Pet peeve: somebody, everybody, anybody, nobody

[RangerWickett]

Seriously though, could someone clear up for me what the difference is between homonyms and homophones?

 

[Nifft]

"I could care less." They're just telling me that they do care. That it is possible to care less than they care. The phrase is "I couldn't care less."

Because sarcasm is hard to figure out.

Consider that the person is saying: "I could care less, but it would take effort." But, they're not expending the effort.

"Irregardless." It just isn't a word.

This one I agree with. Like "Inflammable". Useless ambiguity.

-- N

 

[Nifft]

Seriously though, could someone clear up for me what the difference is between homonyms and homophones?

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=homonym&x=15&y=15

vs.

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=homophone&x=15&y=15

-- N

 

[Nightcloak]

the line is:

WHere no MAN has gone before.

James Tiberius Kirk was right.

all these other Star Treks don't exist.... i disbelieve

You have just officially become my hero.

 

[Korgan26]

Springplum you beat me to it!!
when people say "I could care less." meaning "I couldn't care less." It is everything I can do not to strangle them.

Z

 

[Eremite]

Oh come on, awful grammar, childish spelling errors and mispronunciations are all useful signs that a particular person's ideas or opinions might not be all that useful.

Very true. I apply this "test" to my RPG books as well which is why I tend to rant and rave about poor editing as it is symptomatic of a breakdown in quality control (which is, no doubt, why WotC has such huge variances in the quality of the material it publishes, often even in the same book).

It might sound snobbish, (if a Brit can't sound snobbish then who can?) but we are constantly rating and testing our thoughts and views against the views of the people we interact with. If I bump into an opinion forwarded by someone/body who has reached their 20s without learning to use an apostrophe properly I usually take it with a pinch of salt.

Preach it, brother!

All that said, I think people should need a license before using the word 'literally'.

I have to agree. On a similar note, I am tired of that trite and tired construction, "to be honest", which can provoke only one reply: "Thanks for beginning a sentence acknowledging that you normally lie."

There is a George Orwell saying that I can't remember exactly but, in essence, it states that when we lose precision in our language we lose precision in our thinking. Literally.

 

[RangerWickett]

Y'know, threads like this will inevitably result in someone concocting a sentence so offensive in its linguistic failings that it will incite madness. Sorta like an inversion of the Monty Python "Funniest Joke in the World" skit.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Seriously though, could someone clear up for me what the difference is between homonyms and homophones?

Homonyms and homophones all have different meanings and are pronounced the same. Homonyms are spelled the same; homophones are not. IIRC, the word for words that are spelled the same but have different pronunication *and* meaning is "homograph."

A "House of Mouse" episode piqued my ire recently when two characters tried the "toMAto/toMAHto" thing in a song, but claiming (according to any reasonable reading of the lyrics, the song was indeed making the claim) that words like "conDUCT" (a verb) and "CONduct" (a noun) mean the same.

It's a homograph pair! They... don't... mean... the... same... thing... gasp....

I was roundly chided, of course, for being too pedantic about a silly song in a kids' show.

To put a button on this one, notice "peaked" (one syllable) is a homophone of "piqued." "Pullet Surprise" is homophonous with lax pronunciations (like mine!) of "Pulitzer Prize."

 

[Felix]

There.

They're.

Their.
.
.
.
GRABALDACHSMIGGINBULCH!
3 Fraggin Different Bloody Words For Crying Out Loud!

*pant, pant*


Ok. Yeah, that's my peeve.

ps. When I was a grade-schooler, I thought a peeve was a small furry animal people kept as pets. So when the teacher asked us to write a paragraph about our pet peeves, I thought I was the only kid on the block without one... ended up making something up about a furry little peeve named Eric.

 

[JEL]

Lack of capitalization is one that annoys me. I usually completely ignore posts I see on message boards that are in all lower case letters, because obviously someone who can't use a shift key isn't worth bothering with. Lack of punctuation and the inability to divide posts into paragraphs run closely behind.