I was amused by a Twitter claim about young men fleeing Russia to avoid war service. The tweet said this was a “propaganda coo for the west”. I wondered (as all right-thinking people would) whether this looked like a Highland coo? Or an Aberdeen-Angus coo?
I won’t milk it too much, but it serves as a catalyst for another of my observational meanders through the language oddities, misdemeanours, and muddles I see and hear around me.
It is a railway junction, not juncture. It is “weather” the storm, not whether. They are the Scilly Isles, not Silly Isles. The phrase is a paltry sum, not poultry sum. That’s what you’d pay for a chicken, and with current supermarket prices it won’t be paltry.
A shear cliff sounds a scary place to clip fleeces. It is a sheer cliff. If you’ve sold your sole to the Devil, what will you do with the rest of your shoe? People who fit glass are glaziers, not glazers. Bant is not the past-tense of ban, that would be banned. It is used to, not use to, when describing a former undertaking.
Devout and devoted are different things. Contentious and conscientious are different things. Further is additional, farther denotes distance. The phrase is “hue and cry”, not Hugh and cry (there, there Shuggie!)
A criminal might have “complied” with a court order (though few seem to). He will not have “compiled” with it, unless he had a lot of them (eminently possible) and put them in a tidy stack (unlikely). As we are on court matters, admonished does not mean “let off”. An admonishment is given after a guilty verdict. It is the lowest sentence, a warning not to re-offend.
Gotten, as a past participle of get, might be a word in The United States of Incorrect Spellings. It is not (thankfully) a word here. Same goes for “tooken”. Blindsided (another uncouth Americanism) is not blindsighted as that would makes no sense, even in America.
Bemuse and amuse are different. Bemuse is to confuse or muddle, which could also be amusing. A government U-turn is not a 360-degree turn. It is a 180-degree turn. Though it depends how many U-turns have been made; it can be difficult to keep track.
Opaque doesn’t mean misty, or almost apparent. It means light cannot pass through. An opaque meaning is indiscernible, not just unclear.
Lastly, when did “ramped up” become common usage? The phrase is (or was) “ratcheted up”. Ramped up is something done to cars while mechanics fix them.
Word of the week
Apposite (adj)
Well put, apt in the circumstances. EG: “It is more apposite to say tension in the House of Commons was ratcheted up, than ramped up.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
