I could care less – misused words and phrases
AAHHHHHHGGGGHHHHHHH! I can’t take it any longer.
I could care less : Usually, when one uses this saying, one’s intention is to indicate no care; no less care can be given because one doesn’t care at all now. Saying you could care less implies you care a little bit, which contradicts the point one is trying to make. ” I could care less” just doesn’t get the job done. It’s “I couldn’t care less”.
I’m nauseous or I feel nauseous : Nauseous means causing or able to cause nausea. If you say that you’re nauseous, you’re saying that you nauseate others. If you feel sick and think you may throw up, then you might want to say you are feeling nauseated.
Irregardless and Orientated. These two are abominations. I used to be able to say those are not words, but no longer can I make such a claim. These mispronunciations were used so often that they are actually now in dictionaries. How sad. It’s Regardless and Oriented.
Just today, I heard a new one from a friend. I told my friend I wanted to use this new word in my post but I had to promise I would not divulge my friend’s identity. The word – interpretate. Now, I had never heard that one before and when I said interpret, my friend kept adding ate and I kept saying no. My friend’s head tilted to one side kind of like a puzzled puppy does. I eventually got through though.
10 times less fat! Wow, that’s quite remarkable when you think about it. OK, let’s do the math. Let’s say that a certain popular tasty vanilla cake filled with creamy goodness has 100 grams of fat. What is 10 times that? Well, it’s 1000 grams of fat. So, there are 1000 less grams of fat than the original 100 grams? C’mon. How can you have ten times less of anything? It should be something like a tenth of the fat or 90% less fat or 10% less fat, depending on the math. I just heard that people are battering them and deep frying them now. Oh man, no, no, that’s just… well it sounds kind of good actually.
Like, it’s like, and I was all like, and he was like… Stop it people. Just stop. I recently saw an interview of First Lady Michelle Obama; it seemed every other word out of her mouth was “like”. Some role model for our young.
I saw a brochure at a massage therapist’s office a few years ago which made a point out of listing people in certain professions that can benefit from massage, as if a list was needed; wouldn’t the shorter list be those that would not benefit from massage? In an apparent effort to be politically correct and gender neutral, it listed police persons and fire persons. What ever happened to police officers and fire fighters? By the way, I hear that the term politically correct is no longer proper; culturally correct is now the phrase we should use to protect everyone’s feelings. This stuff makes me nauseous; irregardless, I could care less.
Look, I’m not perfect and never claimed to be. I’m a horrible speller and I can drop participles and end my sentences in prepositions with the best of them. But these things are just too out there; they really make the speaker sound stupid. Others that make one look stupid are misuse of there/their/they’re and to/too/two; there’s three of each folks, look them up, use the correct one. Also, your vs. you’re and its vs. it’s.
It’s not safety deposit box, it’s safe deposit box.
It’s not by the power invested in me, it’s by the power vested in me.
Very unique. Stop qualifying unique. A thing is unique or it’s not. It can’t be somewhat unique or extremely unique. It’s just unique.
Four corners of the earth – The earth doesn’t have corners.
He made a complete 360° turnaround. OK, what are you trying to say there? If you’re trying to say that he’s back where he started, then alright. If you’re trying to impart the notion that he is now very different than what he was, then he made a 180° turnaround.
There are plenty more but my head is about to explode, so I’ll give it a rest.
Cheers,
Maggie
