GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: rivka on August 24, 2005, 10:50:27 AM
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This thread is for spellings and/or usages that are correct (so defined by dictionaries and/or style guides), but look terribly wrong to you.
I've already mentioned "alright," but I'd like to add "payed." *shudder*
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*types out entire contents of an English dictionary*
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My understanding of "payed" is it is only used in specific contexts.
-o-
Impostor
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Separate. The adjective, that is. I never could quite get used to that.
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Surprise always gets me. I'm never sure if I am saying or spelling it right. What is the deal with Payed? Like it is the past tense transitive form, and everything else is a participle or something?
I payed him.
He got paid.
Now of course, this makes sense to me but I've never seen "payed" before and the way in which it makes sense will probably mean it is not the correct form.
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"Payed" is used when referring to letting out slack on a rope.
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Separate. The adjective, that is. I never could quite get used to that.
Luckily for me the Spanish cognate helps me spell that one right.
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Thanks for the heads up on payed.
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French helps me out with surprise.
This is almost completely off-topic, but this is why I now hate "alright": I just started a cell biology course, and the professor has three words and syllables that he says without thinking. "Alright" is one of those. Today in class he said it about 125 times in 75 minutes. He said "Okay" about 317 times, and "Um" or "Uh" was said about 175 times. Tuesday was the first day of class, and it really started to annoy me that he kept saying these things for what seemed like every other word. So today, I kept tally for half of the class period.
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Don't you hate when people use a filler THAT much?
My co-worker was on the phone yesterday, and trying to make a point. I didn't start counting until she had already said "you know?" a dozen times or more, and I counted 26. (For a total of close to 40, I think.) In a call that lasted about 5 minutes. :blink: :P
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You should hear Ruth's story about the history professor who said "during this period of time" as a filler phrase. She reportedly used it three times in one sentence.
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Dimension.
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Really? How would you spell it?
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I have no idea. But I'm working on some code with that word appering dozens of times, and I keep secong-guessing its spelling.
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BTW, I hate both "its" and "it's".
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You should hear Ruth's story about the history professor who said "during this period of time" as a filler phrase. She reportedly used it three times in one sentence.
I had a calc teacher in high school who used to say neat all the time. Everything was neat, he knew no other adjectives. Ok, so it's not a filler, but he once said it over 20 times in a 40 minutes period.
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It's a much more hilarious story if I can tell it out loud. There was something in the way she said it with the same intonation each time that just got me. She said it over 100 times in a 50 minute class period once. That's a five-word phrase every thirty seconds, on average. It was annoying, to say the least.
It was a large class, and the day I recorded her, I wrote down a tally each time she said it. Partway through the class, the person sitting next to me watched me mark a few tallies, figured out what I was doing, and gave me a huge grin like she'd been wanting to do it too.
During this period of time, I dreaded going to that class because the teacher during this period of time kept saying the same thing over and over during this period . . . of time.
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Brinestone, that is the most hilarious filler I've ever...read. I can't even begin to fathom how one bandy that around willy-nilly in regular conversation, but the idea is pure comedy.
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*laughs very hard at Ruth's story*
It could have been worse. At least that phrase makes sense coming from a history teacher . . . imagine it (with the same frequency) from an English teacher!
Although I did have an English professor once (with the amusing name of Kipling) who didn't know the correct pluralization of "daughter-in-law" (or "son-in-law" or "sister-in-law"). >.<
And we were doing King Lear.
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Daughter-in-laws. :cool:
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Don't make me hurt you.
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Sorry. :huh: :blush: :huh:
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*prim* That's better.
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There's a professor at BYU named Bill Shakespeare (no kidding) who teaches . . . well, you figure it out.
Apparently he's not that good, though. I took Shakespeare from one of my favorite teachers, so I wouldn't know.
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Take these so called "bananas," my arms are getting tired
ARGH. It just looks so wrong.
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Well, it's arguably a comma splice.
And I would hyphenate "so-called."