• The TUGBBS forums are completely free and open to the public and exist as the absolute best place for owners to get help and advice about their timeshares for more than 30 years!

    Join Tens of Thousands of other Owners just like you here to get any and all Timeshare questions answered 24 hours a day!
  • TUG started 31 years ago in October 1993 as a group of regular Timeshare owners just like you!

    Read about our 31st anniversary: Happy 31st Birthday TUG!
  • TUG has a YouTube Channel to produce weekly short informative videos on popular Timeshare topics!

    Free memberships for every 50 subscribers!

    Visit TUG on Youtube!
  • TUG has now saved timeshare owners more than $23,000,000 dollars just by finding us in time to rescind a new Timeshare purchase! A truly incredible milestone!

    Read more here: TUG saves owners more than $23 Million dollars
  • Sign up to get the TUG Newsletter for free!

    Tens of thousands of subscribing owners! A weekly recap of the best Timeshare resort reviews and the most popular topics discussed by owners!
  • Our official "end my sales presentation early" T-shirts are available again! Also come with the option for a free membership extension with purchase to offset the cost!

    All T-shirt options here!
  • A few of the most common links here on the forums for newbies and guests!

Words that people commonly use incorrectly ...

Hail Brittania !

andypoole said:
You've obviously not been here for a while Alan!
Click to expand...
Not since 1992, as tourists to Edinburgh & Loch Lomond & Loch Ness & Ben Nevis -- stayed with a USA friend on overseas work assignment who since then has completely Gone Native (bought real estate, married an Englishwoman, joined a lodge, drives on the left, the whole 9 yards).

In 1992, however, everybody spoke The Queen's English -- though mostly with a tangy brogue up where we were visiting.

Here's how naive I am. As a Yank grandson of an English grandmother & Scottish grandfather, I thought maybe I would be welcomed warmly by just about everybody I met who would recognize me as a returning colonial on homecoming after far too long away from the Mother Country.

In reality, of course, I was just another tourist, & a foreigner at that -- had an outstanding time anyway.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
AwayWeGo said:
Not since 1992, as tourists to Edinburgh & Loch Lomond & Loch Ness & Ben Nevis -- stayed with a USA friend on overseas work assignment who since then has completely Gone Native (bought real estate, married an Englishwoman, joined a lodge, drives on the left, the whole 9 yards).

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
Click to expand...

Driving on the right is not an option! ;)

Alan - You chose some good areas to visit and even though it pains me as an Englishman to say this, the Scots generally speak better English than the English!
 
"Where is it AT?" Arrgh! Drop the AT, people.

Utilize What's wrong with use? Why must everything be utilized? I am unsure regarding the correct usage of those two words.
 
Which is it?

I was taught that one doesn't feel good, but most people say that one doesn't feel well. Shouldn't an intransitive verb be modified by an adjective? Unless, of course, speaking about one's sense of touch.
 
A Southern Contribution to the Thread...

VERY southern ----

Instead of saying "I can ....." it is common to hear even the most educated in our community say "I might could.....". If you visit our fair town you will also hear "might should".

Drives me crazy.

I also spend a lot of time with our state-level elected officials, and I am always taken aback when I hear them refer to our fiscal year as our "physical" year.

Ann
 
The Ways Of The Grey Old Bureaucracy.

Aussiedog said:
I am always taken aback when I hear them refer to our fiscal year as our "physical" year.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure that's the way they say it over at The Pentagon.

Of course, they have other curious bureaucratic practices over there, too. For instance, they are required to make 2 Xerox copies of any document they throw away.

One guy's job over there was reviewing certain official documents, after which he would initial a copy of each, then put'm all in the out basket.

One day he received an official memorandum signed by the Assistant Administrative Assistant To The Deputy Assistant Secretary For Administration, to wit: "You were not authorized to review this document. Your are to erase your initials from the top copy, then initial the erasure."

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​



 
Yesterday I Couldn't Even Spell Grammarian & Now I Are One.

cissy said:
I was taught that one doesn't feel good, but most people say that one doesn't feel well.
Click to expand...
Ike : My dog doesn't have any nose.

Mike : Really? How does he smell?

Ike : Terrible !
Shouldn't an intransitive verb be modified by an adjective?
Click to expand...
I love it when you talk technical.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 
artic vs. arctic
 
Steve, You are getting nit picky.:D That's like the jewlery/jewelry thing. My dear friend always says pitcher when she means picture. I cringe in my mind but would never correct her. The "where is it at" thing really makes me cringe, though. I actually physically shudder. I'm petty like that.:p
 
The Altogether.

Naked - Nekkid.

Naked means they don't have any clothes on.

Nekkid means they don't have any clothes on & they're up to something.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Buck Naked - Butt Naked.

I think the phrase originated as buck naked even though these days it increasingly comes across as butt naked -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
Buck Naked
Click to expand...

Where & how did that originate? There's a website I used to have in my bookmarks that gives word origins. Anyone know the one I'm thinking of?
... errr ...the one of which I am thinking?
 
Another little irritation is when people pronounce the word 'aitch' with an 'h' - 'haitch'. Does that happen in the US?
 
Thanks, Richard, that's not the one but it is good. This is the one I used to refer to but it seems to be inactive now.http://www.takeourword.com/index.html

Wordsmith dot com is good, too.

There seems to varied speculation on the origin of buck naked.
 
No Speculation Needed . . .

barndweller said:
There seems to varied speculation on the origin of buck naked.
Click to expand...
. . . however, to figure out the origin of butt naked.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 
barndweller said:
Steve, You are getting nit picky.:D That's like the jewlery/jewelry thing. My dear friend always says pitcher when she means picture. I cringe in my mind but would never correct her. The "where is it at" thing really makes me cringe, though. I actually physically shudder. I'm petty like that.:p
Click to expand...

"artic" is not a word. It's like saying "Febuary" or "nukular".
 
T_R_Oglodyte said:
"artic" is not a word...
Click to expand...
Ahhh.... the version of the Oxford dictionary on my PDA (it is actually amazingly complete) lists "artic" as "Brit. informal an articulated truck."

So maybe you are just misunderstanding people when the talk about the frigid artic. Apparently, there are a lot of ice cream trucks crusing around on the M roads in Britain.
 
"Roger" said:
Ahhh.... the version of the Oxford dictionary on my PDA (it is actually amazingly complete) lists "artic" as "Brit. informal an articulated truck."

So maybe you are just misunderstanding people when the talk about the frigid artic. Apparently, there are a lot of ice cream trucks crusing around on the M roads in Britain.
Click to expand...

I'm thinking about the ones that are driven by the little critters that build nests in the sand - the antartics.
 
Living in Greenville NC I learned to "cut" off or on the lights or anything with a switch and "burn" my headlights.
Also to be polite I had to "ho de do"
 
You Say Tomahto. I Say Tomayto. Let's Call The Whole Thing Off.

When my father transplanted the family from Indianapolis to the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC in 1949, some regional pronunciations in our new neighborhood sounded distinctive to us because they were different from what we were accustomed to hearing in our old neighborhood.

To us, route sounded like rowt, so that's how we said it. Around here, folks said root -- rhymes with boot, not foot. (Back in Indianapolis, the way some folks say root does rhyme with foot. So it goes.)

When Virginia people asked where we were from & we said Indianapolis, most of'm thought we meant Annapolis, just 40 miles or so east of here on Rooote 50. I'm not sure anybody around here had heard of Indianapolis in 1949.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
One of my pet peeves is when an action verb is needlessly changed to a noun. I thought of that this morning when I reading an AP news story saying that the basketball coach at the University of Indiana may have "committed violations of rules".

Arghhh. He may have "violated rules". Miss Larson and Miss Bergtold, my English comp teachers in high school, used AP news stories classroom examples. They would be most dismayed at how sloppy the editing at AP has become over the years.

If you can say the same thing with fewer words, that's almost always the best way to write. And one of the way to tighten up writing is to look for those little gremlin verbs masquerading as nouns - traipsing through your clauses like cross-dressers in a Mardi Gras parade.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top