'The cold-bloodied murder of the English language!'

So let’s get started.

 When did we start to meet ‘with’ people? I may meet you. Or I may meet with you (accompanying me). I always talk ‘to’ people, but if I talk ‘with’ people, it must be a duet or an Irish Parliament – everybody talking and nobody listening.

 I heard a ghastly one on Classic FM this morning. The idiot broadcaster pronounced ‘homage’ as in ‘fromage’. Where on earth did this come from?

 ‘State of the art’ is something well-known or commonplace. Now, to the PR mafia it means just the opposite.

 And there’s the use of ‘of’, such as ‘take it off of the table’ or ‘I should of gone’.

 The American disdain for prepositions has now completely taken over in the media. ‘He will appeal his conviction’. No he won’t; he will appeal against it. We can’t protest Cameron’s cuts, only against them, much good it might do us. I don’t suffer osteoporosis, but I do suffer from it, hence mobility assistance when flying, otherwise I would never get to the bloody gate.

 One I picked up in The Oldie: which is as much cliché as bad English – ‘The close-knit community is in shock’, when they almost certainly knew hardly anybody in Little Snoring, and are indifferent to the violent end of someone of whom they have never heard.

 Then there’s ‘alternate’ instead of ‘alternative’, ‘floor’ instead of ‘ground’, and so on ad infinitum.

 As for ambiguity – I was the son of a miner  who joined the army’ and ‘I was a miner’s son who joined the army' - don’t get me started!

 And re The Oldie, there’s a monthly column simply called ‘Words’, which tracks down the meanings of the obscure, esoteric etc. This week it is ‘moider’. Its meanings include to confuse, or stupefy (as with drink).  

 

So don’t get moidered tonight.