Pet peeve phrases II

This is a new thread, because Pet peeve phrases is closing in on 600 posts. Please post here instead of in the original thread - seeya!

As a boy I heard draw for drawer from my r-less mother, but I also heard dror from some other people which seemed to me consistent with the spelling. At an early age I knew that spelling didn't consistently prescribe pronunciation, so I went with my mother's pronunciation despite having r's in all the right places otherwise. Now I just try to avoid the word, but I see and object to the spelling draw for it.

Robert

I was discussing this with my mother, who's from New Jersey, just the other day. She pointed out that she's seen the (phonetic) spelling chesterdraws for what I would call a chest of drawers (pronounced drors). I haven't seen that, thank goodness.

Mildly related oddity - when I was a kid, my parents used to say "Keep it down to a low drawer!" when we got too loud. Much later I heard it again, and what they were actually saying was "Keep it down to a dull roar". Interesting mondegreen...apparently I heard d...ror and put the 'low' in there to make it fit 'keep it down'. Either that or I have dyslexic ears and put the L sound before the D...

>3 jjmcgaffey:: jjmcgaffey

You sure they weren't saying "loud roar"?

The OED gives two pronunciations of "drawer": /drɔ:(r)ə/ and /drɔ:/ (just ilke "draw"); the first is only used for the sense "person who draws"; the thing you store stuff in is a /drɔ:/. If you're adding an "r" sound to the end of the word, you're doing it wrong (or you're American, which is the same thing <g>)

>5 PaulFoley:: Guilty as charged. Left side of the pond, and fond of my r's. (Heh.)

I've heard wash pronounced as warsh. I've heard this pronunciation on the West Coast, and in the Southwest, of the USA.

Also grease as greaze. Same general geographic distribution.

Many years ago I mentioned to my sister's husband, who used that pronunciation, that I'd never heard a Chicagoan say "greaze," only Westerners. He said, "That's because I'm from the western suburbs."

Ok, maybe that would only be funny to a Chicagoan.

I'm from pretty far west and I've never heard greaze.

> 7
In Pittsburgh we say "worsh" instead of wash or warsh. (And when camping we worsh our hands dahna crick...)

>8 PhaedraB:

:D and I'm not a Chicagoan.

I haven't heard greaze. I have heard greasy pronounced as greezee, though.

>10 Crypto-Willobie:

I've often wondered where the pronunciation "crick" originated. I've read that pronunciation in literature more than I've heard it in use.

>7 Sundry: I've associated warsh with southern Ohio.

>8 PhaedraB:, 10, 11 -- Thinking about the eeze pronunciation. I think in most U.S. dialects the names, Bernice and Denise, rhyme (using an eece sound). However, my French Canadian relatives pronounce the s in Denise with a z sound, which is consonant with French.

Nope, they both have an s sound.

> 13 & 14

According to Merriam-Webster online, you are both right.

grease:

Pronunciation: \ˈgrēs, ˈgrēz\
Function: transitive verb

\ ē \ as y in easy

I loved the closing topic of the forerunner thread, watching contributors get their drawers in a twist. LoL.

Many West Virginians (northern part of the state) also say "warsh" or "worsh."

My dad says "worsh" and he is originally from eastern Washington state. Or I should say "Worshington" as that's how he pronounces the state name, too.

re: grease, upon reflection it seems that I pronounce it with an s when using it as a noun as in bacon grease, but with a z when used as a verb as in to greez the wheel and I'm in the mid-Atlantic states area.

I grease my wheels with an "s." Mid-Atlantic, here, too, but perhaps closer to NYC. No "z" in the word, ever, regardless of the variation in meaning or part of speech, etc.

Maybe I'm alone on this, but I've always recognized a subtle difference between the active and passive forms of the word grow; specifically, passive use includes "increase in size" (the company will grow, etc.). Whereas the active use is a little more exclusive, and is something more like the word cultivate (I will grow lettuce, a fu-manchu, etc.).

Now, though, I hear people saying things I feel are kindof not quite right all the time in this regard, mostly things like "grow the economy" and "grow your business".

Anybody else unsettled by this, or am I just delusional?

(For the record, the first time I noticed hearing this was from that prodigious language-mangler George W.)

>21 jbberube: All of the examples you cite are actives. What do you mean exactly when you say "passive" (i.e. "the corn was grown" etc.)?

Maybe what # 21 means is the difference between transitive (carries an object) and intransitive (no object).

I think there are lots of verbs with transitive and intransitive uses. Some languages, like Basque, use absolutive and/or ergative cases depending on the transitivity of the verb.

Isn't the passive voice when there's no actor in the sentence, "Mistakes were made", vs. "I made a mistake"?

Passive is where the object is the subject. "Mistakes were made by the sitting government."

Robert

The verb 'to ship' has also changed recently. I always understood the verb to be transitive, but now, Amazon (UK) tells me when my item 'shipped', rather than 'was shipped'.

27> I always have an urge to explain that no one can make it through the day without making some sort of assumption, like eating my cereal will make me full. But it wouldn't do any good.

>27 Collectorator: You could have gone a bit further and actually said it, knowing that you'd be right.

>28 jjwilson61: We assume a lot more than that! Indeed, we'd not be able to even start getting through the day if we didn't. I always assume I'll be able to get out of bed, for starters. I've given in to the urge to explain this, on occasion. It's worked, more than half the time.

>21 jbberube: I also find this use of grow to be annoying, but I take it as business speak, which moves in cycles. They will be off on a new annoying word fad in a few years. I do wish business schools would put out articulate grads who don't mangle the language to suit their marketing whim.

26>

Rudyard Kipling used the intransitive of 'ship', when he wrote in The City of the Dreadful Night: "As soon as the money's gone, they'll ship, but not before." Not quite the Amazon meaning. (I got this from the OED.)

>22 Petroglyph:-25 ... I'm learning...

>27 Collectorator: I like to use the parody of this from the movie "Jackie Brown" (thats where I heard it, anyways): When you make an assumption you make an ass out of you and umption.

Okay, not a pet peeve, but you would not BELIEVE what this guy said in my class today.

Now, I want to preface this by telling you that this was during a graduate-level course. And this guy, he's making a presentation on a proposed programming idea for YA library services: a summer reading program called The Book Bistro. And he says,

"Bistro is basically French for café."

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGG!

>:(

greazy divides more north/south than east/west, but I don't know where the isogloss for it runs. I did once.

To #13 "grease the noun has an s sound
grease the verb has a z"

No, the variation is regional. No native this far north of that isogloss would EVER say "greazy"! (Wisconsin)

Message deleted because I just realised my query has already been addressed above.

36: Agreed. I grew up in western New York, and both noun and verb forms of 'grease' rhyme with 'geese'. But I went to college in central Indiana, where at least some of the locals rhyme 'greasy' with 'easy' rather than with 'B.C.'. (And now I live in Maryland, where I just haven't noticed what local usage is, possibly because almost nobody here is from around here.)

I have a new irritant to add:

"I like that" followed by subject, verb, etc. "I like that ___car does/has____" in ads time and time and time again.

"I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked. But my name certainly is John. It has been John for years." From the Importance of being Earnest. I'm not sure why it bothers me so much, maybe because I played Cecily in the play once. But I cringe every time I hear it