If you believe the Internet is the fount of all wisdom, giving free rein to bloggers to exercise their vocal cords, think again. Ancient English cliches and expressions are being mangled by the culture of cut and paste and the spread of unchecked writing on the Internet.
According to the Oxford English Corpus, a database of a billion words, dozens of traditional phrases are now more commonly misspelled than rendered correctly in written English.
"Straight-laced" is used 66 percent of the time, even though it should be written "strait-laced," according to lexicographers working for Oxford Dictionaries, who record the way English is spoken and written by monitoring books, television, radio and newspapers and, increasingly, Web sites and blogs.
"Just desserts" is used 58 percent of the time instead of the correct spelling, "just deserts" (desert is a variation of deserve), while 59 percent of all written examples of the phrase in the Corpus call it a "font of knowledge or wisdom" when it should be "fount."
It has become so widely used that the wrong version is now included in Oxford dictionaries alongside the right one.
Other mistakes fast becoming the received spelling include substituting "free reign" for the correct phrase, "free rein." The original refers to letting a horse loose, but many use "reign" and assume the expression means to allow a free rule.
Other examples of common mistakes include "slight of hand" instead of "sleight," "phased by" when it should be "fazed by," "butt naked" instead of the correct "buck naked" and "vocal chords" for "vocal cords."
"We have to accept spelling is not fixed and can change over the years," said Catherine Soanes, of Oxford Dictionaries. "You only have to look back 100 years, when the word rhyme was spelled rime. But since then we adopted rhyme as the correct spelling because this is more like the Greek word from which it originally came."
She added: "Our Corpus has around 150 million words from the Web and the way words are written often has to do with familiarity."
"For instance, 35 percent of people say `a shoe-in' when actually it should be `a shoo-in,'" she said. "But the original is an American phrase using a US version of the word `shoe' in the first place."
According to the Corpus, another linguistic trend is the US habit of turning two words into one, such as someday, anymore and underway.
The Corpus also records how some words are used almost exclusively to apply to men and others to women.
Only men seem to hijack, crouch, kidnap, rob, grin, shoot, dig, stagger, leap, invent or brandish.
Women, meanwhile, tend to be the only ones to consent, faint, sob, cohabit, undress, clutch, scorn or gossip.
CROSS-STRAIT COLLABORATION: The new KMT chairwoman expressed interest in meeting the Chinese president from the start, but she’ll have to pay to get in Beijing allegedly agreed to let Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) around the Lunar New Year holiday next year on three conditions, including that the KMT block Taiwan’s arms purchases, a source said yesterday. Cheng has expressed interest in meeting Xi since she won the KMT’s chairmanship election in October. A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a consensus on a meeting was allegedly reached after two KMT vice chairmen visited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao (宋濤) in China last month. Beijing allegedly gave the KMT three conditions it had to
STAYING ALERT: China this week deployed its largest maritime show of force to date in the region, prompting concern in Taipei and Tokyo, which Beijing has brushed off Deterring conflict over Taiwan is a priority, the White House said in its National Security Strategy published yesterday, which also called on Japan and South Korea to increase their defense spending to help protect the first island chain. Taiwan is strategically positioned between Northeast and Southeast Asia, and provides direct access to the second island chain, with one-third of global shipping passing through the South China Sea, the report said. Given the implications for the US economy, along with Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductors, “deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” it said. However, the strategy also reiterated
‘BALANCE OF POWER’: Hegseth said that the US did not want to ‘strangle’ China, but to ensure that none of Washington’s allies would be vulnerable to military aggression Washington has no intention of changing the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Saturday, adding that one of the US military’s main priorities is to deter China “through strength, not through confrontation.” Speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Hegseth outlined the US Department of Defense’s priorities under US President Donald Trump. “First, defending the US homeland and our hemisphere. Second, deterring China through strength, not confrontation. Third, increased burden sharing for us, allies and partners. And fourth, supercharging the US defense industrial base,” he said. US-China relations under
The Chien Feng IV (勁蜂, Mighty Hornet) loitering munition is on track to enter flight tests next month in connection with potential adoption by Taiwanese and US armed forces, a government source said yesterday. The kamikaze drone, which boasts a range of 1,000km, debuted at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition in September, the official said on condition of anonymity. The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology and US-based Kratos Defense jointly developed the platform by leveraging the engine and airframe of the latter’s MQM-178 Firejet target drone, they said. The uncrewed aerial vehicle is designed to utilize an artificial intelligence computer
RSS