NGM Blog Central - Modern Malapropisms - National Geographic Magazine

Recent correspondence from persnickety readers who care about the finer points of usage have yielded these comments on the misuse of the English language:

Baited breath

“Just what is the meaning of bated in this idiom?” asked a colleague, who even though he’s a numbers guy did spell the homonym correctly: bated. It comes from the verb to bate, which itself comes from to abate, and means “. . . to moderate, to restrain, etc.; as, to bate one’s breath.” This definition is from the second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary, considered by many to be the last legitimate scholarly offering of that publication before "permissiveness" took over.

Couldn’t care less/could care less
Somehow the logic of the proper expression—I couldn’t care less—eludes modern speakers who have shortened the phrase to I could care less and thus totally destroyed the meaning, at least to anyone who thinks about the meaning.

Set foot/step foot
The idiom is set foot, according to my correspondent and the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, but the uninformed have converted it to step foot. At least, this misuse makes sense and doesn’t affect the meaning.

Beg the question/raise the question
This is a distinction I’ve given up on. Although I side with the reader and will not myself use beg the question when I mean raise the question, I conclude that beg is so entrenched in the modern mind as a synonym for raise that it’s futile to protest. The original meaning of the idiom, with roots in the writings of Aristotle, was to assume the truth of the very thing being challenged, and therefore to evade the truth.

Posted by Lesley Rogers | Comments (0)
Filed Under: Rogers' Rules of Order

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