Grammar that makes you cringe

[Pingu]

Re Peeve, Tees who sets crosswords in the Independent had a clue last year: Vex Gove (5)

Took me a lot of head-scratching to crack that one.

 

[citoyen]

Headline in the Guardian today:

“50 best summer dresses to buy, rent or thrift”

[spesh]

I suspect the latter term is being used as a catch-all for the sources of second-hand clothing  - charity shops, eBay/Gumtree et al or sites such as https://thrift.plus/ , but yes, it looks horrible and smacks of creeping Americanisation.

[citoyen]

The intended meaning is obvious enough. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

[Tim Hall]

The intended meaning is obvious enough. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I'm guessing the meaning of the second term isn't this one either

 

And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom;

although it could be.

[hellymedic]

There is a part of Bristol called Troopers Hill. Or is it Troopers' Hill? Or maybe Trooper's Hill? The answer is predictably yes, yes and yes:

 ,  and 

Elsewhere in these parts, is an Audax named Drover's Roads.
I object...

[nicknack]

"Get go" or should it be "get-go"?

Whatever.

Just fucking stop it.

"Start" or "beginning" are perfect good English words. Use them.

[Mr Larrington]

🎵
Get up and go 🎶
Get up and go 🎶
Get up and go back home!

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've got to put myself in this thread. Well, vocabulary not grammar, but close enough. I arrived early for a hot date (weeding an allotment) so texted the allotment owner that I had "underestimated the time it would take to get here". I had, of course, overestimated it. 

(I went on to compound the stupid by looking in the wrong shed. "The watering can's not in the shed." "Are you sure?" "Nothing there, see." "That's not our shed.")

[liam_whippet]

 

"Does your dog bite?"

asked Clouseau-ziemiec, yesterday.

[Legs]

Mrs Legs and I are watching every episode of Silent Witness.  From Series 9 Episode 1:

[Legs]

After the sad death of Darius Danesh, we were discussing the diverse destinies of the Pop Idol cohort.  For the first time I noticed the ungrammatical title of Gareth Gates' Anyone Of Us (I'd always thought it was Any One Of Us, which would have made sense).  It's a really annoying song because of weird juxtaposition of the soppy upbeat melody, and the horrible gaslighting #sorrynotsorry lyrics.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Stopped by an American couple in their 60s and asked for directions this morning. "Is there a food market along this road?" "A market?" "Yeah, just a small one." Oh, a shop! There is a food market a few roads away but it's only on Saturday mornings. Two little grocery shops up here and then left though.

[Pickled Onion]

It was lucky they asked someone as international as you! Market/Markit/Minimarket are fairly ubiquitous across E Europe for what in internationalese is referred to as "convenience store". In the UK we only have "supermarket", totally different to a "market", leading to they abomination "mini supermarket". Then again, I know plenty of British people who don't know the difference between "grocers" and "greengrocers".

[Kim]

Then again, I know plenty of British people who don't know the difference between "grocers" and "greengrocers".

Now there's a neuron that hasn't fired for quite some time.  Though in my vocabulary it was always "greengrocers" and "grocery shop".

[Cudzoziemiec]

I read somewhere, some time ago (possibly in Language Log? maybe not) that forms such as grocery, bakery, when referring to a shop, were American formations under the influence of German (Bakerei, etc) and only became common in GB English in the late 20th century.

[Salvatore]

Stopped by an American couple in their 60s and asked for directions this morning. "Is there a food market along this road?" "A market?" "Yeah, just a small one." Oh, a shop! There is a food market a few roads away but it's only on Saturday mornings. Two little grocery shops up here and then left though.

They should go to Finland. One of the biggest supermarket chains is K-Market. And that's the name which is proudly displayed above their premises. Except their really really big ones which call themselves K-Supermarket.

Wherever you are in Finland, you can find the K-Market. It's opposite the S-Market, its big rival.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Not at all cringe, but I'm wondering if 'out-migration' and 'in-migration' are standard Australian usage in place of 'emigration' and 'immigration'?

It is certainly true that the coups have led to a massive out-migration of Fijian Indians, whose share in the population has fallen from 50% in the late 1980s to only about 34% now.

Or perhaps there's a subtle difference between the original emigration from India to Fiji and the later out-migration from Fiji to (Australia, US, etc)?

[T42]

Not at all cringe, but I'm wondering if 'out-migration' and 'in-migration' are standard Australian usage in place of 'emigration' and 'immigration'?

It is certainly true that the coups have led to a massive out-migration of Fijian Indians, whose share in the population has fallen from 50% in the late 1980s to only about 34% now.

Or perhaps there's a subtle difference between the original emigration from India to Fiji and the later out-migration from Fiji to (Australia, US, etc)?

My guess is that there's an editor somewhere who's thinking "I know what the real words mean but the plebs won't".

Meanwhile, I need the brain sanitation dept.'s attention after listening to 5 minutes of the Artemis would-be launch commentary the other day. It went something like this: "the LOX-tank team communicate that they are holding in a liquid-oxygen-flow-suspended situation. They are currently not flowing oxygen into the tank." 

[Salvatore]

Stopped by an American couple in their 60s and asked for directions this morning. "Is there a food market along this road?" "A market?" "Yeah, just a small one." Oh, a shop! There is a food market a few roads away but it's only on Saturday mornings. Two little grocery shops up here and then left though.

They should go to Finland. One of the biggest supermarket chains is K-Market. And that's the name which is proudly displayed above their premises. Except their really really big ones which call themselves K-Supermarket.

Wherever you are in Finland, you can find the K-Market. It's opposite the S-Market, its big rival.

I should add that the Finnish for market is tori, whence torille, roughly translated as "Let's all go to the market place to celebrate our victory against Sweden at ice hockey".

[Kim]

Meanwhile, I need the brain sanitation dept.'s attention after listening to 5 minutes of the Artemis would-be launch commentary the other day. It went something like this: "the LOX-tank team communicate that they are holding in a liquid-oxygen-flow-suspended situation. They are currently not flowing oxygen into the tank." 

I don't envy the job those commentators have, though.  Following a stream of technical jargon (which in NASA circles leans heavily in the acronym soup direction) that they may only be partially familiar with in one ear, and a director's instructions in the other, while trying to translate it into something the lay person can understand.  Crimes against grammar are to be expected.

More international missions have the added bonus of people speaking technically in different languages for them to make sense of, which can be fun.


(I've always been impressed by SpaceX's ability to find some of their engineers with knowledge of the subject matter and actual presentation skills to do the commentary on their live streams.)

[T42]

I suppose.  Also, NASA-speak is also determined by the need to be unambiguous, à la affirmative/negative rather than yes/no.  All the same I reckon they've got a department somewhere devoted to coining new and longer ways of stating things that can be conveyed with a single word.

[Kim]

Hanananananah the astrononononomer, who spent some time in South Africa herding a spectrograph named GIRAFFE, assures me that one of the key stages of designing a new scientific instrument is coming up with an appropriately cute and/or clever acronym for it.  I reckon the rocket engineers share the same philosophy.

[T42]

I once wrote a programming system called John's Own Keyboard System To Rapidly Assemble Programs.

[Kim]

My brief, and notably unsuccessful, foray into rocket engineering featured a piece of software called Bristol Rocket Enthusiasts' Altitude Speed and Trajectory Simulation.  It may have needed a re-write to account for negative altitude at the end of flight.  (I was a lowly E&EE first year, and therefore given the minor task of making the parachutes deploy without using any stuff-wot-goes-BOOM.)