You Keep Using Those Words…

The other day, a friend and I were chatting on the phone when he concluded a story he was telling me about his questionable behavior as a young man.

"I'm not too worried about it, cause I figure the statue of limitations has long since run out," he said.

"The what has what?" I asked.

"The statue of limitations," he said, with that tone that some take when conversing with a barely literate rube.

"I think you mean the statute of limitations. Unless someone somewhere erected a statue to honor our limitations, only to find that it jumped from its pedestal and ran out of the museum," I replied with an equally snarky tone.

"Whatever," he said. "Didn't know I'd accidentally called the Word Cops!"

Then, came the pièce de résistance (or, what he might have called a piece of resistance). He snorted after his "word cops" line, then added: "It's a mute point, anyway."

"I'm sorry, what? Did you just say it was a mute point? Mute?!"

He sighed, then said, "Whatever. What should I have said, professor?"

"I might have gone with moot. A word that indicates the point is irrelevant. Moot."

"Again, whatever. I really could care less," he said, with more than a small hint of annoyance.

I really, really wanted to point out that the expression is "I couldn't care less." If you could care less, that would seem to point out that you do care a fair amount.

I didn't point that out because, well, I'm hoping to continue our friendship. It's been my experience that those who spend their days looking for ways to correct others often find themselves alone and shouting corrections at the TV. Besides, I've made similar mistakes myself. Most of us have.

Thank goodness for the professional proofreaders at Proofreading Services. They've got an interesting piece on this topic, including some of the above-listed errors, and more:

• “You’ve got another thing coming.” This is a phrase that people often say in anger, as in “Oh, yeah? Well, then, you’ve got another thing coming!” It sounds vaguely threatening, but if you really think about the phrase, it doesn’t make much sense. What people should actually be saying is, “you’ve got another think coming,” but that makes even less sense unless you use the saying in its entirety: “If that’s what you think, then you’ve got another think coming.”

• “With all intensive purposes.” While, yes, it is technically possible to have purposes that are intensive (doctors and police detectives probably have these all the time), the correct phrase is “with all intents and purposes.”

• “Card shark.” While someone who is amazingly good at cards may seem like a vicious shark if you are playing against them and losing all of your hard-earned money, card shark is not the correct term. For the right phrase, you need to think about synonyms for “good” and “smart.” People who show those qualities when playing cards prove themselves to be sharp – therefore, they are card sharps.

• “Nip it in the butt.” A dog might get away with this, but unfortunately a person doing this would probably be thought crazy, which is why we “nip it in the bud” instead. Huh? Think “bud” as in flowers and plants. To nip something in the bud means to stop a small problem before it can become a larger one.

• “Take it for granite.” Why are you taking it for granite? Does it look like granite? Does it feel like granite? Maybe you should test it out instead of just taking it for granite… or maybe what you meant was that you were taking it for granted. One involves not showing enough appreciation for something, while the other is a rock. Slight difference.

John Green at Mental Floss has more for you: