Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Fit to Be Tide

Red bottle of Tide detergent wearing a blue bowtieAccording to thatwhichmatter, "tie one over" has become a common replacement for the actual phrase "tide one over." And the d-less version is "becoming OK."

No, no, no! This is clearly a confusion of "tide one over" and "tie one on." The two phrases have nothing in common -- a fine example of an incongruent conflation.

A couple of other word conflations that have caught my attention lately:

  • "Flush it out" when the phrase that is wanted is "flesh it out."
  • "Exasperate" when the word that is intended is "exacerbate."
  • "Sceptic pencil" instead of "stiptic pencil." (Ouch!)
Got to go -- time and tide wait for no woman.

2 comments:

Ms Sparrow said...

I had a supervisor who would always say "reverberate" instead of "reiterate".

Daughter Number Three said...

That's a wacky one! Maybe s/he thought the "verb" in reverberate made it mean "resay" or something... oh, never mind, that doesn't make any sense.