I LOVE language. The names, phrasings, colloquialisms, dualities, idioms and all that jazz.
And, as the new year stretches in front of us like a pristine, unused notebook, I thought I’d take a (light-hearted) look at some of the language we misuse in work (and maybe we can vow to think more carefully about these in 2023):
• Doing a 360: My personal bugbear. If what you really mean is that you have changed direction, opinion or stance on something so that you now are in favour of the complete opposite, then you have done a 180. This means you are now facing the other way. A 360 is not the same. A 360 means you have completed a full circle and are still heading in the same direction.
• Please don’t using the word ‘literally’ when it is clearly not the case. You did not ‘literally’ die of embarrassment last week, or you wouldn’t be here to talk about it.
• ‘For all intensive purposes’: unless you are specifically referring to the ICU unit in your local hospital, what you really mean is ‘for all intents and purposes’.
• Imply and infer are two very different things. To imply means to suggest, to infer means to come to a conclusion. I might imply by my comments that you are stupid. You may infer from hearing my comments that I think you are stupid.
• I could care less: No, please stop. This does not mean what you think it does when you are trying to appear nonchalant. If you really could care less, then at that precise moment in time, you still actually care to some degree. Your care reservoir still has some content. If you are actually trying to communicate that your capacity for caring is totally used up then you should say I ‘couldn’t’ care less.
• ‘Lose’ and ‘loose’ are two different words. You team, when 1-0 down is not ‘loosing’ the game.
• As are ‘to’ and ‘too’. You might go ‘to’ somewhere and your friend might come along ‘too’
• ‘Irregardless’: this is a double negative. Regardless means without regard. Irregardless means without, without regard: Is that even a logical proposition?
• ‘Hone in on’: Hone means to sharpen. You use hone when talking about a knife. If you mean get closer to, or focus in on, then you ‘home’ in on it.
• Pass ‘mustard’: This is an instruction relating to condiments. If you mean it passes inspection then you say pass ‘muster’.
• ‘First come, first serve’: a ‘d’ at the end makes all the difference. As it stands, this phrase means that the first person there is the one who serves the others. If you really mean earliest means being first to receive something then you say first come, first served.
• ‘Wetting’ your appetite. Not sure if, or how, you can moisten a desire. Maybe you want to use ‘whet’, meaning to stimulate.
• Worse case scenario: if you are in a worse case scenario it’s only worse than the previous one. It’s not the nadir, it’s not the absolute lowest you can go. That would be the ‘worst’ case scenario.
• On tender hooks: these would either be hooks that themselves are made of something tender or which treat whatever is attached to them tenderly. They are probably not appropriate as a descriptor unless you are watching a much less violent remake of Hellraiser. Otherwise, if you mean being kept on the edge of your seat, in suspense, then what you mean are ‘tenterhooks’, as in hooks that stretch wool on a frame, leaving it thin and tense.
• Finally, a ‘mute’ point: a ‘mute’ point is one made with the volume turned down. A ‘moot’ point is one that is no longer relevant to the current situation or that doesn’t matter.
So, before someone might imply that you have a poor grasp on language and in case you could actually care less about that, maybe put a few of these resolutions into action next year.
Then again maybe you believe language evolves on a daily basis and the important thing is to communicate effectively, albeit perhaps not in a technically correct fashion. In which case maybe I’m the loser (or looser)
Either way - have a great 2023!
:: Barry Shannon is head of HR at STATSports
