Once more, I’d like to offer you a pepperoni pizza, now that you’re safe in the knowledge of what it actually is. I won’t play any tricks this time. Now, would you like that pizza to be hot and spicy? You would? OK, first, let me add some chilli oil. Then… wait, that’s it? But you said you wanted it to be hot and spicy, and I’ve only added the chilli oil. Don’t you also want some… No? OK, but with only the chilli oil, it’s not hot and spicy. Why? Let me explain again…
Hi there! Would you like a pepperoni pizza? Of course you would! Well, here you go…
Yesterday, I mentioned that I expect other languages to have an increasing influence on English due to the fact that there are more non-native speakers of English in the world than native speakers. I’ve already noticed this happening a lot with one specific word. Let’s see if you can guess what it is:
The first part of the title of this post is the title of an article I came across yesterday on the Culture of the BBC website. I thought it would be interesting, and wondered in what way they might be killing the English language. I was quite disappointed then, to read it and find out, as I’d expected, they’re not killing it at all.
To develop a theme of translating from Latin, I want to take a quick look at this phrase today.
-Oh man, he’s not going to tell us we’ve been using this wrong too, is he? He’s not going to take this inspirational phrase away from us!?
No no, not at all!
Well, maybe a little…
Has anyone ever told you that you, or most people, use this word incorrectly? It’s possible, because it’s a favourite of misguided pedants.
It’s main use now is to mean to inflict heavy losses, or to almost completely destroy/defeat. It’s usually used in a military sense, as so:
While checking that I knew what I was talking about when writing about the words venomous and poisonous, I came across an interesting term: true bug. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 