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I've run across a particular error in a number of stories here recently.
People are writing about having been "put through the ringer".
That's wrong. It's "put through the *wringer*". A wringer was a gizmo on early washing machines where you used a crank to turn a pair of rollers which you fed wet clothing between. They'd squeeze out the water.
Getting a finger caught in one was rather painful for obvious reasons.
These days you find wringers on some industrial type mop buckets.
Related words phrases:
"wrung out" (what something/someone is like after going through the wringer)(see also note farther along)
"Wringing wet" (from the state of clothes before you fed them into the wringer. Not quite dripping wet, but definitely very soaked)
"wrung his hands" (twisting the hands together)
There's also an old technical term "wrung joint" which was where you fastened pieces of metal together by having tabs on one piece fit through slots in another and then twisted 90 degrees so they won't go back through. I last saw wrung joints on metal toys back in the 1960s.
Wringing your hands goes back before the mechanical wringer. Back then you wrung out clothes and other cloth items by twisting them really hard which forced out the water.
Comments
And Here I Thought
I thought the phrase "Put through the ringer" was having been accosted by a Salvation Army Santa the week before Christmas. Ho-ho-ho.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Gosh!
And I thought that thing on the top of old washing machines was what Scarface used when The Boss told him to "Put the squeeze on him!"
I envisioned being "put through the ringer" meant being thrown into an extrusion machine that produces round plastic objects. That would really hurt!
Hugs
Carla Ann
It's the same thing with
It's the same thing with wrack. "Wrack and ruin" is when something goes agly, in an ugly way. (Wrack being sea wreckage). I've seen people say "Wracked with pain" - which is "racked with pain", from being put on a rack.
Don't get me started on 'hording' food. (or even hordeing), :)
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Another one is "tow the line"
Another one is "tow the line". Sorry, it's actually "toe the line" from the way they'd line up peasant levies in the middle ages (and on until recently). Draw a line or lines in the dirt, and line the rows of men up with their toes touching the line(s).
Too many of these are due to the aliteracy of most people these days. They don't read much (except on the net) and thus have only *heard* many common idioms. So they come up with "reasonable" looking spellings.
A classic one is "next store" instead of "next door".
Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks
Another one is...
"passed/past". And I don't know if it applies here, but I'm also irritated by "use to", as in "He use to spell badly." It's "used to."
"Next store" seems as if somebody's text-to-speech software messed up.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
Not so
According to the Oxford Dictionaries Online, both are correct:
"The relationship between the forms rack and wrack is complicated. The most common noun sense of rack, ‘a framework for holding and storing things’, is always spelled rack, never wrack. In the phrase rack something up the word is also always spelled rack. Figurative senses of the verb, deriving from the type of torture in which someone is stretched on a rack, can, however, be spelled either rack or wrack: thus racked with guilt or wracked with guilt; rack your brains or wrack your brains. In addition, the phrase rack and ruin can also be spelled wrack and ruin."
rack
The point is that 'wrack' is
The point is that 'wrack' is wreckage. Rack is not. 'Wrack and ruin' would be destruction. 'Rack and ruin' would be a progression TO destruction. I don't see how someone could be 'wracked' with pain. After being racked, their body could sort of be 'wracked', but that's about it :)
The article above doesn't clarify, it simply obfuscates.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
I think you're actually referring to homophones...
...but I get your point. I've talked about the "waist/waste" confusion before, and your/you're is a particularly infuriating one.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
I don't know...
if this is a matter of nationality or age. When I was growing up in the states in the '50s, we were taught that a homonyn was another word that sounded the same, but was spelled differently. FWIW.
On another matter, in Britan, to the best of my knowledge, a wringer was called a mangle. Lovely word that!
Liz
Mangles
Here in the states, a mangle is a pressing machine, that presses most of the garment at one go by catching it between two steam-heated plates. Usually only large households or commercial establishments have one of them. Steven King has a short story in which a mangle of the American type is featured.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Homo Words
A homophone pair is two words that sound the same but have different meanings: "to lead a parade" and "bury the lede".
A homograph pair is two words that are spelled the same but have different meanings: "to lead a parade" and "the metal lead".
A homonym pair is two words that are alike in some manner but have different meanings, so it can both or either of the above two. Some people insist that a homonym is only one or the other of the first two and some people insist that a homonym pair has to be both; which would make homonyms exceedingly rare.
http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/homonym-h...
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Pet Peeves
A person's "tounge" (rhymes with lounge?). Also when someone "looses" things. It's particularly bad when my fingers do that.
-- Daphne Xu
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war?
(Of course, if it was the way I've seen it spelled, it'd be 'Cry Havok and lose the dogs of war'. Apparently some people can't find their animals after they scream a badly spelled battle cry)
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Then there was the time...
... when both of us in a flame war referred to "ad homonym arguments".
-- Daphne Xu
Homophones....
...Two I-Phone 6's would be homophones. A Samsung Galaxy and an I-Phone 6 would be heterophones, yes?
Love, Andrea Lena
It depends on how bent the
It depends on how bent the iPhone 6's are, as to whether they're homophones.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
My very pet peeves are,
Ravaged and ravished. The first is savage and destructive. "
The warriors ravaged the town, killing all within."
The second is as in being ravished by ones lover. "He took her gently to bed and ravished her."
Then we come to heel and heal. Heel refers to one's heel height as in high heels. The second refers to making an injury feel better. "The doctor helped my broken leg heal straight."
I WISH more writers would read these blogs and learn from them.
Catherine Linda Michel
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.
I'm new here.
I've been reading through past blog posts and stories and some of the blog posts on writing mechanics get little or no attention. Further, some commenters here have some decidedly odd views on writing as I see it. However, in this case, I can't agree more. From what I've read there are many little gems of writing wisdom tucked away in blogs here.
Personally, I believe misused homonyms usually slip by due to a dependence on spellcheck combined with a lack of proofreading, or so I've found.
~XI
~XI
Spellcheck is actually your
Spellcheck is actually your enemy unless you are a very good at spelling.
All it does is tell you that there is a correctly spelled word there. It does *not* tell you if the word is the *correct* word for the context.
Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks
<wry grin>
For me, spellcheck is good for spotting mistakes while typing. The thought of what Microsoft Word and it's spelling and grammatical checks have done for the average primary student's English praxis makes me shudder.
~XI
~XI
My spellcheck
My dyslexia actually gives me a very good means of determining if a word is spelled wrong. I can automatically spot misspelled words. I just have difficulty at times in figuring out the CORRECT spelling :) I have even found that my dyslexia makes me a pretty good editor because I automatically spot the mistakes and then have the desire to correct said mistakes.
Dyslexics Untied!
Dyslexics Untied!
-- Daphne Xu
Got another doozy.
I constantly hear or read this phrase. "He's the spitting image of his father." WRONG!!!!!
"He's the spit AND image of his Father" or "The spit 'n image." Because of speech shorthand, the phrase was incorrectly heard and then misquoted. I'm not certain of the original intent of "Spit 'n image," but I think it had something to do with a child growing up and becoming very much like his or her Father or Mother, along with colloquialisms in speech. I.E. The spit, as in the sharing of the temperament of the parent, and (hence the 'n) the image, as in the similarity of the son's/daughter's looks to the parent.
And lets not forget, Phase and faze. Phase is like," My daughter is going through a goth phase." Faze is like, "It doesn't faze me...meaning it doesn't bother me."
One of these days I'm gonna gather all these things together and post it as a guide of sorts. Yeah right! Like anyone would ever look at it anyway.
Catherine Linda Michel
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.
Possibly "Spirit and image" -
Possibly "Spirit and image" - meaning the same inside and out?
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Nope. It actually is "spit
Nope. It actually is "spit and image".
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1977/whats-the-orig...
Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks
Re: Got another doozy.
There used to be a programme on UK television called "Spitting Image". It was a satirical programme and used puppets made to look like caricatures of well known people. I guess even people who should know better also get it wrong!
Regards,
Dave.
An often confused one
is baited breath, when it is bated breath. The first is if you are a cat who wants to catch mice by making their mouth smell like peanut butter :)
And don't forget the ol' 'reigning in the horseplay'. Or 'he laid prostate on the ground' (Ooooo that has got to hurt!). Or 'wear' versus 'where'. Or let's versus lets. Or 'where' vs 'wear'. Or 'brake' vs 'break'.
Of course all this is inexcusable if you put it for sale on Amazon. Once you want to get paid for your work, this kind of nonsense has no place in a professional piece of work. Sadly there is a lot of junk in Kindle land.
*Groannnnnn*
On FM
it seems characters in stories there regularly play with each others prostrates, presumably it grounds them.
Angharad
Well, if they weren't
Well, if they weren't prostrate, they'd be doing a tuppeny upright, I guess.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Forgot one of the top ten that annoys me the most
Phase vs Faze.
Every time I read a character who was 'not phased', I must wonder to myself if she experiences so many episodes of transitions or was not using a mutant power (eg Kitty Pryde of the X-Men) at the moment.
Word pairs and others
Breath/breathe, it's/its, who's/whose, your/you/re, their/there/they're...
One very odd Americanism has been explained to me, but its origin has been lost and as it is now being used it is utter and complete nonsense. The phrase should be "I couldn't care less" but it is rendered as "I could care less". Apparently it originated as a sarcastic question along the lines of "And I could actually care less than I do? Don't believe I could"
It works that way. Said flat, it is meaningless. And don't get me started on the various abominations about ships that "heave to"...
Another couple
I often see cloth and cloths instead of clothe and clothes. Truely instead of truly, insure instead of ensure, shoe-in instead of shoo-in. Shouldn't spellcheck actually be spelling check or spelling checker?
Regards,
Dave.
Spellcheck
I often find myself saying to the programme "Bollocks!" or other comment on its suggestion for le phrase/mot juste.
It's a corruption. Most
It's a corruption. Most likely, to me, from the southeastern US.
The phrase is "I couldn't care less", but if you slur/drawl it, the contraction is easy to lose.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.