Idioms people don't understand

I was brought up on a big council estate in Manchester where vocabulary was rather limited, especially amongst young children. I loved to read and the local librarians really took me under their wings and encouraged me to use any new words I discovered whenever I could. I always tried to work out pronunciation, but must often have got it wrong and I now realise what a strange child I must have seemed.

In company my mother used to tell people I’d swallowed a dictionary. ☺️

I had to stop before I literally exploded with repressed rage. No; I wouldn't actually have exploded. 'Literally' seems to have lost its literal meaning these days.

Being by nature a miserable and pedantic old so-and-so, I could fill pages with outpourings of bile against commonly mis-spelled, mis-pronounced and misunderstood words and expressions. Let me confine myself to two which particularly annoy me. First, I abhor the general pronunciation of 'February' as 'Febuary' (minus the 'r'). Second, in the context of furniture, the creeping tendency to replace 'drawers' with 'draws' never fails to make me cringe.
And don't get me going on writers who don't know the difference between 'draft' and 'draught'. And what about the Devil's Own 'should of' and 'must of'? Not to mention the recent write-up of a funeral which referred to the coffin being 'interned' - which would have had me spinning in my grave if I had been the corpse!
OK; I know that's more than two, but I couldn't help myself. Honest...

Research is another word often "mispronounced" on the radio.

But bear/bare me a minute drives me mad.

And asking me to "confirm" my address/postcode or whatever when they just want me to say what my address is.
I'm asked this so often I've been ground down and just accept it now.

Does anyone else regularly notice presenters and reporters saying 'prospective' when they mean 'perspective'?

If not, I will assume that my hearing is at fault, as I think I hear it all the time!

Albeit - pronounced allbite is one I often hear recently. Not sure why more so lately unless I am homing in on it.

Marydoll

Pacific is the one which annoys me. I have heard BBC presenters use it instead of specific.
Honestly, what has the world come to/too/two? 😉

I know! It drives me mad.

At the risk of sounding like Sybil in Faulty Towers, I can only say,

Ooh, I know, I know Basil (substitute any other name.)

I would of agreed with you too!

I had a friend who was a real Mrs Malaprop. She would describe a neighbour's gazebo as a "gazzy-boo" and would end a long email with "Excuse my epitaph". She was lovely

... and then we have all the different sounds for "ough" !

I remember being corrected on a mispronounced word by my ex-teacher when I was chatting to her several years after I'd left school.
It was a word I'd read quite a bit but never heard spoken.
Oops..

Of course we are all still learning (I hope) and developing our vocabularies. And then there are new words being added all the time - and not just technical ones.
My parents probably wouldn't have come across "petrichor" for example as it only came from the other side of the world in the (?) 1970s/1980s.

I remember reading a sign out loud in Woolworths when I was a child, saying "Thieves will be prose cutted" and my Mum laughing and explaining it was "prosecuted". I was only 6 though... but the thing is, if you have only ever read a word and never heard it pronounced, the English language is confusing, eg. hyperbole (hy-PER-bo-lee) but hypocrite (HIP-o-crit)

sodapop

Chaos will reign/rein/rain if we lose/loose the correct words

Well, in some cases it does significantly change the meaning of what is written, or make it nonsensical. I'm all for clarity in written communication.

I agree that it's sometimes because the word has been read rather than heard. I was puzzled for years by the US word 'clothespin'. It took me decades to realise that it was 'a clothes pin' i.e a clothes peg...

Conversely I think people mispronounce words because they haven't read it properly... especially if they were taught to read by 'look and say' (seeing the word as a 'whole') and not by decoding. The letter sequence is meaningless to them.

The word 'pedant'is one that I never heard spoken as a child. It was quite embarrassing when, in quite recent times, I discovered that it wasn't pronounced 'peedant'.

And closing our boarders.

I once read something that made me think - when people pronounce something as it is written (eg 'misled' pronounced 'my sled') it shows that they have taught themselves the word by reading. Those who pronounce it in Standard English are simply parroting what they have heard, so what gives them the right to the high ground? It's an interesting point of view.

A very interesting point! I had a fairly good education, but I can remember hearing a word said on the radio and a light going on "oh is that how you pronounce it? I've always read it as xxxxx in my head" These occasional words haven't been ones I've needed in general conversation so haven't led to my intelligence being questioned.

I have just read on the local Next Door forum, an electrician saying "it's all a process of illumination"? when advising on how to check the usage of a smart meter.
I think he meant elimination. Made me smile though.

But who 'should know better'? People say things the way they were taught - ie the way people around them say them - whether that is correctly or incorrectly. We are just lucky if those around us pronounce things in Standard English. I don't think it's so much that we are not allowed to correct people, but that it would be extremely rude to do so (teachers and parents aside). Manners are about not making people feel uncomfortable, surely?

I once read something that made me think - when people pronounce something as it is written (eg 'misled' pronounced 'my sled') it shows that they have taught themselves the word by reading. Those who pronounce it in Standard English are simply parroting what they have heard, so what gives them the right to the high ground? It's an interesting point of view.

I despair when I hear people ( who one imagines should know better) say
' mischieveeos' instead of mischievous!!!

I saw the ‘knit picking’ too. Another poster used to use the phrase ‘a mind of information’. We’re not allowed to correct so they gaily carry on …

Chaos will reign/rein/rain if we lose/loose the correct words

Pacific is the one which annoys me. I have heard BBC presenters use it instead of specific.
Honestly, what has the world come to/too/two? 😉

Elegran

Of course baring with me means the knitpicking would be easier, without clothes to hinder finding the little nits, but somehow I don't think that is what the Mrs Malaprops intended.

😂

Of course baring with me means the knitpicking would be easier, without clothes to hinder finding the little nits, but somehow I don't think that is what the Mrs Malaprops intended.