You’ve got to feel sorry for the way Beirut is still used idiomatically to mean chaotic, war-torn, or lawless. The civil war in Lebanon finished 33 years ago, but still people (of a certain age) if describing a riot, cacophony, or a teenager’s bedroom say “It’s like Beirut”.
Or, at least some do. A friend of mine attempted to say “It’s like Beirut” last week but got a little mixed up and said: “It’s like Biarritz”, the French luxury resort. It would have been churlish to laugh, but I don’t mind being churlish once in a while so laughed heartily.
It leads me to embark upon one of my regular lists of mistakes and language mishaps.
Larger than life doesn’t mean the same as big. Absolutely isn’t a substitute word for yes. You’d find it difficult to reap what you sew.
I’d like to see someone curve their enthusiasm. Especially if they did it on the spurt of the moment. I think I’d give up the goat.
Indifferent is not inconsistent. Entity and identity rhyme, but mean different things. Going broke isn’t same as going for broke.
To The Manor Born was a sitcom starring Penelope Keith. The Shakespearean phrase the title plays on is “to the manner born”.
“In a nutshell” means very briefly, it doesn’t necessarily mean good. Coordinating and cooperating aren’t the same thing. You bide your time, not bite. And (there must be a superb back-story to this error) circumcised is not circus-sized!
Confusion seems to be growing around insure and ensure. You insure your car. But ensure you have filled out the paperwork. Sadly, I fear dictionaries will soon allow the distinction to be lost. Dictionaries are easily swayed weaklings, so will let the spellings become interchangeable merely because so many get it wrong
Originally, in the 1600s, the phrase was “worst comes to worst”. The more common (and most sense-making) usage nowadays is “worse comes to worst”. Sadly, you will see and hear many examples of “worse comes to worse”. But anyone saying “worse come to worser” deserves two weeks in jail on bread and water.
I’m not sure if this is a true story but I’ve heard of a man threatening to punch the nose of a doctor who said his wife had acute angina.
Lastly, and this one is actually correct usage. It just annoys me (we all have things that annoy us, don’t we?) I don’t like evidence as a verb. It has become a beloved phrase of the modern workplace: “I have evidenced the data”. It sounds much less pretentious if you just “show” the data.
Word of the week
Ludibrious (adjective))
Apt to be the subject of jest or mockery. EG: “Pity the poor columnist, whose hard-sweated works and opinions are regarded as ludibrious nonsense of little merit.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
