Commonly misunderstood words that get your blood boiling

[Iron_will]

I hate it when people mispronounce the word Manga.

It is pronounced "Mon-guh" not "Main-guh"

It pisses me off to no end.

ma-n-ga, really.

-m

What the Canadian said.

You're all missing the point of the thread.

 

[Chal]

I despise the misuse of the word 'epic' myself. Most of the time it's used, the subject just can't compare to the classics the word originates from, and now it has lost its meaning.

Also, I very much hate people using the term queer to describe homosexuals. It's rude and corrupts a perfectly good synonym for weird.

EDIT: On the whole decimation debate, one would be using incorrectly if the screen was void of soldiers altogether, but using it to be 1/10 would be incorrect as well because that definition refers to it as a punishment, not combat.

*
Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of
o
the project would decimate the fragile wetland wilderness
o
the American chestnut, a species decimated by blight
*
Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something)
o
plant viruses that can decimate yields
*
Kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group

Quick Google search backs this up.

 

[punkrocker27]

unresponsible, unorganic, etc.

And why is it hard to understand "I could care less"
It means you don't care enough to not care about something. Simple

 

[L4hlborg]

when they get theyre then their gonna put on there mittens

I fucking hate that. How hard can it be to get right?

That is one I reaaaally hate.

Another one is swearing with completely forgetting what the words mean. Sure, sometimes you have to just scream fuck or something like that, but adding it midsentence often makes no sense. Just listen to pretty much anyone (even yourself) speak and you'll notice how interesting the meaning of whatever they are saying really is at a literal level.

 

[Mortech]

People also call games RPGs when they're not. My friend said Halo was an RPG because you are playing as Master Chief.

To be fair, technically Halo is an RPG. You are playing the role of the Master Chief in the story. It's one of the many problems inherent with the incredibly lax definition of "Role-Playing Game" these days.

Well yeah I guess technically you could say that. But I believe the definition of an RPG is a game that you can influence your characters decisions, narrative, etc. Or something to that effect.

'Role-Playing Game' doesn't even go that far; RPG just means a game where you play as someone or something other than yourself. But it's used to describe any game with a turn-based combat system and a world map. A better term would be 'Turn-Based Adventure Game'... Then again, I guess people already associate TBAGs with FPSs. (Oh, ha! I get it!)

 

[lacktheknack]

"Same difference."

NO IT IS NOT, YOU STUPID NONCE!

<punches seal, kitten, and innocent puppy>

 

[ghostalker.cepo]

I also hate how ironic and sarcastic is thrown around so much.

I also hate the way people think their being Sarcastic when they;re being Ironic!

Because IRONY IS WHEN YOU SAY SOMETHING AND MEAN THE OPPOSITE!

while Sarcasm IS LITTLE ABOVE JUST INSULTING SOMEONE!

Balls man! It annoys me how much I see it on this sight...

First off, it's SITE, not SIGHT. (in keeping with the topic )
Second, Irony is when the surface meaning and actual meaning are completely different. Sarcasm as said above is using ironic wit to deride. It doesn't have to be insulting, although frequently is. Americans amuse me in the fact that they don't understand irony or sarcasm, to quote an American stand up comic (who lives and works in the UK) Reginald D Hunter "A British guy insults me, it takes me 3 weeks to figure out he don't like me"

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuq8ZU2Uf_0 (sorry, been a while since I used forums, forgot how to do stuff heh)

 

[AugustFall]

Decimate, meaning, to reduce by 1/10th ...If I hear one more guy talk about getting decimated on a game and his screen is utterly devoid of troops I will punch a kitten.

Punch a kitten.

I think the meaning of the word has changed. It's become more like keep 1/10 instead of remove 1/10.

Makes sense. Decimation isn't a big deal, especially not in your example:
Woo, I lost 10% of my units! More likely a near flawless victory then.

-10% doen't deserve a special word.

Unless you play RTSs like my friend in which case decimation means you've lost damn near a million troops, plus what if I said New York had just been decimated? We just lost 1/10th of New York, see it matters if you have a lot of something.

I'm going to start saying Hectomate. It's not as cool but at least it's correct. Or maybe Enneacontimate if there are a few left.

 

[Steve Butts]

The most common and infuriating mistakes I've seen in my time as an editor are:
"Beg the question"
"Should of"
"All intensive purposes"

 

[masqueblanc]

'Momentarily'. It means 'for a moment'. People seem to use it to mean 'in a moment', for example 'I'll be with you momentarily, madam.'

I'd really rather hold your attention for a little longer than that.

 

[veloper]

Decimate, meaning, to reduce by 1/10th ...If I hear one more guy talk about getting decimated on a game and his screen is utterly devoid of troops I will punch a kitten.

Punch a kitten.

I think the meaning of the word has changed. It's become more like keep 1/10 instead of remove 1/10.

Makes sense. Decimation isn't a big deal, especially not in your example:
Woo, I lost 10% of my units! More likely a near flawless victory then.

-10% doen't deserve a special word.

Unless you play RTSs like my friend in which case decimation means you've lost damn near a million troops, plus what if I said New York had just been decimated? We just lost 1/10th of New York, see it matters if you have a lot of something.

That would be an atrocity. A human tragedy. But not a defeat.
1 death can be a tragedy for that mattter.

When it's not about real civilians, -10% shouldn't shake things up enough that you wouldn't be able to send out a more exact figure like 9.8 or 10.1%. How often is it exactly 10% and why not just type "10%" then? Less effort too.

 

[Plazmatic]

We've all got our pet peeves when it comes to people use the totally wrong words to describe a situation, they might mean one when they say it, a lot of people might understand what they mean, hell you might even grasp it yourself, but you still get really ticked off when read/hear it.

For me it's the sapience / sentience problem, which I blame Star Trek (ffs get it right people) and other Sci-Fi shows that have polluted the public mind on the issue for decades, generally when someone says sentience or sentient they really mean sapience or sapient and it's just obnoxious, normally I leave it alone but recently I've been fixing a mistake I made almost 15 years ago when I dropped out of high-school, doing an online course to get my damn high-school diploma, and I ran into this problem, I wrote a rather long essay for a philosophy assignment and used the correct terms, only to have it come back with one of those annoy red-notes in MS word from the teacher about using the wrong word...

Yes a teacher doesn't know the correct definition of sapience and sentience and marked me down for it.

An email later with links to dictionaries and other definitions I get a reply stating that I should have made that clear in the essay and the grade stands... I wanted to punch a kitten... I should have made the definition of a bloody word clear when it's right there in the damn dictionary? If you don't know what a word means the problem is with you not the word.

So what words that people commonly use wrong really tick you off?

Your story was more about unfairness, and general idiocracy from the teacher rather than the difference between sapience and sentience.

I have made this mistake as long as I have used the word sentience, due to the fact there is virtually no where, where sapience is used in any dialogue you would find normally/

and I dont really have a pet peeve word.

 

[Dana22]

Slapping "MMO" label on game which has 32 player mode. Or 256.

 

[Bashful Reaper]

I'd have to chime in for "Awesome", to some degree it implies that whatever is being described is fear-inducing. So when someone says "I saw an Ossum show last night" (usually said like that) I highly doubt that they were scared... Just annoying.

 

[FugitiveZero]

My pet peeve is of a taboo word.
******.
Dictionary definition: A rude, immoral, or otherwise ignorant person.
Why it pisses me off; 1: The moment you call someone that out of spite, you yourself become a ******. 2: African-Americans calling each other it. They'd get pissed if someone called them ignorant or rude as a greeting, but adding an illogically placed "A" at the end makes it OK?

I really hate that word.

I also hate discussions about why it is taboo with my friends. Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. But they think its funny to say it anyway.

 

[SamtheDeathclaw]

Decimate, meaning, to reduce by 1/10th ...If I hear one more guy talk about getting decimated on a game and his screen is utterly devoid of troops I will punch a kitten. Also, Irony, good god why can't people use it right any more?

damn you ninja.

anyway, yeah, decimate. i hear people say it all the time as in total destruction. it's really bad when i tell them what decimate actually means and then they don't believe me. god.

/slaps the non-believers

Dictionary.com- 1. to destroy a great number or proportion of. The population was decimated by a plaugue.
2. to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.
3. obsolete to take a tenth from.

OT: Probably the word gay, or ignorant. Both are grossly misused by today's populace.

 

[Bashful Reaper]

"Same difference."

NO IT IS NOT, YOU STUPID NONCE!

<punches seal, kitten, and innocent puppy>

Not implying you used it incorrectly, but a lot of people I know incorrectly use the word nonce. They think it is a synonym for idiot rather than slang for a child molestor.

 

[not_the_dm]

A pet hate of mine is when people pronounce "suit" as "soote". Not really a misunderstanding, but still...

Edit: Queer. It means strange, not homosexual. And gay means happy.

 

[GothmogII]

A pet hate of mine is when people pronounce "suit" as "soote".

Err... Well, how do you pronounce it then? Oohh, you must mean -suite- as in 'sweet' right? I hope that's what you meant, as, I'm reasonably sure both suit as in clothing and lawsuit are pronounced 'soote'. Could be a regional thing though...I've never heard anyone say it any other way.

suit [su&#720;t sju&#720;t]

 

[hardlymotivated]

I have a disproportionately strong contempt for an odd little Americanism: momentarily.

Over here in the United Kingdom, its meaning is synonymous with the phrase "for a moment", e.g. 'I'm going to sit here momentarily' equals 'I'm going to sit here for a moment'. However, whenever I've been in the States I only hear it in the sense of "in a moment". This invariably happens when I'm about to land at NY or Washington D.C. - "we're going to be landing momentarily". Every single time I picture the aeroplane (airplane - another one!) landing briefly on the runway and then taking off again.

Still, if you live in a country with food as great as the US', I think you ought to be able to get away with a few trivial semantic hiccups.