Darndest?? Now is that a word? The little red squiggle underneath it tells me it isn’t. But I have heard of it, and maybe you are old enough to have heard of it too. (Hint: Used in a television show in the wayback. Oh, I guess wayback isn’t a word either.)
Bu that’s okay because unusual, weird, and maybe just plain wrong things that people say is the subject of this blog post!
How about, for example, all of the sudden? I have always said it that way, but then I just edited a book that used “all of a sudden.” I looked it up to find that my particular resource preferred all of a sudden. I think they are both OK, but what is the difference, really? It’s just one article or the other one. And why not just use suddenly??
Here is a good one for you. Did you ever say, Well, that’s a whole nother story! Ever stop to think about whether nother is a word or not? Of course, it isn’t. Seems to me that it is really another whole story. In that case, I will call it a split pronoun (another: split into an and nother). You’ve heard of splitting infinitives, but I bet you’ve never heard of splitting a pronoun!
Ever hear someone say It’s a mute point? Well, while it is true that points don’t talk (or do they?), the correct word is moot (debatable, doubtful, or not worth talking about).
I get asked sometimes whether the correct expression is different than or different from. In case you, too, are wondering, different from is preferred.
At first I thought it was just my own kids who said on accident rather than by accident. Then, I discovered it was all kids. Then I discovered it was even younger adults. Maybe it makes sense because it is on purpose. But it is still by accident….until it changes.
I actually never heard anyone say this one….but apparently the British say it: good on you instead of good for you.
There are differing opinions on this one, and I would guess it really depends on the context and the situation. Do you work at a company, with a company, or for a company? All are correct…it just depends.
Rim and brim are both the top edges of cups. So do you fill to the rim or to the brim? Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty has checked this one out, and apparently brim refers to the inside of the top edge of the cup — so I guess that is why we fill it to the brim.
If you dance around the pole, it is probably May Day. If your ship is sinking, it is probably Mayday!
Ever go into Starbucks and order a drink? (Well, I sure have…) And the barista asks you, Did you want whip on that? Yes, I did, and I still do! Why do people generally use the past tense for questions like that? Hmmm….it is probably because for some reason, it sounds more polite. Don’t know why, but it does.
So we aren’t supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. Well, actually we can, but that was the old “rule.” Ever think about ending a sentence with certain contractions? No, I can’t sounds perfectly fine, but what about I don’t know where you’re. Think about it…..
If you have any more of these People Say the Darndest Things, please comment or e-mail me! I’m listening…..
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A Wikipedia article on pleonasms mentioned that New Englanders often use a negative to express an affirmative. Thus, if someone says “I would like to go to the game tonight,” a New Englander, such as myself, might answer “So wouldn’t I.” Or: “So don’t I.” The speaker, of course, actually DOES want to go to the game. I’ve used these expressions all my life though I transplanted to the West Coast 40 years ago. I never knew why; they don’t make sense. But then, regional variations don’t always have to make sense.
You bring up an excellent point! I transplanted to the West Coast 20 years ago from New England, and I do remember people saying that when I was a kid. “So don’t I” was very popular. Since people still can understand what you mean, I would call it a regional thing that is not exactly standard, rather than being wrong (I am reading a wonderful book on linguistics, which is making me a little less “right-wing” about proper grammar!) However, that being said of course “So do I” is obviously what you mean. I wonder where that came from!
Have heard most of the others but not “all of the sudden.”
WOW!You’re the second person to tell me that today. I never heard of “all of a sudden.” Maybe I just misheard it….but people do use both of them, I think.
When I was in about sixth grade, when Robert E. Lee was born, a new neighbor appeared. We went to play baseball (really, softball) the next day, so as we passed his house someone asked him, “You want to play catch?” He just stood there and said nothing, so we figured he was either deaf or really dumb. We were a couple of houses closer to the field when he trotted up, glove in hand, and asked “Do you mean do you want to have a catch?” And so we learned two new things. We were in rural Illinois, he was from upstate New York, and that, it seems, was how it was said where we each grew up. But there was more to it. “Playing catch” for us meant throwing the ball back and forth, warming up, before we picked teams and played. Where he grew up, every time you caught the ball you moved back about six feet, until the throwers were so far apart one of the two couldn’t throw the ball to the other in the air, and the guy who couldn’t throw it all the way lost! Turned out he was kind of a genius, except that in baseball I don’t recall him ever winning at “having a catch.”
Gordon – Ha! Great comment. You learn something new every day!
In California, I had to stand *in* line to wait to reach the clerk. But then I discovered that in the East, folks would go down to the box office and stand *on* line so they could buy their ticket.
I cringe each time I see it written “mute point” — perhaps it’s because my dad was a lawyer, that I knew about moot points (argued by law students in “moot court”). If the point is mute, is that an unspeakable point?
Perhaps you can recall the instant coffee brand “Brim.” Their advertisement tag line was, “Fill it to the rim with Brim!” At least that’s more grammatical than “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.” Obviously, after your grammar lesson, they should have named the coffee “Rim” to have a grammatically correct tag line.
Another regionalism is in Los Angeles where they refer to the major highways/freeways as “the 101, the 405, etc.” Most other places the number does not have the article with it. (I get off I-5 and exit 7.) I suspect that it may have something to do with the early freeways having had specific names rather than numbers … “take *the* Santa Ana Freeway to the Foothill exit…” When the highways were assigned numbers after the Interstate highway system came into being, using “the” probably felt natural.
Interesting and thoughtful comments as always!! I do remember that coffee commercial! And Saturday Night Live had quite a skit going with the Californians, who spoke mostly in directions: I took the 405 to the 10 to the 17……