Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.
The only one that continues to bug me is using “an” instead of “a” before a word that starts with a consonant sound. I especially dislike the phrase “an historic” (as in “it was an historic victory”) which has bafflingly been deemed acceptable. Unless you’re a cockney, it should be “a historic”. The rule is to use “an” if the word starts with a vowel sound, and “a” otherwise. IMO.
it sounds like yunicorn, so it’s a unicorn, not an unicorn.
Ah, thank you! This one bothers me too. I’ve seen even more blatant misuses in writing, even in professional writing, but unfortunately can’t recall any examples.
I’ve mentioned this here before but in the UK “an historic” is written because we are slowly dropping the letter “h” at the front of words from pronunciation. UK people often say “an ‘istoric” so it kinda makes sense… but looks clumsy.
It also makes it more clear your not saying “ahistoric” or “ahistorical”
That’s a good point.
honour, hour, homage, honest, heir
I follow Jeremy Clarkson and intentionally always use the wrong one. There’s an horse. A apple.
Ditto.
I believe this comes from people trying to show off their education. Traditionally, words with a french descent were pronounced with a silent H. So for example hospital (from French hôpital) is an hospital, where hound (from Germanic hund) is a hound.
This is pretty much deprecated these days and anyone enforcing it is beyond grammar nazi, but it’s interesting to know the pattern.
Source: my secondary school English teacher.
Well hell, I use “an” before historic, every time.
It’s fine if you drop the letter “h” when you speak - like I do. It then becomes “an ‘istoric” and sounds correct.