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Pet Peeves



Time to dredge out some of my pet peeves. These are words that I hear people say (usually on television or the radio) that are used incorrectly.

Enormity: This is one that grates on my nerves every time I hear it used incorrectly. It does not mean Huge, or super big, or ginormous. Enormity means evil, usually a great evil. While it is understandable that an average person might confuse enormity with something that is enormous, I have heard people who should know better (writers, reporters) who misuse this word. It would be appropriate to say “. . . the enormity of the 9/11 attacks . . .” or “. . . the enormity of Hitler’s Holocaust . . .” It would not be appropriate to say “ . . . the enormity of the Sahara Desert . . .”

Iregardless: This is not a word. You meant to say regardless.

Laid: I will confess that this one tripped me up in my younger days. If you are talking about reclining, the past tense of lie is lay. For the verb lay, meaning to set something down, the past tense is laid. So it would be proper to say: “He laid the book on the table,” or “the chicken laid an egg.” It would not be proper to say: “he laid in the bed.” Instead you should say: “he lay in the bed.”

Factoid: This is a real word, but it does not mean a small bit of information. It actually means a piece of misinformation that has been presented as fact. So don’t be saving up factoids for your trivia contest.

Forte: This one is not so much misused as it is mispronounced. There are two different words that are spelled forte. In music the word forte means loud, and is pronounced for-tay. Everyone gets that one right. The problem is the other word which means a strength or something you are good at. This one is pronounced fort.  The forte in music is an Italian word so the final e is pronounced. The other one is a French word so the final e is not. So if you hear someone say “Math is not my forte.” They should be pronouncing it fort and not fort-ay.

And while we are on the subject of pronunciation, why is it that almost no politician can pronounce “nuclear”? It usually comes out sounding like “nuke-u-lar.” Seriously, this is disturbing. There ought to be a basic test for holding public office. If you can’t pronounce nuclear, you are disqualified.

Literally: This means it actually happened. It is not to be used as a term of exaggeration or illustration. People are always saying things like “I literally died laughing.” Really? How can you say that if you are dead?

Its/it’s: The confusion here is understandable because it seems to violate the rules. “. . . its box” means the box that belongs to “it”. “It’s a red box” means “it is a red box.” Normally when you see an apostrophe followed by an “s”, it is a possessive, like “joe’s box” or “Fran’s car.” But when it comes to “its” the possessive “s” does not get an apostrophe.

“For all intensive purposes:” Yeah, that is not a thing. The correct phrase is: For all intents and purposes. The other one doesn’t make any sense.

Okay there are my pet peeves for the day. What are yours?

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, Amazon, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out soon).
Link to Star Liner

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