English Lunacy

Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. Has it ever struck you that we are constantly standing meaning on its head? Let’s look at a number of familiar English words and phrases that turn out to be the opposite or something very different from what we think they mean.

A near miss. It is, in reality a collision. A close call is actually a near hit.

I’m speaking tongue in cheek. So how can anyone understand you?

I want to have my cake and eat it too. Shouldn’t this time old cliché be, I want to eat my cake and have it too? Isn’t it logical to hope to eat the cake and then still possess it?

A hot cup of coffee. Here again the English language gets us in hot water. Who cares if the cup is hot? Surely we mean a cup of hot coffee.

A hot water heater. Who heats hot water?

Preplan, prepone, preheat, prerecord. Who needs to pre-tentious prefix?

They do things behind my back. You want them to do things in front of your back?

Underwater and underground. Things that we claim are underwater and underground are obviously surrounded by, not under the water and ground.

Watch your head. I keep seeing these signs on low doorways, but I haven’t figured out how to follow the instructions. Trying to watch your head is like trying to bite your teeth.

We come to the conclusion that English is a crazy language. Still, you have to marvel at the unique lunacy of it, in which your house can simultaneously burn up and burn down, in which you fill in a form by filling out a form and in which you first chop a tree down and then you chop it up.

Pronunciation gone awry

Here are some of the words you and I are likely to use on a regular basis. We probably didn’t even realize that we were pronouncing them incorrectly all along. Have you ever heard someone say ‘aks’ instead of ‘ask’? I reckon that’s a ‘yes’. Go on and correct yourselves if you’re fumbling up with these words too.

Correct word	Mis-pronounced version	Brief
Hierarchy	Hi-archy	Remember, hierarchies go higher than you might think. This one is pronounced ‘higher archy’ and not ‘high archy’.
Espresso	Expresso	While I can't express my love for espresso enough, this word was borrowed from Italian well after the Latin prefix ex- had developed into es-.
February	Febyuary	We don't like two syllables in succession with an [r] so some of us dump the first one in this word. Most dictionaries now accept the single [r] pronunciation but, if you have an agile tongue, you may want to shoot for the original.
et cetera	excetera	Latin for 'and' (et) 'the rest' (cetera) are actually two words that probably should be written separately.
Probably	Probly/ prolly	Haplology is the dropping of one of two identical syllables such as the [ob] and [ab] in this word, usually the result of fast speech. Slow down and pronounce the whole word for maximum clarity and to reduce your chances of misspelling the word.
our	are	It is common to hear the pronou ‘our’ incorrectly pronounced like the verb ‘are’ or the letter r. The correct pronunciation is the same as hour. They have different spellings and meanings, but different pronunciations as well. Remember never to confuse the pronunciation of ‘our’ with ‘are’. As a reminder, think of our as being the same as hour, but without the h.

So, go on and pronounce them right!