# What misused terms bug you the most?



## Kevlar (Aug 24, 2011)

It seems like almost every book I read or game I play uses some terms inccorrectly, especially in weaponry. The most common ones I see, and the ones that bug me the most, are:

Using morningstar to refer to a flail
Using longsword to refer to an 'arming sword'
Using broadsword to refer to any wide swords, when in fact they were basket-hilted swords broader than others of the type.
Using rapier to refer to what should be a sidesword or smallsword

I even remember playing one game that had falchions as huge two-handers.

What misused words and terms bug you the most in literature, games, or film?


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## The Blue Lotus (Aug 24, 2011)

"Friends with benefits"
Sorry but Sex is not a fringe benefit of being friends with someone...  However Aids is a fringe Benefit of having sex with random people... (I'm just sayin') It is over used by far and imho it is incorrect. 
That term to me says, If I give Tiffany a ride, maybe she will spring for a creamsickle.


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## JCFarnham (Aug 24, 2011)

Something that really gets me is the amount of so-called "serious writers" who use drug and the past tense of drag. Surely Drug is a completely different word altogether! There are a number of other examples of this that annoy me. 

Saying that though I heard from a friend I was discussing this kind of thing with just yesterday that "sneaked" is more acceptable than "snuck"! Honestly, English just plain confuses me sometimes. I makes me wonder if we young people are so used to writing things in the wrong way that we can no longer recognise the correct usage of a whole slew of terms. I like to think I'm alright in this field, but maybe I haven't a clue? [I don't however excuse my tendency to make stupid typos haha]

Then again we all know that the English language is a bit of a freak  and wonderful freak mind you, but a freak none-the-less.


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## Map the Dragon (Aug 24, 2011)

I or me. Many get it wrong. I am sure me is among that number.


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## Kevlar (Aug 24, 2011)

JCFarnham said:


> Then again we all know that the English language is a bit of a freak  and wonderful freak mind you, but a freak none-the-less.



That's because it's the mutt of languages. Honestly, it has roots in latin, germanic languages, celtic languages and probably other ones I don't know about. 

I tend to make those kind of mistakes too, like drug and dragged, snuck and sneaked and so on. But sometimes both ways are technically correct ,and each sounds better in different situations, for instance: spun and span. Though I read something about Rowling using span being controversial.

Another interesting thing, though it doesn't bug me, is that there are tons of words spelled incorrectly by most authors everyday. Cooperation, if you are sticking to traditional conventions, should be spelled coÃ¶peration, like seer or see-er should be spelled seeÃ«r, elite should be spelled Ã©lite and melee should be spelled mÃªlÃ©e.


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## Philip Overby (Aug 24, 2011)

Something that bugs me is when people spell or name something different in an attempt to make it "new."  Like "vampyr" (yes, I know what that is, but I still think it's goofy) or "lupin" (for werewolf).  Why not just use the commonly perceived name?  Or come up with a different creature?

Something else that's annoying?  Dungeons and Dragons allowing PCs to be "fae-touched" or have "demon/angel blood."  The demon/angel thing is so 1997.  I miss the human fighter with the broadsword, medium shield, and splint mail (2nd Edition anyone?)  Minmax to the rescue!


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## Donny Bruso (Aug 24, 2011)

This isn't technically a misused term, but it sort of falls into the same category:

People who can't/won't proofread.

Whether it's a manuscript you're submitting to a publisher, a short piece you're putting up in the showcase, or just a quick note in one of the threads, everything should be re-read before hitting 'send.' You're trying to convince the world that your writing is good enough to sell, but you're so lazy you can't even check it over to make yourself look good? Really? REALLY? Grrr....


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## Lord Darkstorm (Aug 24, 2011)

> The demon/angel thing is so 1997



1997?  I believe that some of my books date back to the early 80's...Don't think I ever bought deities and demigods, but it was around in the early to mid 80's at least.

My personal thing, and I am for public lashings to correct it, but the use of 'like' every other word.  There is nothing more obnoxious than being near someone who has no idea how to describe anything, so they fill in the blanks with 'like'...ok, and every other word they throw in an extra one or ten for good measure.

That and the overuse of the word 'awesome'.  Very few things in life have the ability to inspire true awe, but if I had a dollar for every time someone says that word referring to average things...

Ok, I'll stop while it's still brief.


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## Ravana (Aug 25, 2011)

"Literally" and "virtually"–which, it seems, have both come to mean what the other one used to, in spite of the fact that they represent mutually exclusive domains. 

I've also developed a major antipathy recently for the phrase "It is what it is." No, really, is it? Have you ever heard someone say "It is what it ain't"?


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## UnionJane (Aug 25, 2011)

My personal pet peeve is the abuse of "metaphor," which I believe is much maligned because of its application in academia. At its base, it usually defined (denotatively) as a comparison of two unlike things. In the hands of some my fellow English majors, that means that every piece of figurative language is mostly easily identified as a metaphor--whether it is or it isn't. Abuse of the label is followed by a long-winded, often erroneous explanation. I'm beginning to feel that when reading literature, identifying/explaining metaphors is often best left to the experts, especially if it's supposed to be tied up to an essential theme of a work.


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## Leuco (Aug 25, 2011)

Phil the Drill said:


> Something that bugs me is when people spell or name something different in an attempt to make it "new."  Like "vampyr" (yes, I know what that is, but I still think it's goofy) or "lupin" (for werewolf).  Why not just use the commonly perceived name?  Or come up with a different creature?



It's not really a misused term, but personally I don't like the deamon or daemon spelling of demon. The old school spelling throws me off. My biggest complaint of a misused term is "french benefits" instead of fringe benefits. And yes, bad past tense verbs always leave me scratching my head. Those are probably the worst. In real life, I make a conscious effort to correct people politely that way they don't have to look like a fool in front of someone else. It's kind of like having a piece of parsley between your teeth, and no one saying anything. You'd want someone to tell you, wouldn't you?


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## JCFarnham (Aug 25, 2011)

Don't think I've ever heard french benefits before? I'm surprised people make that mistake. Really surprised!


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## Digital_Fey (Aug 25, 2011)

Phil said:
			
		

> Something that bugs me is when people spell or name something different in an attempt to make it "new." Like "vampyr" (yes, I know what that is, but I still think it's goofy) or "lupin" (for werewolf). Why not just use the commonly perceived name? Or come up with a different creature?



Argh, yes. It makes me cringe with embarrassment when writers do that without a *very* good reason. Changing a few letters does not make your brand of vampire any more unique. 

Something else that drives me crazy is writers using the word 'okay' in medieval fantasy settings. All the characters are 'my lord'-ing each other and suddenly this complete anachronism gets dropped into the dialogue. It just looks sloppy, and it ruins the atmosphere. To get back to the weapons thing, it's extremely irritating when foreign weapon names (like wakizashi, katana, etc.) are used frequently in a fantasy world with no explanation of how these things came to be used alongside zweihanders and claymores. It's a tricky issue admittedly, but to me it undermines the believability of the world.


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## Shadoe (Aug 25, 2011)

...."french benefits".... I got a good laugh out of that one. My ex husband used to say "It's a doggie dog world out there." I couldn't stand it anymore and finally asked him what he thought it meant. He had no idea.

"Okay" in fantasy drives me nuts too. I used to edit a fanzine that took place in Anne McCaffrey's Pern, and that was one of the words I banned from use.

The use of "alot" and "alright" bug me too. These are not words. Is it really that annoying to press the space bar?

The thing that annoys me most is this idiotic texting spelling that seems to have taken over the world. I see some pieces on fanfiction.net or fictionpress.com where people actually use them in a story. It's insane. What can they be thinking?


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## JCFarnham (Aug 25, 2011)

They're not thinking.


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## Leuco (Aug 25, 2011)

Shadoe said:


> The use of "alot" and "alright" bug me too. These are not words. Is it really that annoying to press the space bar?



I once had someone correct me at work. She was trying to be polite about it, too. "You know a lot is one word." I was trying to explain to her that it wasn't but she made this strange argument about her friend who was an English graduate or something. I finally just said whatever. I hope she figured it out. But you know, with all the texting language spreading into the dictionary, one day, she may be right! _"Bum Bum BUM!"_


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## Lord Darkstorm (Aug 25, 2011)

So they put stupidity in the dictionary, it doesn't mean I have to use any of those acronyms in my writing.  Unless I was putting a direct quote of a test message into the story, then maybe....but I'd have to really think hard about it.  

The english language does change all the time.  Not a lot D) but it does. Some words I'm not upset have gone away from common usage.


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## Kevlar (Aug 27, 2011)

Vampyr bugs me, but vampyre is pretty much fine by me. Why? Because vampyre was the traditional spelling. Plus vampyr would sound like vamp-ear, which is just stupid.

As for daemon/demon, they're actually two different things. Daemons were actually supernatural Greek entities, and while I don't know much about them I know they were never explicitly stated to be evil.

I've thought of a few more misused words that sometimes bug me.

Fail - When did it become a noun?
Irony - Even today's teachers are taught it incorrectly. What they teach us to be irony I believe is actually called dramatic irony. Wouldn't bug me so much if English teachers could explain what's ironic about someone saying 'Hey, nice shirt.'
Epic - used to refer to inconsequencial (sp?) or small things. Since when is peeing for five minutes straight epic? (Don't ask, please, don't.)

And on a side-note:

Anyone else notice Sam calling Gollum a douchebag in the movies?


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## Philip Overby (Aug 27, 2011)

I seems I remember Gollum calling him "douche-y" or something.  

The internet happened to a lot of these words like fail, epic, and owned.  Even now when I think of pawn shops I think of the word "pwned."  Just makes me think someone pawned something.  Sometimes I wish the internet would die, but then I wouldn't have cool places to find other writers (except coffee shops)!


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## HÃ«radÃ¯n (Aug 27, 2011)

I hate the phrase "He all but blah blah blah" as in "when they beheaded his father he all but threw up" what he is trying to say is that the boy threw up when his father's head fell, but how it is written it sounds like he did everything except toss his lunch!


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## Kevlar (Aug 27, 2011)

I think 'he all but' means 'he almost.' Of course, 'he almost threw up' is simpler than 'he all but threw up.'

Just thought of another one though:

People saying 'I could care less' when they mean 'I couldn't care less.'


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## sashamerideth (Aug 28, 2011)

With me big on science fiction, using sentient when the right word is sapient.  A dog is sentient but not sapient.


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## grahamguitarman (Aug 28, 2011)

basically I hate all text/internet speech and refuse to use it - even when texting.


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## grahamguitarman (Aug 28, 2011)

Oh and no offense to Americans, but I'm fed up with software constantly telling me I've spelt something wrong because I've used the English not the American spelling.  I'm not American so I have no interest in using Americanisms, examples being (but not limited to):

its colour not color, humour not humor, sneaked not snuck, dragged not drug, normality not normalcy, centre not center, traveller not traveler, offence not offense, paralyse not paralyze ect.  

this might not seem a big deal to Americans but as someone who was brought up with English as my first language, I find it very annoying to be told I should be using American spellings.


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## HÃ«radÃ¯n (Aug 28, 2011)

if you are using MS office all you have to do is click the button at the bottom that says "English (United States)" and scroll down to the one that says "English (United Kingdom)" and set it to default that will fix your problem... As to other word processing programs, I'm sure you can change it, but I don't happen to use them.


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## CicadaGrrl (Aug 29, 2011)

I'm a big fan of language changing all the time.  Language is fluid.  That's part of its fun. 

In my high fantasy books (which, true, are set far from any time and space we know of) people say things like "okay."  It is anachronistic.  I'm aware of it.  I'm not trying not to have it have anachronistic details.  If I were to solely work with "proper," time and place specific language, we wouldn't understand a word, so why can't they have a version of "okay." 

Yeah--if the class books I've seen, anyway, are representative, it would be kind to say even dramatic irony is being taught correctly right now.  It's not just youngsters either.  I've always found it the ironic generation doesn't appear to know what ironic means.


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## Shadoe (Aug 30, 2011)

Oh look. I talked to my ex-husband and came up with some other things that annoy me:

"mute point" instead of "moot point"
"for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes"
"escape goat" instead of "scape goat"

The use of "anyways," "towards" and "irregardless"
(Though I'll admit that "irregardless" is still one of my favorite words.)

The word "literally" when used incorrectly. As in, "I literally died when she said that."


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## Philip Overby (Aug 30, 2011)

I sort of like "escape goat."  Sounds like when you're in trouble just call your escape goat to get you out of a pinch.

"Escape goat!  To me!"


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## Shadoe (Aug 30, 2011)

Yeah... Now I'm never going to be able to be annoyed by the phrase, "escape goat." I suspect when someone uses it, however, they will be mystified by my helpless laughter.


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## myrddin173 (Aug 30, 2011)

While it isn't usually used in fantasy literature, it drives me insane when people use the term osmosis for anything except water.  They should be using diffusion!  Osmosis is the diffusion of water, not anything else.  I was just reading a textbook where this was used.


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