Grammar: Howlers 15

In the metropolitan bubble

Late 2016, and many are using “elite” to mean “member of an elite”. Metropolitan elites, liberal elites. Some use “elitist” with the same meaning. For some, it is code for “people in power with the wrong ideas”.

An “elite” is a privileged, or powerful, group of people. “The Ritz – where the elite meet to eat.” An elitist is someone who thinks that members of the elite really are superior.

The same goes for “minority”. A single person can be in the minority if 99% vote the other way, but he can’t be a minority. But the word is often used to mean “member of a minority”. In Europe and the US, people of colour and LGBT people are in the minority. Not women – in the UK we’re in the majority, about 51%. In other countries, men predominate. (And in Africa, white people are in the minority.)

And "majority" doesn't mean "huge number of people". The picture is clouded by the way people often stick the word "vast" onto any majority. A majority of people in the UK voted to leave the EU, but they didn't win by vast majority – it was 4%. 17 million voted to Leave, but the population of the UK is 64 million.

More howlers:

With all the props required, children will spend hours pretending to scour the isles for the best grocery bargains with the Toyrific Shopping Trolley Play Set! (aisles)

refreshers’ fair for freshers’ fair (It's short for “freshmen”.)

with importunity for with impunity

Their wishes take president. (take precedence)

Richmond VA described as a magnet for "craft-beer coiffing" millennials. (quaffing)

are forced to reign it in... (Horses have reins, Queens have reigns.)

Jesus was crucified on Calgary. (Calvary)

nip it in the butt (It’s “bud” and refers to frost “nipping” a flower in the bud so that it never blooms. When it's freezing cold in the UK we say it's "a bit nippy", with our usual understatement.)

grant it for granted (Americans pronounce it “granite”.)

SIGH UP NOW LONELY GIRLS ARE LOOKING FOR MEN (Sigh!)

well-known fictional author for well-known fiction writer

recess monkeys (autocorrect for Rhesus)

old-fashion pasties, process cheese etc. (old-fashioned, processed)

espousing for plugging: "By the end of the book the author is clearly espousing his critical opinion of the radical Irish, the revolutionaries and terrorists who have sullied the reputation and history of the homeland he is proud of."

Nice to know you think my costumer care is up to your standers!

Flog It! is selling a Chinese censor. (Censers burn incense, censors ban books.)

No one will batter an eyelid. It beggars the question. (You bat your eyelids or flutter your eyelashes – it's supposed to be flirtatious, but does it work? Shakespeare said that an appalling sight “beggars belief”, ie makes belief as poor as a beggar. If you "beg the question" you carry on as if the question under discussion had already been settled. Your way.)

gaffe for gaff (The first is a solecism and the second a home, or is it a net for landing fish?)

Someone in Inverkeithing asks why Dunfermline doesn’t have even on inconvenience store? (Also spotted recently “It wasn’t non-negligible”.)

going by the weigh side for falling by the wayside

epitath for epitaph

Quentin Crisp was a naked civil savant. (He had to join the Civil Service to do his job as a nude artist's model, and he called his autobiography The Naked Civil Servant.)
Site and sight are easily confused: a moving site, get it in your sites, building sight. (Think of eyesight and caravan site – a sight is what you see, a site is where you’re SITuated.)

He ate a cough pastel. (Pastille – pastels are coloured chalks, or pale colours.)

on the cusp for on the brink (The cusp is the join between two zodiac signs. Very popular June 2016 – we’re on the cusp of disaster, no kidding.)

I like anything with equestrian horses on! (Bargain Hunt)

Hi Hitler! (Scrawled by a very dim white supremacist.)

Find the writers you admire and immolate them. (Student howler, allegedly, for emulate or imitate. Heretics were immolated, or burned at the stake for their views, back in the Good Old Days.)

These men who obsess with feminism and then name calling, threatening to rape and murder are the lowest form of Homo Saipan ever. (They are, though it's "Homo sapiens", and it's a singular, not a plural. All humans are members of the group Homo sapiens, and all of us apart from Africans have a bit of Neanderthal as well.)

beaurocrats for bureaucrats

I'm sure the rich all have personal helicopters to take them to their secret mountain layers! (lairs)

More here, and links to the rest.

Outrageous Excuses 2016 (2)

But you can in the Isle of Man

...and silly reasons for not doing things.
I'm not getting married because:

Marriage brings a lot of Victorian baggage with it about treating a woman as a chattel, and the man being head of the household. (A wife was once a man's possession, as were his children – the law has been changed.)

We can’t afford it – a wedding costs £25,000. (A registry office wedding costs about £100.)

It’s just a bit of paper. (Yes, it's a legal contract.)

Even in a registry office, marriage has “religious connotations”. (You are not allowed any mention of religion. Today, marriage is an equal partnership, but there may be lingering, erroneous beliefs that, for instance, the man is boss. "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Ephesians 5:23)

Living together gives you the same rights – after two years, or when you have children. (Not since 1753.)

Talking about death and money and who gets the house isn’t very romantic.
Love is too precious to burden with marriage. (Words fail.)

I’m not getting married until heterosexuals can have civil partnerships. (There are some differences, but you could just cross out the word "marriage".)

It’s an outdated institution. (It has been constantly updated over the last 200 years.)

Divorce is too expensive. Marriage only enriches lawyers. (It might be a lot more expensive if you broke up or your partner died and you found you had no money and nowhere to live, and – men only – few rights over your children.)

Why should the state be involved? (To protect your rights.)

“There is no such thing as common law marriage or common law man and wife.” (nidirect.gov.uk)
The rights gained on marriage or civil partnership (they differ) are explained here.

We should teach children "whole language" because:

Phonics is mind-boggling and mind-numbing.
Phonics tests make children read non-existent words.

We should teach children to memorise and recognise every individual word as if they were logograms or ideographs.

In Finland they don’t teach children to read until they’re seven.
Yes, they can decode, but do they understand what they’re reading?

Just give children books and they’ll work out how to read.
English spelling is anarchic – how can there be any rules?
Children have different learning styles.

Phonics is old-fashioned.
Phonics is conservative.
Phonics is right-wing.

“A phonics rule has to operate 75% of the time with the corpus of words you’re using or else you shouldn’t teach it.” Ted Clymer, 1960s

“What we should probably do, my evidence says, is teach as many possible  phonics rules as we can, to completely load the child up with this kind of information and understanding and ability to use the se kinds of things and he or she will do the rest. They’ll come up to a word and make a fairly good guess, and if it doesn’t hit it right on the nose — whatever the phonics rule they’re trying to apply — they’ll go ahead and do it on their own.” Don Potter


I'm not wearing a poppy because....

Virtue signallers! Fascists! Jingoists! Jobsworths! Too big! Too small! Forbidden! Imposed!

“I loathe the mission creep turning remembrance day into some 'armed forces appreciation day'. I loathe it with every fibre of my being.”

The British armed forces are underfunded.

“I’m not going to wear a poppy because politicians wear them earlier every year.”

“I find the modern day ‘celebrity endorsement’ of poppies sickening!”

“I don't wear a poppy because it seems to be open to all sorts of misinterpretation these days.” 

I don’t wear symbols at work.
The poppy has been misappropriated to support illegitimate wars.
Poppy fascism – people are insisting I wear one, so I won’t.
I’m a pacifist.(BBC)


Outrageous excuses

Murderer Michael Danaher claimed his hit list was kept by another man and the victim attacked him first.

Abusive UKIP tweeter Raheem Kassam says "I am not that guy".

Charles Van Doren, accused of cheating in a quiz show, said that "while he had always known that what he had been doing was wrong, he had done it anyway, 'because it was having such a good effect on the national attitude toward teachers, education, and the intellectual life'.” (Florence King, Wasp Where Is Thy Sting?)

(See also the paedophile we can’t report to the police because “everybody looks up to him”, and the miracles of Lourdes and the visions at Fatima, which may be illusory “but have brought so many back to the church”.)

Right-wing politicians in France called for a swimming pool’s “burkini day” to be banned as it was “incompatible with French traditions and lifestyle”. Burkini objections continue, and burkas are an “act of provocation”, not a costume.

Owen Smith says he can’t be sexist because lots of women work for his campaign. (And others on this model: “Some of my best friends are Jewish”, “I can’t be racist because I’m gay” etc.)

Corbyn campaign says list [of party members who have “attacked Corbyn”] was issued by junior staffer and was not intended for official use.

Barrister says gang member who stabbed rival with a wine bottle and was then shot in the foot "just fell in with the wrong crowd."

More here, and links to the rest.
More silly reasons for not getting married.