mispronounced “kielbasi” (kil-BA-see) |
| lackadaisical | Not “laxadaisical” |
| laundromat | Not “laundrymat” |
| let it be | Not “leave it be” |
| library | Not “libery” |
| literature | Not “litature” |
| mano a mano | In Spanish, this literally means “hand to hand.” However, many Americans incorrectly pronounce it as “mano y mano,” which would mean “hand and hand.” |
| mayonnaise | Not “man-aise” |
| memento | Not “momento” |
| menstruation | Not “menstration” |
| mischievous (MIS-chee-vus) | Not “mischievious” (mis-CHEE-vee-us). |
| moot point | Not “mute point” |
| myrrh | Not “myrth” |
| nauseated | Not “nauseous.” A reader contributes: “Too often I hear people who are sick to their stomach say “I am nauseous” rather than “I am nauseated.” Saying “I am nauseous” means that I cause OTHERS to feel sick to THEIR stomachs.” |
| nuclear (NEW-clee-ar) | Often disgustingly mispronounced as “nucular” (NOO-kyoo-lar). I still cringe when remembering George W. Bush say “nucular” in his speeches. |
| nunchucks | Not “numchucks.” A reader contributes: “Nunchaku is technically correct. However in English usage it is acceptable to use nunchucks, but not in Martial Arts usage or Japanese.” |
| off | Not “off of” |
| olfactory | Not “old factory” |
| on one hand… | Not “on the one hand…” |
| one and the same | Not “one in the same” |
| orangutan | Not “orangutang” |
| oriented | Not “orientated” |
| parenthesis | One of these “(” is a parenthesis (as opposed to parentheses, which is plural) |
| phenomenon | The word phenomena is plural. Therefore it is inappropriate to use phenomena when speaking of a single phenomenon. |
| picture | Not “pi’ture” |
| pieces and parts | Not “pieces parts.” For some reason, this is catching on at an alarming rate. |
| powers that be | Not “powers to be” |
| prescription | Not “perscription” |
| pronunciation | Not “pronounciation” |
| realty/realtor | Not “real-a-ty” / “real-a-tor” |
| regardless | Not “irregardless” |
| relevant | Not “revelant” |
| repercussions | Not “reprocussions” |
| rhombus | Not “rhumbus” |
| sacrilegious | Not “sacreligious” |
| sherbet | Not “sherbert” |
| sidetracked | Not “sidetracted” |
| statute of limitations | Not “statue of limitations.” To quote Jerry Seinfeld, “Fine, it’s a sculpture of limitations!” |
| strength | Not “strenth” |
| supposedly | Not “supposably” |
| tact | Not “tack” |
| take for granted | Not “take for granite” |
| that’s not fair | Not “that’s no fair” |
| touch base with… | Not “touch bases with…” |
| triathlon | Not “triathalon.” Also applies to biathlon, tetrathlon, pentathlon, etc. Even the word athlete is sometimes mispronounced “ath-a-lete.” |
| utmost | Not “upmost” |
| verbiage | Not “verbage” |
| vertebra | The word vertebrae is plural and should not be used as the singular. |
| vice versa | Not “vice-a-versa.” |
| voluptuous | Not “volumptuous” |
| where are you? | Not “where are you at?” and certainly not “where you at?” |
| width | Not “wi’th” |
| would have | Not “would of” |
| wreak havoc | Not “wreck havoc” |
| yin/yang | Not “ying/yang” |
April 8th, 2010 at 6:59 am
If it were not for funny speaking Americans, those whom we refer to as British would be speaking German.
April 11th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
ugh, it just bugs me how other countries think that every american speaks the same. im absolutely sure i would never hear a harvard graduate say “hey can i axe yous a question? where you at, yo?” and i dont think you would either. sure some americans might but im pretty sure theres some dumb people where you live too. i read this over and havent said half of the things on this list. saying every american says this is like saying “why do brits have such nasty crooked teeth?” “why do muslims always blow up buildings” “why do mexicans keep breaking into my country?” “why do french women have moustaches?” “why dont chinese people bathe?” “why do black people love fried chicken and watermelon so much?” i know these things arent true, why dont you go fix the problems in your own country and leave America alone for once.
April 16th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Dustin – sounds like you’re from the Saving Ryan’s Privates and Band of Buggers generation.
BTW, on D-Day you lot landed on the wrong beach – air brushed from history books.
April 21st, 2010 at 5:38 am
This just made my day. Admittedly I’m guilty of a few of these – specifically comfterble and “couldn’t care less” (comfterble is due more to my being too lazy to enunciate). But good lord do the more obvious ones bug me. It’s like an entire generation learned phonetically instead of by reading.
I am sooooo with you. Every time I hear someone speak publicly, I’m with them all the way until they say something like “irregardless” and then they lose me completely. Or in other cases they’ll append a comment by saying “also too…” which doesn’t even make sense.
My friends call me the English Nazi. And they’re not referring to my political views.
I’ve written a couple of english-centric blog articles along similar lines:
http://coding.drewcorp.ca/other/spoons-are-weird/
http://www.drewcorp.ca/english-101
Incidentally, the people I’ve found to be the biggest “offenders” have been American, but it’s by no means exclusive them. We Canadians aren’t any better.
And the metric system sucks.
May 11th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
THANK YOU. Suddenly I find myself working with two otherwise reasonable human beings who insist on using the term “pieces parts” when talking about code. I’d never heard this before and I thought I was going crazy.
May 19th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
We found this list humourous, but want to leave comment for ‘becca’: Why don’t you take a class or two in punctuation before sounding off in a rant that does nothing more than exclaim your sheer ignorance!
May 19th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
I find it most annoying when people say “these ones” or “those ones” instead of just using the words “these” or “those” for plural objects. And, if they want to make it singular they should use the words “this” or “that”.
May 21st, 2010 at 8:01 pm
“Old Timers” instead of “alzheimer’s” is actually a joke most people say, often by an elderly person trying to remember something. It is not a language mistake.
May 23rd, 2010 at 3:51 am
i’m sure many of the people you hear saying “would of” are actually saying “would’ve”
also, the “i could care less” saying is my BIGGEST pet peeve
May 24th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
I understand your frustration towards people who incorrectly articulate, however, where do you think the standards for articulation started? Catsup became ketchup and can not became can’t because a language grows and changes with the culture. It is easy to frown upon these changes, and ignore them, desperately wishing them away, but that doesn’t make it right. Words have the meanings we give to them, and those meanings will always be changing, no matter how it may annoy us.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Very funny and true observations. I’m so gratified, relieved and somehow vindicated to see that you’ve included my all time pet peeve: all of “the ” sudden.
May 31st, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Americans have bastardised the english language. just as they do to everything else. Bunch of morons. go nuke yourself
June 4th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Please, get off your high horse. English is a living language, and while I too am annoyed by what I sometimes take to be its butchering, I understand things change. There is nothing more sacred about what is considered correct spelling or grammar today than there was when we were speaking Middle or Old English. Google for some examples of those, or even just pick up a Bible to see how far we’ve come; then realize we’re not special, and hopefully you’ll see you are clinging to antiquities.
June 8th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
add to the list — “safe deposit box”, not “safety deposit box”
June 12th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
You’re an idiot Rosco. First of all, where do you get off calling people out on thier English mistakes when you have one in your post as well. You’re probably one of those idiots who attacks someone then reads over their own post frantically making sure you didn’t leave a mistake, but you did! Also, we’re on the internet folkes, we’re going to see people type in many different ways. If someone leaves out puncuation, then that’s them, not you. If you can’t understand a sentence without punctuation, then don’t read it, and go back to grade school.
As for the Original Poster, I’ve never heard even half of the phrases in this list wrong. If you truly have a pet peeve for ALL of these phrases, then I think you need to go see a doctor. I’m sure this is unhealthy. I also think you’re confusing slur with proper English. You need to understand all living languages have “slur,” in the sense that it’s slightly altered phonetically.
June 18th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
A few suggestions to add to the list:
1) It’s “Buck naked”, not “butt naked”. Although reading the origin of “buck naked” on this very good website from Washington Stat University (http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors) certainly makes we NOT want to use the correct original version. I will take their suggestion and say “stark naked” instead from now on!
2) It’s “dog-eat-dog world”, not “doggy dog world”. ‘Nuf said on that one.
Thanks – Melissa in LA County, CA
June 21st, 2010 at 8:30 pm
I LOVE your list and agree heartily with all but one expression: so long as. I was taught to use “so long as” for conditional situations and “as long as” for measuring time. I’d love to know when this rule changed!
June 30th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Comparable is not com-PAIR-able, though you wouldn’t know this listening to the evening news.
June 30th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
The American Heritage Dictionary lists “exclamation point” as its primary entry.
July 5th, 2010 at 8:26 am
My peeves are: when offering someone a drink they say ‘can I GET a coke’ instead of ‘May I have’ or ‘Could I have.’Pervasive by the Brits too I’m afraid.
It’s also incorrect to say oriented. The correct version is orientated, unless you are thinking of something being made Asian!
July 5th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
My pet peeve is accessory when pronounced assessory. Aaahhhh…even in movies. Thank you!
July 14th, 2010 at 1:51 am
I have often heard the word ‘PRErogative’ pronounced ‘PERogative’. This would be a good one for the list.
July 18th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
I ate up the article like it was cake and devoured the comments just to see if there were any more mispronunciations to find. I have to agree with the comment that word pronunciations do change and become accepted. However, until they are accepted, I like to hear the accepted ones. “Orientated” for “oriented” is the one that drives me nuts. Thanks for writing the list!
July 21st, 2010 at 5:11 pm
I’m so happy that someone else has made these observations. However, it really is (or was) sherbert and not sherbet, even though common use may have made it correct. You missed my two pet peeves. Criteria used as a singular as opposed to criterion makes my skin crawl, and I can’t resist correcting offenders on the spot, even though it might put me at a social or business disadvantage. The major offender, to my mind, is the use of media as a singular… one medium, two media. I once chided a participant in the M.I.T. “Media Lab” about this. I suggested that they didn’t call it the “Medium Lab” was because people would discover that it is neither rare nor well done.
I must point out that it’s usually the English and not we Americans who twist nouns into verbs when there were already acceptable verb forms in common use.
July 29th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
I often hear people say the phrase “as per usual” and although a very brief Google search brought me no sites that claim that phrase is incorrect, I just think it must be! “As usual” makes sense, but “as per usual” does not make sense to me. Per can mean “to each, for each or by each” or “through itself, by itself or in itself”. So how would that make sense in the “as per usual” phrase?
As usual, I have an opinion about the users of that phrase – I think they might think it sounds classier or more intelligent. Personally I think it sounds less intelligent.
August 8th, 2010 at 1:12 am
I really become annoyed when Americans tell us all that the English language is a dynamic and ever changing entity. The major problem with a large percentage of the American population is that it has been exposed to Outcomes Based Education, which tended to “dumb down” students rather than encourage them to compete for with their peers. As an Australian teacher, I am aware of the use of coloquial language and cultural differences.
While I understand that Americans have developed a different spelling and grammatical than the rest of the English speaking countries, it does not mean that it should be accepted as the “norm”. I will still continue to take marks form students who write essays using “get, got and gotten” rather than more creative verbs. I will continue to scoff at the use of stupid terms such as “directress” rather than “director” and hopefull encourage my students to enrich their creative writing rather than “kill” it with some of the lazy, unamaginative “American speak” that has permeated our culture.
August 8th, 2010 at 1:16 am
I have just realised that I have made a few “typos”. No excuse accept to say I have been marking papers for too long this weekend.
August 15th, 2010 at 7:47 am
As a Brit, I could say that the USA has subverted the English language, but its really not true. Its just laziness; and the fact that it is a multi-cultural country, I mean you don’t even spell colour correctly.
Bush was the thickest president ever; even topping Reagen. But like him, I belive that fish and humans can coexsist peacabally.
Besides, English is constantly evolving, there is Indian-English, Chinese-English et cetera. My pet hate is Americans who say ‘I-ran’, or ‘I-raq’, instead of Iraq or Iran.
August 25th, 2010 at 11:27 am
Interesting clashes of culture(s). Did you ever read Britain and America, two nations separated by a common language? I have often been amazed (and somewhat comforted) to find that most syntactical and grammatical mistakes that grate when Canadians here in Ontario use them, are also used by my many Brit import friends. We in North America didn’t create most of our linguistic shortcomings but rather inherited them from over ‘ome. I frequently hear “I seen” and “I done” spoken with a Midlands or Irish lilt. It has caused me to believe that, in Britain, English is not spoken but rather Englishes are spoken. The many conquests of England by a myriad of invaders has left regional varieties of English which also were noted by Shaw in Pygmalion- every time an Englishman speaks it makes another Englishman despise him. And these many regional dialects then have been imported to the New World. (In the evening do you eat “dinner” or “supper” and at noon “dinner” or “lunch”?) I like language very much and would that it were better cared for by the minions of media. Our CBC used to be a bastion of “High English” but is unfortunately no longer as dependable. I even hear rather clunky English via the BBC. English does change rapidly. It’s really only about 900 years old—try to read Beowulf. Fortunately the invention of printing has slowed and stabilized its transmutation. An Australian friend travelling in the deep American “souf’” did need a Canadian to transliterate when ordering in a restaurant. She should have just gone to the “Brikfas’ Boar”.