Le mot juste - does it matter, who cares anyway if it is the right word?

Before we had self service tills in supermarkets, we had checkouts for '10 items or less.

Georgesgran I have a friend who does exactly the same, I never correct her, she had a poor education and is very self conscious about her language and writing.

From one acryolophobiac to the others: Thank you all so much.

I loved the diffident meanings.

I am sure none of us would be rude enough to correct a friend for misuse of language, but surely we are entitled to expect people whose work requires them to use the language correctly to do so?

My Grandad told us about a young lad in his army days who always referred to the latrines as the 'lavatrines'. Understandable though.

MiL always used to talk about birds pruning themselves. It's now a private joke between us and the other day I said loudly to MrA 'That cormorant is giving himself a right old pruning'. Over MrA's shoulder I saw a man grin to himself as he passed us. He probably told all his mates about the woman who thinks birds prune themselves.

Yes, 'diffident' is lovely grandtante lol

OH was a very early reader. Went to a public loo with his dad in town and reading the sign on the wall, asked 'daddy, what is a venerable disease'

That had me laughing out loud by the third line, maw. I am a pedant of the highest degree and as grandtante says, those whose job it is to convey important information should use the language properly.

As I have said before, my bugbears are "avoid" instead of "prevent" and the wrong pronunciation of contribute and distribute. Who started that? The Americans don't do it, it's only Brits I hear saying contribute and distribute.

grannydarkhair

I didn’t know there was a fancy word for what I call malapropisms. Every day on Gransnet is a school day.

Same here and I used to be a teacher!!!!!. I called them Malapropisms after Mrs Malaprop. People do it all the time they don't mean to, I had an aunt who always referred to the hospital in Newcastle as the Royal Vic[RVI] she got it mixed up with the Old Vic.

Yesterday I went to a village history exhibition in the village where I grew up. I was reminded of this thread when, looking at one of the many displays, I spotted a newspaper notice about a death, from 1935, containing the word internment.
Evidently errors from those who should know better are nothing new.

Like I often remind my children, it's better to teach children to spell and use grammar correctly, when possible, because one day they might be writing out our prescriptions!!

makes no difference as you won't be able to read them ;)