• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

I want to reach out …

L

Lurker

Old Oak
Joined
Nov 26, 2020
Messages
3,229
Reaction score
548
Location
Loughborough
…. and throttle some folks 😡

I have had a charity we support saying “we are reaching out to you “.
I replied that I would much prefer for them to contact me.

Last week , I went to a supermarket for three items that I planned to carry out in my hands.
The check out lass asked “ do you want a bag, at all?” What??
I am sick of people adding “literally “ to a sentence when they mean something far removed from literally.
 
My heart literally jumped out of my chest when I read your thread. I'm dead of course and typing this from the great beyond.

My neighbor's teenage daughter uses "literally" frequently to describe events that couldn't possibly happen, such as her heart leaving her body when her brother scared her. When confronted with her use of "literally" (buchstäblich in German), she responds with a blank stare and I don't think she really understands the definition of the word.
 
Mike said:
My heart literally jumped out of my chest when I read your thread. I'm dead of course and typing this from the great beyond.

My neighbor's teenage daughter uses "literally" frequently to describe events that couldn't possibly happen, such as her heart leaving her body when her brother scared her. When confronted with her use of "literally" (buchstäblich in German), she responds with a blank stare and I don't think she really understands the definition of the word.
Click to expand...
I’m now even more depressed, having assumed that it was just British kids who are illiterate.
 
The english language is alive and developing. Literal is not the first nor will it be the last word to have additional meanings added to the lexicon over time. D’you know what I mean, like?
 
I find it (slightly) entertaining to count the misuses of "like" in interviews.

Ditto for "you know", and the abuse of "impact", when "affect" (verbal) or "effect" are correct. After all, it's rare for abstract concepts to collide with other concepts at high speed, causing actual, physical damage.

That said, as a BBC 'office junior' around 45 years ago, It was a regular task to physically edit "um" and "er" out of interviews, which is an extremely tedious way to spend an afternoon.

I think "like" has actually replaced "er" as the brain's audible 'I'm thinking' placeholder. Perhaps I'm just perverse...
 
Anyone have access to a modern edition of the OED? I bet that there will be two definitions, or meanings, ;) of the word literally.
 
I remember my father reaching for a dictionary one Christmas in order to challenge the use of the word GAYS. Of course his pre-war dictionary only had gay as an adjective and not a noun. You can imagine what I bought him the following Christmas.
 
Lurker said:
…. and throttle some folks 😡

I have had a charity we support saying “we are reaching out to you “.
I replied that I would much prefer for them to contact me.

Last week , I went to a supermarket for three items that I planned to carry out in my hands.
The check out lass asked “ do you want a bag, at all?” What??
I am sick of people adding “literally “ to a sentence when they mean something far removed from literally.
Click to expand...
The reaching out stuff also drives me nuts.
 
AndyP said:
Anyone have access to a modern edition of the OED? I bet that there will be two definitions, or meanings, ;) of the word literally.
Click to expand...
Here's one of the several definitions in the current online edition - this usage has become a lot more common recently but it really isn't anything new.1731248359314.png
 
And people using slightly different (but wrong) words, eg:

Hone in instead of home in - closing in on something.

Slither instead of sliver - a small, narrow bit of something.

Less instead of fewer, eg “There were less than twenty people there”.

And mispronounciation. Eg “mis-chiev-ious” not mischievous. And misspelling - eg “I brought this bargain at the supermarket”.

I know that language is in constant flux and you shouldn’t get too hung up on it but old habits die hard and I can’t forget what I was taught at school. As someone said, “This is the kind of sloppy grammar up with which I will not put”.
 
Isn't it more a style of speaking? every generation does this to differentiate themselves from their parents'generation. It's often linked closely to music and fashion. So we've had mods and rockers, hipsters and hippies, R&B, street, Millennials, Gen X and so on. So we have had period of cool, sick, like and numerous teenage codewords along with many words associated with black culture and gang culture. Much of it is quite misogynistic.

It used to drive me crazy when my staff used to say "can I get" in a restaurant when ordering. I still notice split infinitives and the misuse of me and I. But I try to smile now and see it as language evolving.
 
Well, if the yoof of today will redefine 'brat' to mean almost the opposite of what you and I probably understand .....

When being 'reached out to' I have been known to ask if they have exceptionally long arms but it usually meets a blank pause in the conversation.
 
RogerS said:
Well, if the yoof of today will redefine 'brat' to mean almost the opposite of what you and I probably understand .....
.
Click to expand...
Well from what I can see, it means exactly what I think it means.

“encourages people to embrace their flaws, have fun, and be unapologetically themselves”

Sounds exactly like who I would call a spoilt little brat.
 
Last edited:
"Draws" said Nawhm, and the rest of the Henglish-speaking world followed suit; no one had the calibre - or critical thought perhaps - to query if this was a thick accent ("Draw-ahs" said casually, with de-emphasis on the last syllable) or just laziness.
 
I'm in the process of joining the board of a company that is based in California and have developed a mental filter to ignore superfluous words. Apparently though everything I say or any e-mail I send is awesome.
 
Congratulations Robert. Whats Up. You will be operating inside the silo then and no doubt your english tailoring will drip. I expect you will have a lit time ...might have misused that one but heck dude let's not get bent out of shape over it.

You do realise they speak an entirely different language over there and the food is supersized for sure.
 
Things that trigger me ... USA "I could care less" when they mean "I couldn't care less", literally the opposite of what is meant ;-)
But the most horrific abuse in danger of becoming common usage - "I could of" (or "I should of") where "I could've" / "I could have" it meant. Shudder.
And how often do you see "I'd defiantly going to try that" - Who are you defying ? I blame autocorrect for this one.
 
“I could care less” could be acceptable if spoken with the right amount of emphasis and sarcasm, impossible when written.
As for smelling, never was my strong point, or perhaps it was:unsure:;).
 
my biggest pet hate is 'hey guys' when referring to women or a group of people, imagine saying 'hey girls' to a group of men, it must annoy women as well but it really annoys me more than it should, american language is a disease and we must stop it from destroying ours.
 
Oh I don't know. I thought "bigly" was a great word when the Don first used it, and was disappointed when I realised he was trying to say big league.
 
thetyreman said:
my biggest pet hate is 'hey guys' when referring to women or a group of people, imagine saying 'hey girls' to a group of men, it must annoy women as well but it really annoys me more than it should, american language is a disease and we must stop it from destroying ours.
Click to expand...
I've gotten used to it ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top