sometimes it's fun to be annoying
Misusing words for business and pleasure.
For the past two weeks, I wanted to write a post about words: when words come out wrong, and make meaning, unintended. I kept a list of misused words that I encountered. And then, I wondered why some misused words are funny, some are cute, and some are annoying.
In the meantime, I read a novel called Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden. I found it to be a stunning novel. I don't want to say too much because the way that the story unfolds is delicious, and I would not want to rob anyone of discovering each twist and turn on their own. (Slightly more of a review at the end of this post.)
When I looked up misuse of words, in an attempt to understand why when my 2.5 year old says, “I goed,” I want to bottle it up and sip from her sweet attempts at language whenever I am having a tough day, but when a stranger on the internet says “a deep-seeded belief,” I roll my eyes, I found lots, and lots, and lots of articles about using English words wrong. Some of the words that seemed to particularly annoy the world were “irregardless” and “I could care less”. Now I am concerned that it’s impossible to write about language misuse without being a bit of a pretentious asshole.
There’s something enticing about language errors. Part of it, I am sure, is the urge to correct and to be right, the particular satisfaction of knowing something well enough to see, clearly, when there’s a minor mistake. Do builders feel this way about houses? Do filmmakers feel this way about movies?
Here’s one that I heard on the tv show The Traitors (Season 1, said by Kyle): Founded vs confounded. He said something along the lines of “I don’t know if my suspicions are confounded but…” This changed the meaning from “being certain” to “being confused”. I kind of love it, since in the context of the show, it is clear that they are all confounded.
Here’s the one I mentioned earlier: “Deep-seated”: you are sitting in it so deep that you can never get out, vs “Deep-seeded”: (not a thing) you buried the seed so deep, but it will never sprout.
Ways to use words wrong
Apparently, a malapropism is humorous. That’s a part of its definition. A malapropism is using a word that is very wrong but shares characteristics with the right word. Like “amphibious” for “ambidextrous,” a famous Yogi Berra switcheroo.
An “eggcorn” is a term that comes from the mistake of calling an acorn an "eggcorn," since they are vaguely egg-shaped. This is a mis-hearing of a word or phrase and throwing in your own meaning.
A homonym happens, maybe, from talk-to-text. A homophone is when two words sound the same, and a homograph is when they are spelled the same. “Aloud” instead of “allowed”, for example.
More cute toddler words:
Paterpillar for caterpillar
Pack pack for back pack
Hanitizer for hand sanitizer
I am pretty sure that when my child says things wrong, it’s cute because she’s cute, and because I love her, and because she’s learning language as a concept in general—and this language in particular—for the very first time.
When an idiom is misused online, I assume that whoever uses it is not thinking about it very hard. Usually when we use words, we reach for whatever is closest and we don’t examine each word or phrase’s component parts. When I write the word “component,” I'm not thinking about it's etymology or roots, or even how it could slide right into competent. And so, when someone writes “deep-seeded” instead of “deep-seated,” or mixes up “flushed out” and “fleshed out,” I assume they just reached into the bank of their mind for the phrase and spent zero time considering how “flushing out” evokes evacuation, while fleshing out adds padding.
Those mistakes make me think really hard about words. Deep-seeded reminds me of planting seeds, and I remember that the seeds have to stay shallow. If you plant them too deep, they will not grow. Fleshed out fattens it up, puts meat on the bones.
My therapist told me once that annoyance or irritation usually hides a deeper emotion, an unresolved conflict. I was talking about interpersonal relationships, wondering why one person doing something innocuous is easy to ignore, while another is so annoying you have to leave the room. She suggested that the innocuous activity isn't what's annoying me, it's something else with that person, something unresolvable that I can't focus on, so I focus on the annoyance instead. It’s easier to focus on how irritating throat-clearing is than on the fundamental lack of mutual understanding in a relationship.
If this theory holds for non-relational annoyances, then whatever annoys us in the world hides a deeper unresolved conflict.
When I taught first-year writing at a university, I tried to tell my students that grammar and spelling aren’t “wrong” for some arbitrary reason, but that meaning changes with changes in grammar and spelling. Maybe a reader can figure out what you meant, but maybe they can’t. For example, passive voice says something different than active voice.
These phrases:
"the death toll rises"
"they died"
"he killed them"
can all refer to the same fact, but make different meaning out of that fact.
Mistakes are the same way. They are mistakes because they create something unintentional, which obscures meaning.
Malapropisms and eggcorns can be funny because they create new, unexpected meaning. They can surprise and delight.
Maybe it’s easier to focus on how “irregardless” means the opposite of how we use it, and how annoying that is, than on language's imprecise nature and how we may never really be making ourselves clear. One of the internet articles I skimmed noted that, online, “irregardless” is actually used more as an example or in discussions of its wrongness than it is used out in the wild, which underscores how annoying people find it. Part of me wants to say, who cares if people use a word incorrectly? And another part of me wants to wax on about the beauty of language and how glorious it can be to convey exactly what you mean. But both of those parts of me agree that part of the beauty of language is in its imprecision. Because language is imprecise, by nature, we’re always re-working it and creating something new.
Sometimes what’s new is wrong, for a while. Sometimes what’s wrong is fun. Sometimes it’s just wrong. Sometimes it’s annoying. Sometimes it’s fun to be annoying.
Reading Nook
A while back, I looked up a list of the best books of 2024. I don’t remember which list I used, which is for the best, since I would not recommend any major media outlets these days. I picked the ones that looked the most interesting to me and I put them on hold from the library. I’m now reading through some of them, and wanted to share the ones I liked with you all.
Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden: An intense and ultimately very sexy book set in post-WWII Netherlands. My only gripe is the happy ending. Actually, I loved the happy ending, since there is so much that these characters have lost and will never get back.
The Book of Love by Kelly Link: It may be her debut novel, but Link is established as a master storyteller. My only two hesitations with this book are fairly superficial. The first is that now that I am a full-on adult in my mid-thirties, I feel weird about gratuitous teenage sex even if it feels realistic and isn’t graphic. (Sidenote, this is the reason I don’t like the TV show Ginny and Georgia—the adults never get sex scenes, but the teenagers do…) The other one is that Mo as a nickname for Mohammed is so westernized and slightly cringe even if, again, realistic. But that’s it, otherwise I had a fucking great time and learned a lot about storytelling. I am already thinking about how she builds the world of the novel and what moves she makes that I could consider trying for the novel that I’m (still) working on.
Snack Corner
The snack of this week is Lofthouse cookies. It’s like eating a cloud.