This section of the blog is dedicated to interesting news and titbits on language as it is spoken by average Joes.
Linguistic snack number one:
Overheard:
“I’ll double-chase Dave. . . “
So are we adding ‘double’ as a prefix for anything now?
The End.
Prefixes, my god. Everyday I hear ‘pre-’ used with verbs which already mean ‘before’, such as ‘pre-warn’, ‘pre-arrange’, ‘pre-reserve’, and my personal bete-noir ‘pre-prepare’.
If this continues I am soon going to climb the nearest pre-built water tower with my pre-loaded gun and start taking out the all the preemies.
“double-chase” is horrible.
I have a confession, I caught this from a colleague, an American Iranian from San Francisco.
Example: “I’d like to list a couple (delete: of) points”
or even
“I’d like to discuss a couple stuff!”
Aaaahhh!! Not good but sometimes I say it!
One from South Africa: “Yes. Well no, fine”
What is that all about?