I'm so obnoxious. The older I get, the more completely I become the character of an English major that Garrison Keillor talks about. I rant and I rave and I ridicule (mostly in private but not always) those who misuse the English language. I've become obsessive about random capitalization, I abhor unnecessary quotation marks and I use words like abhor. But lately, the one that's killing me is "nip it in the BUTT." Intelligent people all around me say it all the time. I'm trying not to lecture, but for the record it is nip it in the BUD. As in, stop the growth, and not bite something in the ass.
I think its a colloquialism, an accent thing from the Germans down in the Sauerkraut triangle, but I need to do my part to nip this little misuse ... in the bud.
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2 comments:
Geez...maybe that's why my uncle got so confused when that prostitute killed his flower garden instead...
You can add to that, "I'm just talking out loud." Uh, it's "thinking out loud." You are *always* talking out loud, or else it wouldn't be talking.
Also, things are "coming down the pike," not "the pipe" (in the U.S. at least).
Finally, you "cash in some chits" when you are calling in a favor. You "cash in your chips" when you are calling it quits.
None of these have anything to do with the Sauerkraut Triangle ... as far as I know.
I hope I didn't use any inappropriate quotation marks!
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