Hallelujah Hatrack

I can understand when The Bear butchers the English language, because he’s only six years old.  My favorite is the use of the word, ‘oftenly’, as in “David Ortiz oftenly hits home runs against the Yankees.”

What really bugs me is when adults show their verbal ignorance in public.  It makes me wonder if there should be a statute of limitations on our high school diplomas.  If I have to have an eye test to continue driving a motor vehicle then maybe they should have to take an exam in order to have permission to speak outside of their own home.

Here are a few examples from just today:

A woman is talking about how she likes her secluded yard: “It’s very peaceful because we can really see any of our neighbors because of all the foilage.”  You ass, the word is foliage, not FOILAGE – I don’t think what you are trying to say is that your yard is shiny and silver.

The woman that the foilage lady was talking to was discussing and encounter in her yard between some members of the local wildlife community: “The robin was just sitting there and a gardener snake crawled by and the robin attacked it.”  Ok, first of all, as snake does not crawl, as it has no legs.  The bigger issue is that there is no such thing as a ‘gardener snake’ – it’s a GARTER snake, for crap’s sake.  Where were you in 9^th grade Earth Science???

I work for a bank, and this is a bit of a conversation between a co-worker and a customer: “If you want to figure out what your monthly principal and interest payment will be you have to minus out your escrows.”  MINUS OUT – what the hell is that?  I think the work you are looking for is ‘subtract’… 

I realize that all of this is very petty, but hey, that’s me – man of a million pet peeves.