Mealy words.
 

I came across two examples of words which confuse or don't mean what they say, both from the Oz ABC, supposed to be our best.

The first, "Mr Hatzistergos is pushing for lawyers to be forced to refuse to engage in harassing questioning of victims." was bad enough, the worst of lawyer speak, but the second just plain wasn't.

"Some years ago, there was incorrectly a claim that an independent retailer was watering down fuel with ethanol," he said. "In fact, it was something different and that gave ethanol a bad name."

How do you water down the fuel with ethanol for god's sake? You water down stuff with water, while you pollute, adulterate or anything but water down.

Do you have any examples of this?

There was the time a couple of years ago that my wife was talkignto a former co-worker:

Co-Worker: "I was playing cards with some friends last night. Didn't do too good."
Wife: "Oh? Why not?"
CoW: "They literally used me to mop the floor."
W: "Literally?"
CoW: "Yeah, I crashed and burned."
W: "Literally mopped the floor?"
CoW: "Yeah, literally."
W: "Your face doesn't looked scuffed or anything."
CoW: "Well, they didn't push me around the floor on my face. Literally is jsut a figure of speech."

gekkogecko,

Please tell me you made that up! :yikes:

my daughter will say things like usually sometimes or we always sometimes. drive me nuts but i cut her some slack cause she's only 7. :D

7's the time to pull her back on the straight and narrow.

lol. i do. her restraints are slackened...slightly. :p:D

And there's always those commercials claiming a product is "new and improved."

I'll think about this today OF. I live in Pa. Dutch country and they have a way with words!

Lixy, there is a way with words which makes a beacon of them, and a way that makes a smokescreen of them.

I don't know that this really fits, but I thought it was cute ...

"Due to a typing error, Gov Dukakis was incorrectly identified in the third paragraph as Mike Tyson." -- Correction in a Massachusetts newspaper.



Mama Mia, that's some spicy typing error! :yikes:

Not at all.

I can see why the mistake would be an easy one to make.

I did not. I'm not entirely sure my wife didn't make it up, but I've met the co-worker in question, and yes, he did occasionally say really stupid stuff like that, so there you have it.

My mother-in-law used to love to cook and always made way too much. So she was always pushing you to eat. She'd say what she'd made and how good it was and wouldn't you like some. But when she added "I'm only going to give it to the dog" It lost all its appeal to me. How good is it if she's giving it to the dog.

Wowsers! That HAS to take some sort of prize!

Like the way I'm constantly being told I'm "pre-approved?"

OF...does this qualify? I cringe whenever I hear it.

"_________(<---insert name here) turned up missing today."