Tag: spelling

Mic drop for a windbag

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Have you heard people drop their ‘N’s’, for example when they ask for ‘a apple’? Do you do it?

I do enjoy hearing from you in response to my columns as it proves to me that for one, you read them and for two, the topics spark thought and comment. I do not mind if you get in touch to praise, correct or criticise, I welcome everything!

I received a lovely email from reader Rosemary Scott who said: “I wanted you to know how much I enjoy your columns, and I look forward to them every week. I was particularly taken by your ‘Perverse Experience’ of October 23rd  25th  because I have been waging a silent war against all those people who misspell the word ‘faze’. This word I have always taken to mean to ‘daunt’ or to ‘challenge’ someone. I keep seeing it spelled as ‘phase’, and this annoys me very much. I finally checked my 1972 Chambers dictionary, which is possibly past its ‘use by’ date, and was shocked to find that they spell ‘faze’ as ‘feeze’ and it means to ‘worry, perturb or discompose’, which more or less agrees with my thinking. However, to my dismay, I saw that the American spelling can be ‘phase’, which means I can no longer silently shout at those I believed to be sinners. I can’t tell you how chagrined and disappointed I was.”

I empathise because I felt just the same when I discovered that ‘perverse’ can mean the same as ‘perverted’, despite thinking that they were two very different things. For no justifiable reason, I had wasted years’-worth of hot air maligning people who mixed them up.

It heartens me to know I am not alone in my little irritations over the usage of certain words. I looked up faze/phase in my 2004 Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and in that edition there are two distinct definitions. ‘Phase’ (both verb and noun) refers to a set period of time, and ‘faze’ (which only appears as a verb) means ‘disconcert’, although it does say it is of US origin from the 19th century. My 2004 OED does not show ‘phase’ to mean ‘disconcert’ at all and it is only defined in the way Rosemary describes, so she is in fact right (even though she wasn’t back in 1972, according to her own Collins dictionary). I also consulted a few online dictionaries which are as up-to-date as you can get and I could not find ‘phase’ used to mean ‘disconcert’ anywhere. Hurrah for Rosemary after all!

Rosemary has a second irritation: “Another pet annoyance is that ‘an’ no longer seems to exist in spoken vocabulary. The efforts people go to to say ‘ay apple’, for example, instead of the much easier to pronounce ‘an apple’.”

That is not something that I have noticed in my everyday interactions, so I’d be interested to know if any of you have spotted this gradual erosion of ‘an’. If you try to say nouns and adjectives beginning with a vowel without using ‘an’ it does feel cumbersome: ‘Ay aeroplane’, ‘a elephant’, ‘ay orange, ‘a exceptionally gifted columnist’. No, it just doesn’t sit right, does it.

But, as we know, language evolves over time, and things that we think are wrong now might very well become right once they worm their way into everyday speech. If they are then repeated many times they evolve into an acceptable part of written English too, eventually ending up on the hallowed pages of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the definitive record of the English language.

I was surprised to learn that the OED is revised four times a year in March, June, September and December, which demonstrates just how quickly our language evolves. The latest (at the time of writing) was September 2024 and new words and phrases that were added this time include ‘boop’ (to tap someone on the nose in a friendly way), ‘to cheap out’ (buy something of inferior quality), ‘cyberstalk’ (harass a person online), ‘mic drop’ (to drop, or mimic dropping, a microphone after a success), ‘prags’ (financial or material aid given to a person in need) and ‘sheisty’ (shifty behaviour). These are just a few of no less than 600 words and phrases added in the latest quarter.

I hope you don’t accuse me of my favourite though, which is ‘windbagging’ (talking or writing at length without saying anything of interest).

Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Get in touch with me via the ‘Contact’ tab at the top right of this page.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 13th Dec and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 11th Dec 2024

Are you perverse or perverted?

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I thought I knew the difference between the words ‘perverse’ and ‘perverted’ until I consulted my 2004 Oxford English Dictionary

Brace yourself. I’m about to have a rant (before I do, as a highly trained journalist and consummate professional, rest assured that I do not rant unless I am 100% certain I have my facts right).

Is it just we writers who get upset when people get words wrong, or is it an affliction felt by regular mortals too? There are certain words that, when used in a misplaced context or misspoken, make me want to scream.

It is even more annoying when the mistakes are uttered by people who should know better. On car journeys, I entertain myself by listening to audiobooks and recently had chosen a new one about serial killers (as you do). The author, a ‘leading TV psychological expert’, narrated it herself and kept referring to the evil perpetrators as ‘perverse’, describing in unnecessary and gratuitous detail their ‘perverse’ habits.

Did she mean that they behaved in a way that was opposite to the norm for your regular serial killer? Was she going to say that instead of killing their quarry, they treated them to a fancy dinner and a family movie before setting them free? Because that would certainly be perverse for a serial killer.

Of course she didn’t. The word she should have used was ‘perverted’.

One of the reasons this particularly annoyed me was because it was being read from a published book, that literary thing with pages and sentences and such like, and which presumably has had a number of wordy professionals like editors and proofreaders look over the manuscript lots of times; the kinds of people who earn a living from the written and spoken word. And yet, she used it on so many occasions that by the end of the journey, every time she read out ‘perverse’ I was shouting ‘YOU MEAN PERVERTED!’ very loudly at my car’s audio system. Thankfully, it was a cold day and I had my windows shut, otherwise the ears of innocent pedestrians could have been harmed.

To understand the difference between the two words, this scenario might help. Imagine your Tory-sympathising granny unexpectedly decides to vote Labour. She is not offended when you accuse her of being perverse. She voted Labour, which you would never have expected her to do in a million years, and therefore her action is totally perverse.

If you then ask your granny why she voted perversely, and she replies it is because of a scandal involving a Tory MP, a nappy and some whipped cream, then her real reason for voting that way is because she thinks the Tory MP is a pervert who has done something perverted with a nappy and some whipped cream.

Perverse is when something happens that is the opposite to expectations, while perverted is something that is sexually depraved.

Isn’t it?

Approaching the end of this column, I remembered the first thing that I was taught at journalism school – to never assume anything and always check your facts. Therefore, being the aforementioned highly trained journalist and consummate professional, I decided I’d better do just that, even though I knew that I was 100% correct. I turned to my most trusted resource, my 2004 version of the Oxford English Dictionary which offered two definitions of the word ‘perverse’. The first read as follows: ‘Showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave unacceptably. > sexually perverted.’

Oh.

Have you lived for years with the certainly of knowing something to be 100% correct, only to be proven wrong beyond all doubt years later by a source you absolutely trust? And, because you can’t bring yourself to believe it, you try to convince yourself you are still right by consulting other trusted sources, only to be proven wrong time and again? And then do you slowly begin to understand what it must be like to be an advisor to Donald Trump?

And finally, do you realise, after writing almost a full column, that all you can do is admit that you were wrong and that your rant is completely unjustified? I suppose I owe an apology to the unnamed famous TV psychologist and to her audiobook’s editors then, although I shall not be listening to any more of it.

But here’s a thing. Does it mean I have just written a column that has ended up being totally perverse?

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 25th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 23rd Oct 2024