Get your idioms right! (Best of, rant, writing)
by at 1:57 PM
It's "Without further ado," not "without further adieu."
"Ado" means "fuss" or "delay." "Adieu" is not a noun but a complete statement which simply means "goodbye."
Why have I been seeing "without further adieu" on weblogs so often lately? It's stupid and wrong and makes no sense in any way! (Unless you're trying to cut a goodbye short.)
Comments
Personally, I love making those sorts of mixed metaphors and horrid euphemisms.
Don't jump to contusions.
We'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
A day late and a dog hair short.
(twitch)
I like "for all intensive purposes" out of sheer irony, but that actually makes some level of sense.
I also like to burn bridges after I cross them. But again, that still makes sense.
But "without further adieu" makes no sense, except in very specific purposes.
"Let's nibble this in the butt."
"...know it like the back of his head."
"Killing two birds for the price of one."
"I don't want to sound like a dead horse."
-- excerpts from http://rinkworks.com/said/words.shtml
Not really an idom, but I like:"Let's shall"
Making "without further adieu" even weirder. Without further to God?
I'm torn. I'm in favor of less God, but against nonsequiturs.
(PS: Your tongue-sticking-out smiley does not look like it's sticking out its tongue.)
WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE
Literacy, absence of.
I don't usually like to resurrect old topics like this, but improper use of terms really gets my goat, so to speak.
I think whatever malfunctioning verbal mechanism responsible for people messing up use of TWO/TO/TOO, THEY'RE/THEIR/THERE, HERE/HEAR, THEN/THAN, and so on, is the same one responsible for people butchering idioms and such.
Plus, how the hell do you misspell "ado?"
I had to look it up too--and I'm an English teacher! I've heard so many people mispronounce it that I did a double take. "Without further adieu..." just doesn't look right on paper though. Good thing for literacy.
Hey I blogged a similar topic (on English errors) a while back. Your readers might enjoy the post. Can't post links, so google the following:
d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y-to-die-for-literally/
Steve
There's actually plenty of weblogs which chronicle a lot of these things. Hopefully someday the Internet will reach some sort of critical mass when people actually know basic grammar innately and it will all be very zen.
It makes me nuts
Also, "drawling" instead of "drawing."
Growing up with my mother...
"You'll never guess who I saul today."
"Be sure to warsh behind your ears."
edit: Here is the link to which you were referring.
Sorry but hanging prepositions drive me insane!
Actually it's a matter of syntax and grammar. Whether you care about it or not is your choice. I did give you an example of that sentence but it seems proper English makes you feel awkward....not my intention.
Furthermore, hanging prepositions are a style/diction issue, not a grammar issue. Every reference I see online for why to not end a sentence with a preposition state that it makes a sentence "end weakly," not that it's an invalid construct. English isn't really a syntactically-strict language to begin with.
(And there's another sentence ending with a preposition which would be difficult to rewrite.)
(Oops! Sentence fragment!)
Fluffy, I know what you mean about the style/diction thing and I'm not here to slam you. I just also understand about what hipcat is saying. If you care so passionately about one part of grammar or style/diction, why not care about the whole thing. It doesn't really matter, but I was just trying to help explain hipcat's point of view.
As for his original comment, I thought of another way that doesn't sound as formal, which you might like better - using of instead of to:
Here is the link of which you were referring.
Heck, maybe that is just as bad and could even be incorrect grammar
I too do not like dangling prepositions. The whole "at" at the end of every sentence...where did you find it at? Grrr! However, I think it's a combination of both ways. In English, we tend to construct sentences a little lazily (with more slang) and differently than they do in other cultures. I speak Spanish fluently and I find that if I want to say something in more of a proper way, I change the construction of the sentence to sound more like the direct translation in Spanish, but with the nouns and verbs in the proper places.
That's a style/diction isssue and is about something of which I really don't care.
It's not the exact same terminology, but the true meaning is the same.
Another thing that helps is to just pretend like you're in Harry Potter and everything sounds just fine - normal or formal
Perhaps I'm all wrong - I make mistakes every day. I hope I didn't hurt any feelings. It was all just in good, clean grammar fun
I forgot to include this one. This was the one I was talking about in regards to sentence construction. It's all just about how we put sentences together. They all can make sense.
"To begin with, English isn't really a syntactically-strict language."
It doesn't really matter, I was just trying to help.
Also, I forgot to thank you for the whole "ado" post. It was something that I always wanted to know.
Because there are shades of gray between black and white. There are also plenty of colors out there too. But I'm sorry, chartreuse and hot pink do NOT go well together.
"don't jump to contusions" is AWESOME!
But at least that's the right word. "Brake" is an entirely different word, and while its past tense (for the verb form) is in fact "braked," "it braked my heart" probably doesn't mean what you think it means.
It's like they went to a restaurant for a meal and ended up just getting ice cream.
When you are disturbed, discomforted, or taken aback by something unexpected, you are "fazed," and when something bizarre or peculiar fails to affect you, you are "unfazed."
And I thought that my English was decent... WOW.
*daps to the administrator and to all of the other people for their intelligent contributions to this topic*
Edit: I do not want to be a noob, so I'll just ask, "Does a typed emoticon come after a puncuation mark?"
That's silly XD
VS.
That's silly. XD
Most people get "jalapeño" right, but for some reason, so many people get "habanero" wrong in some way. A lot of people say it "habañero," presumably because they think either that all Ns are pronounced like Ñs in Spanish, or because of the Ñ in "jalapeño." Even if they get the N/Ñ issue right, almost everyone seems to voice the H (which is silent in Spanish), and in some cases I've even seen people "fix" the spelling to "jabanero" (or, even worse, "jabañero").
I believe the worst WTFery I've ever seen with Spanish quasi-transliteration, however, was someone spelling "pendejo" (the idiomatic equivalent to "asshole," although the literal meaning is "pubic hair" which, frankly, makes at least as much sense) as "bandeho."
I have also ranted at some point about the horrible portmanteau that is the pronunciation of the name of Vallejo, CA, which is "vuh-LEY-ho" (it should be "va-YEY-ho"), but that doesn't mean it isn't worth bringing up again.
Spanish's pronunciation and spelling rules are very simple and almost entirely consistent (albeit with some wiggle room around "g" and "x" and a few different dialects to contend with), although they're a little weird to people used to the very non-simple and inconsistent mess that is English. Still, it would be nice if English speakers wouldn't crap up such an elegant language.
Much like Italian... same consistency, same problems with English speakers.
-bill
edit: oh, and also people get very confused about Italian's plural noun endings. They don't use 's'.
Thus, a sorted affair is very different than a sordid affair. After a sordid affair is sorted, it is often a different sort.
UNCONSCIENCE
ARGH
And wrt Spanish pronunciation, San Jacinto Community College's radio catchphrase was (phonetically) "Surprising San Jack".
Yes, that is, uh, surprising.
I too have been plagued by people who cannot and will not take the time to learn proper English grammar, and use terms phonetically to make a point.
I used to be a BBS Sysop (boy, that was a long time ago!) and have grown to learn that you can't make people spell something properly that they don't want to. Most people these days don't care how words are spelled as long as it's phonetically correct.
For example, I'm originally from Southern Ontario Canada, and now I live in British Columbia, and I never, ever heard anyone say, "Where is it at?" or "Where is that at?" until I got to the west coast. This bothers me to no end! The proper phrase is, "Where is it?"
I can get by without too much of a fuss, but I cringe every time I hear this and I wish some people could go back to school and learn the language all over again.
If there is such a word as disgruntled, why is there not such a word as 'gruntled' if you are the opposite of disgruntled?
Somehow the word "gruntled" didn't make it into modern parlance, but if it did, it would mean someone who is annoyed and agitated, rather than pissed to the breaking point.
"If it's TOO hot, don't touch it!"
"I'm going TO the zoo. Would you like to come TOO?"
"I would like to do that TOO."
"He has TWO dogs. They are puppies, too!"
For Heaven's sake, get it right, people!
- jb
You are right when you say "à Dieu" means "to God".
But "adieu", in one word, does not litterally mean "to God", since that is a direct translation. In the sentence "without further adieu", it actually means: "without saying any more goodbyes".
In other words, it means: "I'm shutting my trap and moving on to (whatever happens next) "
What's your take on ending a sentence with a phrasal, as in 'Some people just need others to look down on.'? Wow, does that, having two hanging prepositions, melt your brain, or is it OK?
Also, how do you pronounce kindergarten, frankfurter and wiener? Like a proper German (or Austrian), or do you allow yourself to speak the anglicized version? Isn't 'habanero' to be extended the same rights of integration into our language, to melt into the big pot of our mispronounced, international lexicon, so to speak, or should it be left standing isolated for its 'unAmerican-ness'?
The two are unrelated. A magic bullet for cancer would be a panacea for all known cancers. The Magic Bullet is a specific reference to the bullet that did the impossible. I just looked up magic bullet, and there are several, in fact. Among them are juicers, accessories, software, music and, you guessed it, suppositories.
I pronounce them "kindergarden," "hot dog," and "penis," respectively.
The issue I have with "habanero" isn't that people Anglicize it, but that they hypercorrect it to "jabañero" or the like, which is just... wrong. But I'm okay with them voicing the H (English-style) as long as they don't roll the N.
"Full stop" means this "this is the end of the sentence." It is the UK English word for "period." To say "full stop" and then to keep on going in the same sentence is anathema to its intent, full stop.