Misused Sayings

OK, so what sayings/proverbs/idioms/adages/whatever word I'm looking for do you hear people misuse/mess up? Things where folks just hear something and adopt it and repeat it without thinking about it and realizing they've mixed it all up.

One I heard today:

"Out of the frying pan and into the fryer."

One I hear a lot from a cow orker:

"Six of one, a dozen of the other"

There are a ton more. People adopting something because they think they hear it that way, but end up changing the meaning and negating the context.

So....what about y'all?

Every time I hear somebody say "I could care less", I want to start slapping.� It should be "I couldn't care less".� "I could care less" implies that you do care to some extent and the expression is suposed to mean you don't care at all.

There was a good one in "The Poisonwood Bible".� One character is meant to be really dumb, and the section that are written from her point of view have horrid gramatical errors to show this.� At one point she tries to say "and never the�twain�shall meet" and comes up with "and never the trains ye shall meet"

yeah, "I could care less" reminds me a lot of "near miss." wouldn't a near miss actually NOT be a miss at all?

or perhaps it could mean a miss that was quite near, as opposed to almost missing.� w0rd.

yeah, we already discussed this one the wall..... while I share lawrence's issues with the mis-speaking.... it is still completely accurate.

So... I guess it's a bad example.

Jillian I TOTALLY agree with you about 'I could care less"! it bugs me every time!!� oh, and The Poisonwood Bible is phenomenal. Even though Rachel's an airhead, she's one of my favorite characters.� (Adah takes the cake though ;)� I love when she says, "Nobody will know me. I prefer to remain anomalous."

That's the other one I loved (but couldn't think of it when I was posting).� Great use of language there.� Damn I should invest in a copy of that book.

I think I missed this whole thread the first time around.

While, "Out of the frying pan and into the fryer." isn't the traditional phrasing, I don't think this one is any less valid. It could be used in all of the same situations, it just involves a bigger kitchen or more of a jump than a fall.

Of course, I could go on a whole bit about how this is a natural part of how language evolves, but no one (other than me) wants to bother with that on a quiet Sunday afternoon ;-)

Are you kidding me? Weekends are when I have time to bother with that kind of stuff!
:)

my ex keeps confusing the words "trite" and "contrite"

also, there's a restaurant near my house that offers "off-premise catering"

I chatted w/ someone about a week ago and he mixed up retroactive and radioactive (and wasn't really aware of it ;)

*sincker* I'm not sure I'd be interested in a radioactive tax cut, or a radioactive raise. :-P

-- Pauley

"Besides the point."

Or "aside the point"

I read in somebody's livejournal recently:

...and I'm rather good at Marshal Arts....

bwahahaha.

I wonder what this entails. Being as quick on the trigger as Wyatt Earp?

i'm rather disturbed by "being as how" instead of "seeing as how". the latter isn't especially grammatically correct either, i suppose, but the former just makes me want to shoot things.

I hate how you're always taught to say (insert name here) and I all the time, without actually knowing why...because sometimes it isn't correct, and then you just sound like an idiot. that is, if you're talking to someone who know the difference...

people do that all the time, and it's annoying, using i when it should be me.

...especially when that person is trying to sound smart. ugh.

exactly. of course, then it's sometimes fun to correct them. if they're receptive of course. otherwise, they just totally ignore you and still maintain the fact that they're right. which is wrong of them.