Grammar: Howlers 27

Write to me, and I will send you some brieflets to browse through and a brass badge to wear in your loophole. (Gerald Wiley)

You'd better battle down the hatchets. Once a poly time. Have a pupcake. Gone off on a tandem. On a petty stool. Windshield factor. Rod iron gate. Wheel barrel. Valentime’s Day. French benefits. Condominimum. (via Twitter. Batten down the hatches, once upon a time, cupcake, tangent, pedestal, wind-chill factor, wrought-iron, wheelbarrow, Valentine's, fringe benefits, condominium. And "heart-rending" has irretrievably become "heart-wrenching".)


We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it!

Joanna Cherry sadly loses her seat. Tonight’s SNP defeat was sewn by Nicola Sturgeon and Ian Blackford. (@PhantomPower14. They mean “the seeds of defeat were sown”.)
sew division: sow division

sails from: hails from
metaphorical: metaphysical
sloncho: cilantro
crowned jewel: crown jewels (The royal regalia that belong to the monarch.)
crassonts: croissants
paramount for "more important": It means "most important".
ultraviolent lamp: ultraviolet
Caucuses: Caucasus

aniquilate: annihilate/liquidate
marywania: marijuana
chicken coup: coop
Solomon Gomorrah: Sodom and Gomorrah were notoriously sinful cities, according to the Bible.
slathering: slavering (You slather whipped cream onto a cake, and your guests slaver over it.)
Don't confuse deem (consider) for deign (lower yourself to answer the door etc)

Jejune does not mean naïve or callow – it means "dried-up".
blue a casket: blow a gasket
a manevelant presence: malevolent
hiding go seek: hide and go seek
make due: make do
crushing bore: crashing bore
dye-sected: dissected
Chock it up: Chalk it up.

cheese lounge: chaise longue
insightment: for incitement
It was a different seriniro: scenario
I'm just about to tug into some American pancakes and bacon. (@eyre_ann. Tuck into.)
media barrens: barons
All-timers’ disease: Alzheimer''s
Crimes including assault, fraud and purgery: perjury

pass mustard: pass muster
wonderlust: wanderlust
I'm biting my time: biding
You’ll be in for a ruffled time: rough old time
He got off scotch free: scot free
Low and behold!: Lo and behold.

Pity The Times is a burnt flush. (@SimonD555. That’s “busted flush”. Poker, probably.)
white as a sheep: sheet (Common in the US - where sheets are coloured or patterned?)
down to brass tracks: tacks
dorma window: dormer
ludacris: ludicrous
Bastille burner: pastille burner (producing incense)
straddled with debt: saddled

jumped up charges: trumped up. (A parvenu or johnny-come-laterly is a jumped-up temporary gentleman.)

Amphibious pitcher makes debut: Venditte becomes first pitcher in 20 years to pitch with both arms in MLB game. (ambidextrous)

nerve-wrecking: nerve-racking (wrack [wreck] and rack [torture on a rack] are terminally confused.)

foul-weather friend for false friend (A foul-weather friend would stick to you through thick and thin)

I was a laughing stalk: laughing stock
Old history was drudged up: dredged up
Rebuff his arguments if you can! rebut
This guy is the epitome of evil in carnet! evil incarnate (evil personified)
He was a wolf in cheap clothing: It was sheep's clothing in the fable by Aesop
Have we taken on more than we can chew? bitten off more than we can chew
wholly pledged: fully fledged

A slight woman, her hair perfectly quaffed... (British Journal of Photography. That's "coiffed".)

However, Farage poured damp water on the idea last night: Even Nigel can't get his hands on any dry water.

prophetic fallacy: pathetic fallacy (Ascribing emotions to inanimate objects eg "Angry storm clouds hung over the city." "The glacier's approach was remorseless". Try "unstoppable".)

Where can I buy combustible compost bags?: compostable

Avoid writing "yield" when you mean "wield". You yield to a stronger foe – you give in. You wield power or a sword.

There is a title wave of truth that is about to start coming out. (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene)

M&S clothes division has been a “thorn in the shoe” for the company, says a spokesperson. (stone in the shoe, thorn in the side

A stiff and upper-lipped Victorian (Daily Telegraph, stiff-upper-lipped)

Typo of the day America has become a vessel state of Israel. (tonythorne007, vassal)

You’re going to have to cut your cloth accordingly. (Wes Streeting)
Lord Moylan may have made an excellent point about the North of England needing to understand that its low population density and small cities mean it can't expect transport as good as London's. We need to cut our cloth and settle for something like the Low Countries. (@thomasforth. The proverb goes: You must cut your coat according to your cloth.)

The Mexicans recognise the upper crust on their tortilla when they see it. (The Times on Lady Susan Hussey receiving a Mexican order – the Sash of Special Category of the Order of the Aztec Eagle.  Tortillas don’t have crusts. They’re so thin there is hardly an “upper”. The upper crust is the top crust of a loaf of bread. It would be clean, unlike the bottom crust which might have picked up some ashes and dirt from the brick bread oven. Well, it’s no sillier than some explanations!)

Old-tie network: old-school-tie network, sometimes called the Old Boy network. (Your fellow Etonians, identifiable by their school ties, give you a helping hand or leg-up.)

Someone was ticked off for talking about Sunak’s “cortege” (funeral procession). Perhaps cavalcade, convoy or motorcade would be better.

Quasimodo predicted all this! (The Sopranos, Nostradamus)

As one of our longest-reining staff members, Andy joined us in 1982 and never looked back. (Reigning. The monarch reigns, you rein in a horse. The Farplants Group)

All around the backwaters of Europe, the common lot of people were still engaging in folk practices of which the church could make no sense, and for which it had no room. (the-hinternet.com “The common lot of humanity” means “the common fate of humanity”, ie death or suffering. “The common ruck of humanity” is meant. How about “People were still engaging...”?)

Williams attempting to seduce Hattie Jacques while Charles Hawtrey is hiding in a cupboard is pure drawer room farce. (Imdb comment. Drawing-room comedies were very genteel and the opposite of farce.)

They don't deserve to be raked over the coals. (It’s “hauled over the coals”. You rake over the embers of a fire.)

Tarnishing the whole service (the NHS) with one sorry brush invalidates those of us doing a great job. (Dr Ellie Cannon. You apply tar to a fence with a brush. Silver gets tarnished if you just leave it in a box or on the sideboard, due to oxidisation.)

dead to the wide: It's a garbled cliché. A Victorian girl who has a child out of wedlock is “dead to the world”. She’s still alive, but she’s dead to “the world”, ie “society” ie people like her parents and their friends.

Thank you to Marjorie Hutchins for her steadfast approach to child safeguarding without the likes of which we will all be treading water in service of the men who groomed these kids. (What does she think “treading water” means?)

It is a problem – when parts of the humanities sacrifice the scholarly ‘moral ground’ and descend into ideology, what value do they have that can be defended to anyone other than like-minded ideologues? (@ianpacemain. Moral high ground.)


Mixed metaphors

The fact that I guessed the murderer in Mrs. Christie’s book only shows how easy it is to miss a cog, through dropping one of the threads. Having forgotten the right explanation of a small incident, I smelt a rat that wasn’t there, and found a mare’s nest which ought to have held a cuckoo’s egg. (Charles William, 1931)

These new developments reinstate the historic street scheme and knit back together the urban grain. (Mixed metaphor. You can't knit a grain.)

Thankfulness is the daylight that crushes the mouldy power of sin. (@Eric_Conn)

Sex and the City smashed that tedious Bridget Jones learning curve of trying to work men out like a complicated jigsaw puzzle to the wall and said, “Let’s start again.” Evening Standard, June 2023

It’s intelligent. It’s left-wing. It’s pathbreaking. (Theconversation.com. Trail-blazing? Ground-breaking?)

The heat poured down upon the narrow deserted streets like a scourge. (An early work by Margery Allingham)

Don’t gloss over the cracks. (You paper over cracks in plaster to hide them. You gloss over a flaw – with paint?)

The victim’s name rang a weird bell in the flea market in the back of my brain. (Martin Ross)

This book treads “well-tilled terrain”. (Anthony Cummins, Observer. Treads a well-worn path? Digs over well-tilled fields?)

Rishi Sunak’s presence in No. 10 is a “groundbreaking milestone”, and John Prescott was a "towering pillar" of the Labour Party.

More here, and links to the rest.