A Small Gripe, Reiterated

I mentioned a misusage back in 2013 in one of my Flips of the Tongue posts, and I've heard or read it a number of times since then. My impression is that it's becoming more common, though I hope not. 

Here's a recent example from a letter to the editor in the Star Tribune: 

"The persistent pit in my stomach tells me that we have made a terrible mistake."

As Washington State University Professor Paul Brians puts it in this list of errors, compiled in his book  Common Errors in English Usage:

Just as you can love someone from the bottom of your heart, you can also experience a sensation of dread in the pit (bottom) of your stomach. I don’t know whether people who mangle this common expression into “pit in my stomach” envision an ulcer, an irritating peach pit they’ve swallowed or are thinking of the pyloric sphincter; but they’ve got it wrong.

This confusion of "pit of ___ stomach" with "pit in ___ stomach" didn't make it into Brian Garner's Modern American Usage (third edition, 2009), however. Maybe someone with a copy of his fourth edition can tell me if it's in there.

Chris Hayes, I have noted a few times over the years, is one of the misusers of this phrase. Much as I dislike it, that doesn't bother me as much as Rachel Maddow's use (misuse) of "fulsome," which she thinks is interchangeable with "lavish," when describing praise. I guess because it sounds like "full." 

Garner labels uses like Maddow's as Stage 4, meaning it is "virtually universal but is opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguistic stalwarts..." His shorthand for Stage 4 is "Ubiquitous but..."

"Fulsome" is such a great word. I am sorry to see it subside into vague positivity.

__

Update: Checking the etymology of "fulsome" is an eye-opener. It's derived from the Middle English words for "full" and "some," just as it sounds, and as etymonline puts it, was "Perhaps a case of ironic understatement." The listing goes on:

Sense extended to "plump, well-fed" (mid-14c.), then "arousing disgust" (similar to the feeling of having over-eaten), late 14c. Via the sense of "causing nausea" it came to be used of language, "offensive to taste or good manners" (early 15c.); especially "excessively flattering" (1660s). Since the 1960s, however, it commonly has been used in its original, favorable sense, especially in fulsome praise.

This use since the 1960s reinforces Garner's Stage 4 assessment. I don't remember hearing it until recently, personally, which is probably why I find it so hard on my ear.