What words annoy you when used wrong or people don't know the meaning of?

Presenters on television saying drawring instead of drawing. This appears to be on the increase/

Too many to mention!

I thought that. Wrongly not wrong

suelld, you reminded me of another of my pet hates - indeed, what happened to 'fitted'? Also 'knitted'. 'Her knit hat fit her' sounds ridiculous instead of 'her knitted hat fitted her'.

The wording of the title annoys me more than the misuse of some words quoted here. 'Wrong' should be replaced by the adverb'wrongly' and it is clumsy to end a sentence with a preposition.

It is 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating.'

orly

When American numbskulls like Trump say "aluminum" instead of "aluminium"

I think lot of historians wouldn’t agree with you.
Humphrey Davey the man who discovered the metal was the first person to use the word.
In fact he had 3 words for it.
The Merrium Dictionary states that both words are acceptable.

People on TV saying that”The proof will be in the pudding” That is wrong- “ The proof will be in the eating of the pudding “!

Decimate as actually means only 10% killed, but used incorrectly now.

Use instead of used, as in "I use to enjoy that years ago."
Boarders instead of borders.
Do instead of does - "Do anybody know what's happening?"

Often upset at the use of ‘who’ where it should be ‘whom’ … but it’s an Americanism that has taken over, and those I argued for it’s with my son who was translating a novel, he disagreed as almost everyone uses it now, including the UK Publisher.
My other bugbear is the use of ‘fit’ instead of ‘fitted’ . ie:
“It fit her beautifully” instead of “ It fitted her beautifully”.
Another Americanism that filtered in and took over.

Can I get, instead of may I have
Should of, instead of should have

Well, Greciangirl I took my eye off this thread a few hours ago and just saw your comments about northern accents. I don't know what your accent is, but perhaps someone might not like the way you talk. However, seeing as they don't know what your accent is it's good that they can't make comments!

BlueBelle

To my ears the title should be what words annoy you when said wrongly not what words annoy you when said wrong
Now maybe that s being pedantic 🤣

Nearly wrote the same, but hesitated in case it would be too rude… but glad someone did.. 🤓

Would of instead of would have . For example - I would of gone with you .instead of I would have gone with you. Just laziness imo

The main thing is to communicate effectively.
If we pedants notice what our long-dead teachers would have considered errors of syntax or lexicon, that's our problem.

GoldenAge

What really irks me is when 'professionals' fail on simple grammar rules and the real bugbear is when a therapist of whatever kind writes things like "I practice in a holistic way" instead of "I practise in a holistic way". At school I was taught that in words like practice - practise, advice - advise, licence - license - the noun of the pair was written with a c and the verb of the pair was written with an s - and the easy way to learn this was to think that c+ n, and s + v and that c came before s in the alphabet, and n came before v.

My English grammar mistress who of course must now be long-since dead would be delighted to know that I'm passing her rules on all those years later!

I know so very little about grammatical rules and it honestly is a sadness to me. I was out of school at 15 and although reading is one of the biggest joys to me, I find studying very hard.
I've no proper idea or concept of how to research, catagorise or evaluate info and would love to have learnt how to do this along with grammar, spelling ect.
I feel very lacking when I read these threads.

TwiceAsNice

Mixing up to, too, and two.

Saying was when you should say were.

Wrong use of there and their

Also they're.

Buddleja

People say 'literally' when they mean figuratively. Like 'I literally died of shock'. This happens so often that I think that the meaning of the word must be changing. This seems to be how languages evolve.

I was in a café last week and a woman customer exclaimed 'My head is literally going to explode'

I thought I should move to a different seat.

LaCrepescule

Pacific instead of specific.

I used to have a colleague who would always do this, and it annoyed me back then.

Five or so years after we had both left, I went to a multi-agency meeting and she was there, now as a senior manger, and she still said 'we need to be very pacific about this.

I felt the silent embarrassment the whole meeting suffered.

I haven't read all six pages so apologies if this has already been mentioned:

Advise and advice.

I'm sure we've already had would of, could of and should of.

I was celebrating today when a columnist in the newspaper wrote "none of them is..." The word 'none' being a contraction of 'not one'. (Sorry Grandma, if you already know how to suck eggs! Tee hee 😂)

Should of, instead of should have.

'Underestimated' instead of 'overestimated'. E.g. "The importance of keeping cool in hot weather cannot be underestimated.' I see and hear loads of examples of this misuse by supposedly educated people...

Using amount of…….

Instead of number of……

I hear it time and time again even on the BBC news and written in the broadsheets.

Unindated instead of inundated
Quite unique or rather unique - it’s unique or it isn’t!

Advice and advise