The lady on CNBC just used premia rather than premiums as the plural of premium. She's not plain wrong given her American accent but it did sound a little strange, and quite posh. Any other gems of this type I can slip into conversation when I want to make a prat of myself?
Chat Forum
Pretentious use of English. How can I make a fool of myself?
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Posted 10 months ago #
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Libation.
Posted 10 months ago # -
You sir could be a perpetrator of terminalogical inexactitudes....
Posted 10 months ago # -
Blackadder has the key....
Posted 10 months ago # -
Posted 10 months ago #
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Datas
Posted 10 months ago # -
use podium as a verb
Posted 10 months ago # -
Caveated. Used often by bell in work.
(I know its a real word, just hate it!)Posted 10 months ago # -
Fora?
Posted 10 months ago # -
will Cav podium or medal today?
Posted 10 months ago # -
aaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Posted 10 months ago # -
Cromulent.
aaaaaaaargggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I think you'll find there's two Rs in "aaaaaaaarrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
Posted 10 months ago # -
i think you'll find there are several
Posted 10 months ago # -
Ah, Alan Partridge. Truly inspired.
If you want to sound pretentious, try using psuedo-medical verbiage and jargon at every opportunity. My mother does and it's amazingly annoying.
Posted 10 months ago # -
A woman ahead of me in Costa the other day asked for two capuccini. When her friend looked at her quizzically she said airily "Oh, it's the plural of cappucino." She's probably right but it was a bit Alan Partridge.
Posted 10 months ago # -
Contrafibularities
Posted 10 months ago # -
Could all those plural smart-arses please note that when a foreign word is appropriated into English then English plural rules apply. So cappucinos it is. And forums etc.
Posted 10 months ago # -
Molgrips, I was contemplating the same whilst enjoying a plate of spaghettos.
i.e. to simply appropriate the foreign plural into english must be equally valid.
Posted 10 months ago # -
A classic mistake is agenda/agendas.
Any fule know that agenda is the plural, and agendum is the singular.
Posted 10 months ago # -
It's down to convention unfortunately. Hence data and agenda. We have lots of funny conventions like that. For instance we write disc and programme UNLESS we are talking computers, in which case it's disk and program like the US.
Posted 10 months ago # -
You could always send someone an invite to an event....
*Blood boils*
Posted 10 months ago # -
Are we sure that premium is a neuter noun anyway?
Posted 10 months ago # -
A classic mistake is agenda/agendas.
Any fule know that agenda is the plural, and agendum is the singular.
But that makes sense surely, agenda is list of items, ie. a plural of the items on it. If you have two different lists, it makes more sense to say agendas, to make that clear than just to say I have two agenda, which sounds stupid.
Joe
Posted 10 months ago # -
I'm off out to lunch (verb) with mrs deadly!
The "with" has huge significance there...
Posted 10 months ago # -
just don't guestimate.
Posted 10 months ago # -
There was a quote in Private Eye recently that went something like;
Foreign sports person, "I'm sorry that my English is not very good"
Interviewer, "That's OK, you're doing wonderful"Posted 10 months ago # -
octo/pi/podes/puses
seem to remember a thread, probably superstar related
Posted 10 months ago # -
Cephalopods please, scaredypants.
Posted 10 months ago # -
Gestalt is a nice word, but pretty much impossible to use without sounding pretentious.
Trivia - Michael from the AP sketch now voices Captain Barnacles on the Octonauts. Wouldn't have thought it possible to get any higher than Partridge in your TV career but he's gone and done it.
Posted 10 months ago # -
capuccini
Excellent, just the sort of horror I was looking for. Perfect for roadie baiting.
Posted 10 months ago # -
capuccini
what would have been really funny, was if she'd asked for a lar-tay too after going through the trouble of getting the plural of cappuccino right.
but really i don't think anyone is going to top that. it would almost of been less skin crawling if they'd asked for 'due cappuccini per favore'
Posted 10 months ago # -
My last boss was a complete tool. He often used the words like 'outwith' and 'extant' instead of 'outside' and 'existing'.
In fact he would always try to use two words where often one would do, and I took pleasure in asking if 'that was a tautological tautology'.
Which kind of makes me a **** too, I guess.
Posted 10 months ago # -
Which kind of makes me a **** too, I guess.
Posted 10 months ago # -
For instance we write disc and programme UNLESS we are talking computers, in which case it's disk and program like the US.
... unless it's a technical term that originated outside the US. So you'd have a floppy disk and a hard disk, but a compact disc.
Posted 10 months ago #
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