Writing & Grammar: Meeting of Peeved Minds

by Jennie Ruby 

 

We are finding some agreement, those of us sharing our pet peeves. First, Lisa J. Stumpf voices her agreement with Michael Stein:

I totally agree with Michael. Moot is much different in meaning and sound than mute! And keep the "t" sound out of often!

And on the topic of pronunciation (have you heard people say "pro-nounce-ee-a-shun"?), Julie Walawender gives us "processes":

One of my pet peeves is the mispronunciation of the plural form of process. The correct pronunciation is pros-es-iz, NOT pros-es-eez. An online resource suggests that this new pronunciation is increasing in popularity, perhaps by mistaken analogy with such plurals as "theses" and "hypotheses," with which it has no connection. I've also heard users attempt to make a parallel to "matrices." Drives me nuts!!

Right? That "eez" on the end always sounds a little pompous to me--but a trip to Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) indicates that the long e is used equally often by educated speakers as the short e! But again, Webster's is descriptive, meaning it is a record based on observation of how people are actually using and pronouncing words, rather than an analysis of how words should be pronounced and used.

So Julie is absolutely right that processes, from the Latinprocedere, has nothing in common with theses or hypotheses, which come from Greek words. Given that, together with my feeling that it is pompous, I would guess that the origin of this pronunciation is in hypercorrectness. Hypercorrectness occurs when people create "a nonstandard linguistic form or construction on the basis of a false analogy (as ... "widely" in "open widely")." In other words, when they try so hard to get it right that they get it wrong.

Speaking of getting it wrong, Laura Gillenwater writes in to clarify her pet peeve about impact, which I mistakenly took to be complaint about its use as a verb:

One small clarification...I actually wasn't complaining about the use of impact as a [verb], but, rather, its incorrect use when the person means "effect." So, for example, I'm fine with

The impact that the asteroid made when it hit the Earth 246 million years ago can still be seen today.

But I'm not okay with,

The price of that new TV has an impact on whether people will buy it.

Finally, one more pronunciation peeve: Tanya Davis writes,

I have a pronunciation pet peeve. It is "our." Most people pronounce it as "r," when it should be pronounced just like the word "hour"!

If you've got some peeves, feel free to post them as comments below. If I have not featured yours yet, it means I'm either hording it or researching it, one or the other, but I intend to publish them all. (Haha!, a self-peeve just happened! When I proofread the previous sentence, I found I had typed [or autocorrect had helped me type, I'm not sure which] punish instead of publish! Don't you hate it when that happens? Is that a new category of peeve? The SELF-peeve? Write in if you have any of those that you are willing to share. We have a new category: pronunciation.)

Comments

[Larry_kunz]

You're hording it? Really? Pray tell, does that mean you're stockpiling a hoard of peeves, or that you've already got a horde of them? ;-)

I tend to be pretty forgiving of pronunciation peeves, because I learned a lot of words through reading them rather than hearing them. But I never fail to cringe when I hear "new-cue-lar" for nuclear.