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I had a conversation with someone once in which I was told to "stop contradicting to" him. He meant "dictating to" him. He didn't even mean "stop contradicting me".

Ho ho! These are making me laugh.

i guess it all depends on how you interpretate what he said.

i had a fill-in psychology teacher in highschool for a few months who thought that the active form of the noun "interpretation" was "to interpretate".

I must admit that the appearance of 'orientate' in dictionaries angers me. The verb is orient!

Surfrider wrote:I was surprised to learn that saying (example) "this is nonsense" is actually wrong. It's supposed to be "this is a nonsense".

But i think i may have only heard the correct usage once or maybe twice at a push. So where does this lie in terms of clever dicks getting it wrong, in relation to how annoying the correct usage is / how annoying people's use of incorrect usage is in general?

Okay so that sentence is really poor but i'm not particularly clever.

Sorry.

Presumably "this [situation] is a nonsense" is different from "this [argument] is nonsense"?

Maybe not.

I get annoyed when people confuse imply with infer, but I'm sure I make stupid mistakes a lot of the time.

One I never thought about before studying GRE vocabulary lists: enormity (wickedness) vs. enormousness (really, really big). I can't recall using either word, but I would have automatically thought "really, really big" if I had heard "enormity".

"The enormity of Bono's ideas to stop global hunger" actually works either way.

LAD wrote:I must admit that the appearance of 'orientate' in dictionaries angers me. The verb is orient!

Along with "irregardless", this one completely infuriates me. It just hinges on the stupid idea that adding unnecessary and incorrect extra syllables to a word makes the speaker sound intelligent. I read (probably in William Poundstone's Big Secrets), that Debbie Fields decided to start her own business (Mrs. Fields cookies) after she used the non-word "orientated" in front of one of her husband's business associates, who then dropped a dictionary in her lap and said something along the lines of: "The word is oriented. Learn to use the English language."

In a just world, her business would have tanked.

matt, one tip i have for cleaner speech/writing is to avoid '-ized' in general, as it is rarely necessary. you can just say 'it was becoming more bureaucratic.' or say 'even more' if you want to intensificatize the becoming.

During a classroom discussion in college, a student used the 'word' tributize. He meant tribute. Later in the discussion, he used the 'word'

tributization(!)

He meant tribute.

But I'm not that bothered by funny usage. The English language is a living, changing thing, blah blah blah.

Like: flammable is a real word now. It used to be inflammable, but people saw that and thought, hey, this stuff is fireproof!

T'aint no time for armchair etymology when yer town's burnin' down.

placeholder wrote:
... the stupid idea that adding unnecessary and incorrect extra syllables to a word

"Burglarize". I've never understood the point of that word. Is that a real word in America, or is it deemed stupid? Surely the word "burgle" is good enough?

I prefer "booglarize"

Hi.

I googlized tributization (I had forgotten all about it until this thread came along), and the only place it appears on The Internets is at this funeral home web page:

http://www.cartwrightfuneral.com/prearrangement.php

So perhaps this word is part of the argot of undertakers. I doubt it.