Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.

Example:

In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.

  • frezik@midwest.social
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    11 minutes ago

    Online in general: using “reductio ad absurdum” as a fallacy.

    It’s a longstanding logical tool. Here’s an example of how it works: let’s assume you can use infinity as a number. In that case, we can do:

    ∞ + 1 = ∞

    And:

    ∞ - ∞ = 0

    Agreed? If so, then:

    ∞ - ∞ + 1 = ∞ - ∞

    And therefore:

    1 = 0

    Which is absurd. If we agree that all the logical steps to get there are correct, then the original premise (that we can use infinity as a number) must be wrong.

    It’s a great tool for teasing out incorrect assumptions. It has never been on any academic list of fallacies, and the Internet needs to stop saying otherwise. It’s possible some other fallacy is being invoked while going through an argument, but it’s not reductio ad absurdum.

  • Poop@lemmy.ca
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    5 hours ago

    Using “racking” instead of the correct “wracking” in “wracking my brain”. Not very common, but it annoys me… But not as much as “could of”… That is the worst, just stop it!

    This is online and in person in Canada.

  • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe
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    3 hours ago

    I know someone that says ‘Pacific’ instead of ‘specific’. The man has his talents & his place in the world, food man, but yes that is infuriating.

  • Kagu@lemmy.ml
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    5 hours ago

    “that begs the question”. I wish people would just use the more correct “raises the question”, especially people doing educational/academic content. I hear it across the English-speaking internet

  • twice_twotimes@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    Using “uncomfy” instead of uncomfortable. I recognize this one is fully style, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Break the entirely fake rules of grammar and spelling all you want, but have some decency when it comes to connotation.

    Comfy is an informal and almost diminutive form (not technically, but it follows the structure so it kinda feels like it) of comfortable. You have to have a degree of comfort to use the less formal “comfy,” so uncomfy is just…paradoxical? Oxymoronic? Ironic? I’d be ok with it used for humor, but not in earnest.

    Relatedly, for me “comfy” is necessarily referring to physical comfort, not emotional. I can be either comfy or comfortable in a soft fuzzy chair. I can be comfortable in a new social situation. I can be uncomfortable in either. I can be uncomfy in neither, because that would be ridiculous.

    FWIW I would never actually correct someone on this. I would immediately have my linguist card revoked, and I can’t point to a real fake grammatical rule that would make it “incorrect” even if I wanted to. But this is the one and only English usage thing I hate, and I hate it very, very much.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    6 hours ago

    They’re, you’re

    Sneak peek

    In portuguese: mas/mais - people often use “mais” (plus, sum) when the correct would be mas (but)

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    8 hours ago

    “For all intensive porpoises” is the one that really annoys me.

    They’re dolphins, not porpoises. Fuck, get your cetaceans right.

  • viralJ@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I’m not entirely against it, but I’m amused by how common it is to put “whole” inside of “another”, making it “a whole nother”. Can anyone give any other use of the word “nother”?