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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   967 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 7, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Much ink has been spilled here over the dreaded em-dash and other hallmarks of AI writing. But what other linguistic pet peeves do you have?

I ask because I just found myself fuming over the widespread confusion between "jealousy" and "envy." People tend to use them as synonyms (more often simply using jealousy for both terms), but the two words describe emotions that I think deserve to be distinguished. Jealousy is felt over things that rightfully belong to you, while envy is felt over things which do not. God is jealous; you are envious. Being jealous is still generally bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as envy. As a child who was bad at sharing but generally pretty good about being happy about the good fortune of others, it has always bothered me how few people seem to grasp the distinction.

Oh man I have several.

  • "I could care less"
  • "For all intensive purposes"
  • Misuse of "literally" to mean "figuratively"
  • Saying "an homage". My brother in Christ, the first sound in "homage" is an H, not a vowel. You should say "a homage". Technically this one is more the mispronunciation of "homage" than the grammar rule being used wrongly

All of those get under my skin quite a bit. I just ignore it because nobody likes a grammar Nazi to correct them, but they do annoy me.

There's another , more recent misuse of "literally" that really annoys me: when people use it to "clarify" a statement that no one could possibly interpret in a figurative sense, essentially using it as synonymous with "simply".

Yeah so you literally just export it as a CSV and open it in Excel.

Oh, I do that literally, do I? Thanks for clarifying, for a moment I thought this was all a big extended metaphor.

1 and 3 bother me much more than any of the others, because they actually mean literally the opposite of what you said. If you say "for all intensive purposes" it's basically clear what you mean. Language gradually drifting, or people using casual slang is tolerable in bits and pieces, because you're still effectively communicating. Multiplying by -1 and saying the opposite of what you meant to say is just confusing nonsense, and hinders the ability of people to know what your words mean. If the word "literally" means literally 50% of the time and means figuratively 50% of the time then people have to deduce the meaning entirely from context, in which case the word provides no signal whatsoever.

Similarly, I know the word "inflammable" is hundreds of years old, but it's still a bad word because it hinders the ability to easily refer to objects which are not flammable.

an homage

Using "an" for any h word. I feel like I've woken up in a different universe. Saying "an", like in "an 'ot cup of tea", fine, but I frequently see it happening in professional writing now.

Homage is maybe the least objectionable one as people tend to French-ify the pronunciation anyway.

When you say, “any h word,” do you mean any word that starts with H, or just the ones that start with a voiceless glottal fricative? Surely you don’t mean you’d write “a hour” or “a honor”?

You're right, I immediately started thinking of the exceptions after posting. Thanks for linking to the proper terminology.

Wait you pronounce the h in homage, brother? I never have. But I can remember many instances where I spoke a word that I had only ever seen written down and was immediately ridiculed.

If you don't, presumably you don't say "A honest man?"

I do, and so does everyone that I've seen in the other situations you might use the word. For example, I've never seen someone say "pay homage" and pronounce it with the "o-mazh" pronunciation, it's only with "a homage" that they French-ify the pronunciation for whatever reason. I do drop the h at the beginning of "honest", as one generally does.

In my experience, the French pronunciation is reserved for specifically artistic contexts. You pay homage to the King of France, you pay 'ommage to Jean-Luc Godard.

I don't always use the phrase pay homage, but when I do I prefer to pronounce the h as a voiceless glottal fricative. I can't even consider the words in my inner voice being pronounced like house or hot.

I always hated when I'd ask someone the time and they'd say "quarter til," "half past nine," "ten before din'," "twenty before honey," "forty-six before the shits," etc. Just tell me the fucking time, damn it.

the first sound in "homage" is an H, not a vowel

No, it’s not. At least not if you’re American.

I'm an American, and yes it is.

I'm also American and it's not. I've literally never heard the H pronounced, including online, so it's not a regional thing.

There's a special place in hell reserved for people who write "could of" instead of "could have" and they should be sent there right now.

For the record it's not "rock, paper, scissors," it's "scissors, paper, rock." Whoever it was who duped the new generation to say it backwards should be caned.

In *guu, chokki paah" (janken, the Japanese version, used I sometimes believe to make every decision of import throughout Japanese history) the order is actually "rock (guu) scissors (chokki) , paper (pahh, or the outstretched hand)"

They should of been sent there a long time ago.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

You evil bastard!

Yeah, they're all total looser's.

that Lose versus Loose grates my eyes everytime i see it.

For two hundred years people like you have been trying to squelch English speakers' opportunities to feel like fancy snooty French people once in a while. Well, you see the trajectories at the end of that graph? No more! Our time is now. We're not even saying "OM-idj" now, oh no, you lost that chance at compromise. Our speech will now be a full-throated "oh-MAHZH" to the romance languages!

Very well, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Let there only be enmity between us from this day forward!

Saying "an homage". My brother in Christ, the first sound in "homage" is an H, not a vowel. You should say "a homage". Technically this one is more the mispronunciation of "homage" that the grammar rule being used wrongly

You're mistaken. Those people are saying "an hommage".

I mean... maybe in some cases, but people do write "an homage" all the time. So either they are pronouncing "homage" wrong, or they are getting the grammar rule for a/an wrong.

FWIW, default Voiceover TTS says /amədʒ/. So English -age, but French silent h.

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