Grammar: Howlers 26

When I was at school at the Convent, I flinched every time my friends called the "pergola lawn" (pictured) the "pergular lawn" (to rhyme with "jugular"). They also referred to the postulants (novice nuns) as "apostulants". Every day at lunch we would say the Angelus, and the entire school would chant: "The angel of the Lord appeared unto Mary; and she was conceived by the Holy Ghost." Both biologically and theologically incorrect. Every Friday we would sing the Salve Regina, a Latin hymn to the Virgin Mary. We were never given the words – we just picked it up by ear. There was one line I could never get: it just sounded like "er er er er". So I looked up the words: they are "Eia ergo". So I sang this and everyone else sang "er er er er" for the rest of my time there. I'm sorry, but it has all been annoying me for decades.

In the 60s, it was fashionable to buy a Spanish rug from Casa Pupo. The shop's name was on a label on the rug, but everybody called the shop "Casa Pupa". I flinch when people talk about Marlene Deartrick, Johann Sebastian Bark, Rekkavik (capital of Iceland), Bob Geldorf, and Mount Siniai (the place has two Is, not three). As for Americans, why "Joolyard School of Music" when it's spelled "Juillard"? Why is Huston pronounced "Hewston"? And then there are people who deliver a "diatrabe", consult a "theosaurus" and take "Epson Salts" when the name is printed on the tin...

I also shudder when people use “cognitive dissonance” to mean “denial” – or sometimes “projection”.  You deny reality to avoid cognitive dissonance – which is what happens when you try to believe two contradictory statements at once.

MIXED METAPHORS AND GARBLED CLICHES
Rishi Sunak’s presence in No. 10 is a “groundbreaking milestone”.

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

Have we taken on more than we can chew? (It's "bitten off".)

On Lady Susan Hussey receiving a Mexican order – the Sash of Special Category of the Order of the Aztec Eagle – the Times says: The Mexicans recognise the upper crust on their tortilla when they see it. (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 for 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.

Pity The Times is a burnt flush. (@SimonD555. That’s “busted flush”. From Poker?)

He was a very small cog in a much larger wheel. (Martin Edwards, The Life of Crime. “Just a cog in the machine” means that you are a tiny part of an organisation. Surely no cog can be more important than another cog – if any of them fails, the machine stops.)

That’s another part of the double-edged sword. (All swords are double-edged. They have a blade and a handle, and that's it.)

Hopefully Brits will not let this madness build deep roots. (Twitter) 

Kids today are all coddled snowflakes. (If you coddled a snowflake, it would melt. Think of coddled eggs.)

Dealt the death knoll. (Tolled or rung the death knell, dealt the death blow. No grassy knolls involved.)

Dethroning statues (Times letters page headline. You topple statues, and dictators – sometimes statues of dictators. You dethrone monarchs.)

Hanging by the narrowest of threads. (You can’t get much more fragile than “hanging by a thread”.
Hanging by a hair? The cliché is “by the narrowest of margins”.)

The rail-thin six-inch stilettoes worn by this generation of royals are a world away from the sensible block-heeled courts preferred by the late Queen. (Times. A skinny person may, with hyperbole, be “rail-thin”, but stilettos the width of a rail would be pretty chunky – whether that’s a rail as in railway or railing.)

The investigation had blown the lid on a glaring hole in the GRU’s tradecraft. (The cliché is “blow the lid off” or "blow the gaff". And that should be “gaping hole”. Holes don’t glare unless there’s a light inside. How about: "The investigation had shown up a gaping hole in the GRU’s tradecraft"?)

It irks me  that many authoritarian and reactionary Evangelical/other fundamentalist leaders are posturing themselves as against "Christian Nationalism". (@thesnarkygent. "Positioning" is meant.)

Bending their backs to justify X. (The cliché is “bend over backwards to justify/accommodate etc”.)

Thank u to these 2 special people for having the moral compass to stand up 4 fair sport 4 females with me. (@sharrond62. That’s "moral fibre".)

PURE HOWLERS

Sometimes a typo is almost an improvement:

During what she calls "the most misogynistic period" in recent history, J.K Rowling has emerged as Nicola Sturgeon's doughiest opponent. (Reaction.life, doughtiest)

We had a set of beautiful new vanished wood gates installed. (RC)

Make sure you pick the right word, instead of one that just sounds like it. Avoid:

scale model when you mean life-sized

trenchant (pithy, forceful) for entrenched (stubborn, unshiftable)

approbation (approval) for opprobrium (disapproval)

plumage for signage

pertruberance (no such word) for protuberance (knobby bit) 

obeisance (bowing) for obedience 

flushed out for fleshed out 

laconically (shortly) for sardonically (sarcastically)

confusion reins for reigns (rules)

self-reverential (self-adoring) for self-referential (self-referring)

dead to the wide for dead to the world (In Victorian novels and melodramas, a lady who has strayed from the path of virtue is “dead to the world”. She’s still alive, but her family, friends and acquaintances behave as if she wasn’t. Now usually used to mean “deeply asleep”. What would “dead to the wide” mean? It’s like spitting image/splitting image for “spit and image” and and off your own back for “off your own bat”.)

Apparently sports writers confuse in the ascendant with in the ascendancy.

Charles acceded, he did not ascend, to the throne. 

Who dons freckles and a red afro. (Guardian, sports. To don is to put on.)

Shape and extenuate your eyes with this natural and vegan eye shadow. (Peacewiththewild.co.uk, extend)

The Tambora volcanic eruption that caused acute climactic change. (@AlexPetrovnia. Climactic is from climax, climatic is from climate.)

In the colonial period a 70-ft George V had loomed, unscathed in his imperial clad, over New Delhi’s grandest boulevard. (Lse.ad.uk Imperial clobber?)

clouds on the peripherals (Peripherals are things like printers, microphones and external hard disks that you plug into computers. Peripheries, or edges, are meant.)

Do you foment or ferment a revolution? (NGRAM shows “foment” just ahead, both rising sharply in popularity in the 1920s. “Fomentations”, or hot compresses, aren’t so much used these days.)

To this day, I’ve never stepped foot back in the building. (Stepped back, or “set foot”.)

A quick forage into Wales. (Antiques Road Trip, foray)

Release from this saccharine honey trap comes by way of ‘Girl Graduate’ in gown and mortar board, a gratifyingly popular costume. (Verity Wilson, Dressing Up. "Saccharine honey trap" is a tautology. But a “honey trap” is not a sentimental costume, it specifically means sending a woman agent to seduce a mark and then blackmail him into handing over secret documents.)

A couple of local lads flexed their boxing gloves on a carnival float. (Verity Wilson, Dressing Up. You can only flex your muscles. What are they doing with their boxing gloves? Demonstrating, exhibiting, showing off?)

The people living in this arid region are literally living on a knife-edge. (Ade Adepitan, metaphorically. Literally is often used for "very much".)

Back in England, Edgar Wallace was a much sort after newsman. (sought after)

As he has shown that he doesn’t think he should be construed by rules... (@harrycovert16 Constrained? Restrained?)

I am painfully aware I am a 20 year old university student punching a bit above my belt. (Above my weight.)

I thought gaslighting was rewriting history to better suit your narrative. (@rj3000. Gaslighting is persuading someone that there isn't a problem, from "It was just banter" on...)

Now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress. (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Gestapo)

More here, and links to the rest.