Words people get wrong

Hardly anyone on this board spells "ridiculous" correctly, I usually see "rediculous".

A lot of people spell defiantly when they mean definitely.

Hydrite wrote:

A lot of people spell defiantly when they mean definitely.

HA HA a professional athlete tweeted this one yesterday. It totally changed the meaning of his tweet. I knew what he meant but it was funny.

"I defiantly support 'so and so' in all he does...'

The Miami Heat are a very dominate team.

They say loosing instead of losing. To instead of too.

Ex: He was to busy loosing to care about the test he had the next day.

I saw this the other day:

"Grammar: It is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit"

"Penultimate" is almost always misused, as if it meant something greater than or beyond ultimate. It actually means one less than the ultimate.

Yanqui wrote:

"Penultimate" is almost always misused, .

One example please?

I saw a flyer in college once that advertised a meeting of an Orthodox Christian student group. It said that the Orthodox Church was the one true "apostate" (i.e. they have renounced Christianity) church, instead of the one true "apostolic" (i.e. descended from Jesus's Twelve Apostles) church.

Yanqui wrote:

"Penultimate" is almost always misused, as if it meant something greater than or beyond ultimate. It actually means one less than the ultimate.

I hear people complain about misuse of this work more often than I hear people actually misuse it.

wrote:

I hear people complain about misuse of this work more often than I hear people actually misuse it.[/quote]

But I do notice that some people get confused between "word" and "work."

almost always? wrote:

One example please?

Recent quotes from this board.

Josh Groban recently performed in St. Paul. He has a large vocal range and sings a broad range of musical styles. He is the penultimate performer with innovative visual effects. I recommend seeing him in concert.

Why would you not want to run marathons? In the running world, a marathon is considered the penultimate. And to nonrunners, it is the ultimate way to impress them.

Humans will be gone long before the penultimate expansion of the sun.

And that is only from the first 6 or 7 occurrences from the search function.

My favorite is a mute point (instead of moot). The point is unable to speak.

The classics (not words, but phrases):

I could care less

for all intensive purposes

if worst comes to worst

For words, you can't beat the Oatmeal's "10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling"

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

My favorite is definitely- "There is no A in definitely. To help you remember, use this: If you put an A in "definitely," then you're definitely an A-hole."

deer/dear....

The Stache wrote:

I saw this the other day:

"Grammar: It is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit"

Nice

People almost always misspell onomatopoeia and it just pisses me off!

My two favorites:

people say "I's" when they mean my/mine. Usually they will say something like this: "Joe and I's parents." Hey idiots, "I's" is never correct.

The one that drives me crazy is when "humbled" is misused. It happens all the time. Every idiot on America Idol says it at least once. Pro sports players do it a lot as well. For example: "I'm humbled to be inducted into the Hall of Fame." How exactly does being recognized as one of the greatest lower your dignity.

In terms of just misusing words, people use "less" when "fewer" should be used. Express isles at stores usually say "15 items or less." I don't know about you, but I usually measure my items at Wal-Mart in discrete numbers.