Lmst

Saw this sentence with both the Irish English "give out" and a standardized-English "give out":

"The banks often give out¹ that the rules are too tight and they can’t give out² the money people need."

¹ complain
² issue, distribute

Source and commentary: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/giving-out-irish-style/

#language #dialect #idioms #IrishEnglish #EnglishUsage #phrases

On the peculiarly Irish use of "grand", from Garrett's Carr's novel The Boy from the Sea

More on that usage here: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2019/06/27/a-grand-irish-usage/

#books #IrishBooks #reading #GarrettCarr #words #grand #EnglishUsage #Ireland #IrishEnglish

A note on our use of the word ‘grand’ is here required. It might sound like a relative or good or great but in our usage it was something different. ‘Grand’ was how we acknowledged that something wasn’t good or great while also saying nothing could be done and there was no point going on about it. Ambrose relied on the word a lot at sea. ‘It’ll be grand,’ he’d say as the gear strained. ‘It’ll be grand,’ he’d say when the crew expressed concern over the ten-year-old engine. He was the same at home. ‘It’ll be grand,’ he’d say, scraping a dot of mould from a slice of white bread before sticking it in the toaster. ‘It was grand,’ he’d say when Christine asked him about his childhood.

Today someone called a layer of snow "shallow."

I don't think I've ever heard that used to describe snow. It feels wrong; even though (in the US at least) we say "deep" snow all the time. Shallow is for water, or people. Not for snow. Snow can be light or thin, but not shallow.

Do other people use this phrase? I know English is weird, but it startled me that I'd never noticed this quirk before.

#englishusage #copyediting #askmastodon #englishishard #americanenglish #BritishEnglish #irishenglish

Missed this last month – Language Hat followed up on my post about pronoun use for animals. Lots of interesting comments: https://languagehat.com/animals-who/

#language #grammar #animals #pronouns #EnglishUsage #writing

The collective noun suggester is suggesting that the collective noun for misheard words is: a quiver of errors.

#CollectiveNoun #EnglishUsage

Words¹ misspelled² so often, even in edited text, that my copy-editor's heart does a little happy dance when I see them spelled appropriately:

ad nauseam, complement, its, just deserts, led, minuscule, principle, supersede

¹ In a broad sense, to include phrases.
² The descriptivist in me protests the implicit judgement, but "spelled in a nonstandardized way" is on the wordy side for a throwaway Mastodon post.

#language #spelling #words #EnglishUsage #editing #copyediting #proofreading

It seems like a small thing, but I tend to notice what pronouns people use when they refer to animals. Here's a new blog post about it:
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2025/12/15/a-list-of-animals-who/

#language #grammar #animals #pronouns #EnglishUsage #books #writing

"Having been to London, I was hosted by a very nice British."

Is it just me or is this sentence off? I parse it as "since I had already been to London before, I was hosted by a very nice British."

#English #englishusage

Fun example of semantic drift, but is it restricted to one person? Let me know if you've encountered this reading of "take it offline", from Gen Z or elsewhere
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amandabrummitt_i-spend-a-lot-of-time-talking-about-communication-activity-7402116821522567168-T5vD

#language #idioms #phrases #jargon #EnglishUsage

A post on LinkedIn by Amanda Brummitt, FACHE, Principal at Brummitt Group:
I spend a lot of time talking about communication and culture. This week, I encountered a communication mishap too funny not to share!
A Gen Z colleague asked what it actually means when someone says, “Let’s take this offline.” She admitted she always thought it meant “take this out back,” as in… we are about to fight.
Once we stopped laughing, it was a great reminder for all of us that even simple phrases can mean wildly different things depending on who hears them. And, that includes industry-speak, acronyms, and slang!

In the conventional spelling, "drinks cabinet", "drinks" is used attributively; there's no need to invoke the possessive case. But you do see occasional variation with compounds like this

#punctuation #apostrophe #EnglishUsage #writing #spelling

I understand the motivation for this apostrophe, but I do not share it.

(from "A Crack in Everything" by Marcus Chown, a fine new book about black holes)

#punctuation #writing #grammar #EnglishUsage #apostrophe

"For a short while, he sat in the tranquillity of his office, poured himself a schnapps from the drinks' cabinet, and looked out across the manicured gardens of the observatory." [There's an apostrophe at the end of the word "drinks" in the phrase "drinks cabinet".]

Worth reading this exchange between linguists on the subject of spelling errors and correction, especially if you struggle with spelling sometimes
https://arnoldzwicky.org/2025/10/10/linguists-spell-things-out/

#spelling #words #language #teaching #EnglishUsage

Question for speakers of British English:

I was watching a British Netflix show (The Gentlemen, created by Guy Ritchie) and one of the characters said "You're in the right ballpark" to mean "your guess is approximately right".

It's a common phrase in the U.S., but it comes from baseball. Is it really used much in the UK?

Americans also say "ballpark estimate" or "ballpark figure" to mean "rough estimate" or that it doesn't have a high degree of confidence.

#uk #britishengish #englishusage #americanenglish #idioms

Reading nonfiction, you'd be forgiven for thinking sometimes that humans are a single-gender species. Generic "he"/"man" etc. as the default has declined but is still frustratingly common

#reading #books #language #EnglishUsage #sexism #gender #patriarchy

Authors who have used "would of" (or other modal+"of" phrases) in their books include:

Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, Patrick O'Brian, Sylvia Plath, Shirley Jackson, Octavia Butler, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Baldwin, Anne Tyler, Elmore Leonard, Carson McCullers, Terry Pratchett, Dylan Thomas, Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith, Cormac McCarthy, Alison Bechdel...

https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/would-of-could-of-might-of-must-of/

#writing #spelling #language #literature #EnglishUsage #grammar #books

My first thought was that it was an editing error: changing "would of" to "would've" and forgetting to delete the "of".

But a search suggests niche usage of the doubled-up version. LLog has looked at similar cases, e.g. "wouldn't of have" [2/2]

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1162

#writing #language #grammar #linguistics #EnglishUsage #blog

"Would of" (for "would've) and other modal+"of" phrases are surprisingly common in literature – see the link below for loads of examples

But I've seldom if ever seen both at once: "would've of" (from Jim Nesbit's novel Lethal Injection) [1/2]

https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/would-of-could-of-might-of-must-of/

#writing #spelling #language #grammar #books #JimNesbit #linguistics #EnglishUsage #blog #dialogue

"Well, I'll be damned," Eddie said. "I never would've of thought you had it in you."

Jane Goodall's first scientific paper was sent back to her with amendments, the editor having replaced every "he"/"she" (referring to chimpanzees) with "it", and every "who" with "which". She changed them back, refusing to mark non-human animals as inferior.
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/annals-of-animals-which-get-who/

#JaneGoodall #language #EnglishUsage #grammar #PoliticsOfLanguage #pronouns #science #animals

New eggcorn spotted in the wild: "sure up" instead of "shore up"

#eggcorn #linguistics #language #EnglishUsage #words #LanguageChange

Thanks to 3 Quarks Daily and The Browser for sharing my latest grammar nerdout with their readers:
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/05/the-trouble-with-dangling-modifiers.html
https://thebrowser.com/free/tattoos-trouble/?ref=the-browser-newsletter

#grammar #EnglishUsage #writing #editing #syntax #WritingCommunity

#EnglishUsage

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