When writers try to use common idioms and get them wrong, I scratch my head. “What do they think that means?” I wonder, dusting the dandruff off my keyboard.
Such is the case when I read this on Yahoo! Shine:
What did the writer think “put through the ringer” meant? This is a ringer:
This is a wringer — the part of a wringer washer that squeezes out water:
It just wouldn’t be right to let this go without poking fun at the writer for Yahoo! TV‘s “Daytime in No Time”:
Until I started reading Yahoo!, I had never read the expression “poke fun of.” Maybe that’s because I had only read works by literate people. The expression is “poke fun at” or “make fun of.”
I almost spit out my nonfat, sugar-free vanilla latte when I read this on yahoo.com:
Instead, I laughed so hard that I now have a splitting headache. Will someone please inform the children who write for Yahoo! that the expression is “spitting image” while I go get an Advil. Or two.
It’s just not the same thing. It’s not even the correct thing. The expression is “one and the same,” not this mess from Yahoo! Movies:
Rob Wilson could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had cleared the hurdles instead of going through them. That’s gotta hurt:
Thanks to the yahoo.com writers who must have jumped through a lot of hoops to get this past the editors.
It’s time for the Cadillac CTS-V to pay up. This make is due, according to Yahoo! Autos:
Now, if the writer had meant “To manage to get along with the means available,” then he should have written “makes do.”
The filmmakers for the Animal Planet must have been employing some revolutionary new techniques to create a documentary with a mermaid body. I can’t even imagine what it would look like.
The folks at Yahoo! Shine are also making their mark with their new and creative ways with the English language. Like the new expression “off the heels of”; it should “on the heels of,” which means “directly behind or immediately following.” And the documentary didn’t have a mermaid body; it was about mermaids and mermaid bodies. But I quibble.
Some things just seem to go hand in hand, like writing mistakes and Yahoo! Shine:
The writing on that site just never seems to have a pulled-together look. It is hardly the premier site for women. Its roster of errors includes a mismatch of subject and verb, incorrect idioms, wrong words, arbitrary punctuation… need I say more?
Just one more thing: There’s the occasional repetition:
Just one more thing: There’s the occasional repetition.
Every day it seems that the writers for the Yahoo! front page display their woeful ignorance of common idioms. Whether they’re telling us “third time’s charming,” or someone is “poking fun of” someone else or an unfamiliar picture doesn’t “strike a bell,” they have new and creative ways of expressing themselves. So, it should come as no surprise that they think Nicole Richie is the splitting image of her daughter:
The expression is “spitting image.” There are many theories about the origin of the expression, but Laurence Horn, professor of linguistics at Yale University, says it is derived from the word spitten. “Spitten image,” according to Horn, refers to “a likeness that was literally spit out, but where figuratively the ‘spit’ in question involved a rather different bodily fluid … inherently more relevant to the transmission of genetic material.”
Airing one’s dirty laundry is a daily event at Yahoo!, if by “laundry” you mean writing and by “airing” you mean publishing it to hundreds of millions of people around the globe.
Airing out one’s dirty laundry means exposing it to fresh air, generally to remove unwanted odors. Doing it literally means you actually do it. You don’t pretend to do it. You don’t metaphorically do it. You do it.
I guess that’s the advice from the writer for Yahoo! Shopping. Don’t expose your dirty clothes and wet towels to the sun and fresh air. Hide them or take them to your parents. Something stinks about that and I’m not referring to the laundry.
