[daotoad]

Off topic and doesn't impact the validity (or lack thereof) of the post. Just reactionary whining really...

For the love of all that is good, "exacerbated" and "exasperated" are different words.

We've already screwed up "home in on" by allowing the horrid "hone in" to horn in our lexicons. On a side note, watch out for those honing pigeons, they've got very sharp beaks.

[ryandrake]

Glad to see someone fighting the good fight, no matter how lost the battle is online. I'd add:

    your/you’re
    who’s/whose
    were/we’re/where
    to/too/two
    are/our
    then/than
    lose/loose
    wary/weary
    affect/effect
    aloud/allowed
    definitely/defiantly
    complement/compliment
    flout/flaunt

When people make these kinds of vocabulary mistakes, I like to at least charitably assume that English is their second language, but I've seen my kid's teachers make these mistakes, too...

[tmtvl]

I would like to add my personal bugbear of 'less/fewer'. 'Fewer' is such a nice word, it feels so pleasant to say, it would be nice if it saw more use.

[mikepurvis]

No "effects" discussion is complete without https://xkcd.com/326/

(At least "defiantly" is an actual word, unlike "definately" which doesn't even pass spell check)

[SoftTalker]

Standard excuse: autocorrect must have changed it.

[TeMPOraL]

It's all fun and games until it changes the name of a drug on your prescription.

[baal80spam]

Don't forget the worst offender: its/it's

[raw_anon_1111]

One that really gets me that most professional get wrong is jive/jibe.

The last time someone used “jive” when not in relation to music was George Jefferson and other Black folks up to the very early 80s (I am Black before the pearl clutching starts)

[roadside_picnic]

We will never recovered from the fact that "literally" now means "figuratively but with emphasis".

[monocularvision]

I understand that language evolves and meanings change but we need a word that means “literally”! If we let this one go, the battle is lost.

[nkrisc]

To be fair, there is a logic behind “hone in on” that is at least plausible that relates to the intended meaning, and is perhaps somewhat responsible for it sticking around besides simply the similarity between “home” and “hone”.

[schrectacular]

As much as it angers me to say it, I do believe it is an eggcorn.

[nkrisc]

I agree, though remarkably it’s an eggcorn that is still sort of correct on its own.

[daotoad]

This usage is a double misunderstanding, it gets both the phonetics of homing and the mechanics of sharpening a blade wrong.

It’s like calling someone a “stropping young lad”.

[nkrisc]

Honing a blade still "moves" the blade close to what you want: a blade that cuts well. It's not correct enough to have spawned the original phrase, but it's not completely absurd, like saying, "should of" instead of "should've" or saying "I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less" - the first of which is nonsense and the second means the opposite of the intended meaning.

"Hone in on" is at least mildly in the correct direction.

[dugidugout]

I actually stumbled on this earlier today! I was reaching for home in on and settled on hone in on as it intuitively fit better to me! I remember thinking "Im trying to express reducing something critically which is like refining". Now I very clearly see the home etymology too though!

[csallen]

I used to feel similarly whenever people would say "begs the question" to mean "raises a question." But now I've just given up. It's more common for people to mess this one up than not.

[mnhnthrow34]

This lossy mingling of expressions that sound similar is a natural process always present in the evolution of a language. Giving up is a correct and healthy response imo.

"Begging the question" is a great example - its intended meaning as a specific fallacy descriptor lose to face-value interpretations that are "wrong" but also extremely fair for somebody to make. All this means is that "begging the question" is a weak name for the fallacy, because if you don't know what it means, a wrong assumption is easily available and contextually often seems to fit.

The language crushing out these expressions is a feature. Better all around to say the argument is circular or it assumes the conclusion. Doing those things may _actually_ "raise questions" as well as "begging the question" which makes things even worse.

It's not the fault of the casual language users that this expression is poorly understood, it's just bad naming in the first place.

[Sharlin]

Yeah, we should probably standardize on "assuming the conclusion" or just "circular logic" when talking about the logical fallacy.

[mhink]

To be fair, the phrase "begging the question" makes almost no sense from a modern English perspective- according to Wikipedia, it's already a bad translation of a Latin phrase that's tied pretty closely to a specific debate format.

By contrast, the colloquial use feels like an abbreviation of the implicit phrase "it begs for the question to be asked", which makes so much more sense than the "correct" meaning that if I'm being perfectly honest, I'd rather use it.

I like Wikipedia's alternate name for the fallacy: "assuming the conclusion", because it explains what's actually happening.

[Terr_]

Literally is literally figurative and only figuratively literal, anything remotely unsustainable is a "Ponzi scheme", and factoids are somehow facts instead of fictions... *sigh*

[mikepurvis]

Intriguing. I'm normally pretty careful about this kind of thing but I had thought "hone in" was correct. Apparently not:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/home-in-or-hone-in

[isoprophlex]

I've got a few well-homed knives in my kitchen. They're really happy where they are. I can leave them hone alone, too, which is nice.

[amatecha]

Ah yeah I noticed that too while pouring over the post :D

[assimpleaspossi]

Well, birds aren't real, so there's that.

[JamesTRexx]

Now imagine everyone using get only for its true meaning: to receive.