Hare's breath

One of my pet hates (in addition to many of those already mentioned by fellow pedants) is 'she went through it with a fine toothcomb'. No she didn't!!! She went through it with a fine-toothed comb! [grumpy-old-woman emoticon]

'Very unique' 'fairly unique' or 'quite unique' always really irritates me. A thing is either unique or it isn't because unique is a Latin word meaning literally 'one only'. I also feel a desperate need to correct people when they write the word 'of' instead of 'have' eg should of instead of should have.

Aepgirl: "marled" instead of mild is my bugbear too.

Just don't get me started on the BBC weather woman who says Inglind, Irelind and Scotlind. Aaaagh

How about 'Northern Island' for 'Northern Ireland' and 'Loranorder' for Law and order.... Grr!

what about "find your happy"? what is that about?

I dislike all those mentioned, especially 'can I get a coffee?'
and this 'so' nonsense at the beginning of every answer and 'the thing is, is...'
It was lucky I took early retirement last year because 'l'm reaching out to you' started being used by our bank in the UK - it drove me mad enough when it was just American work colleagues saying it ?

I agree with Shortlegs too.
We went to "A house in the sun" exhibition at the weekend and the compere asked us to make sure our email addresses were eligible! He's a journalist so I would have thought that learning what legible meant would have been one of the first things he learnt.

Dear Esspee, no it is both correct and more polite to say May I have rather than can I have.

If you say may I, you are asking permission, if you say can I do something, you are strictly speaking asking whether you are capable of doing it.

As Professor Dumbledore said to Harry Potter in the first book (and film) where Harry asks "Can I ask you a question, sir?" "Obviously, you have just done so; you may ask me a question"

All through my childhood, my father made similar remarks to any child unwise enough to use can instead of may.

"Can I get down from the table?" was invariably answered with "I imagine you are physically capable of doing so, but if you are requesting my permission, you mean "May I please leave the table?"

Anyone else out there remember such remarks?

Try speaking publicly, being recorded and broadcast live. Bet you'd make mistakes too.

Youngsters and some not so young say "can I get" these days
We are being, like, Americanised!

I dislike going forward too also - forward planning, looking back in retrospect and very unique.

Totally agree with others about starting sentences with 'so', but my current exasperating phrase is 'going forward'.

My pet hate - the plural of you is NOT "yous"!!!!
Has me spitting "fur and feathers"

I just want to smack everybody all the time - but it is frowned upon. (Sigh!)

My Mum was very pedantic. She always said 'I think not' rather than ' I don't think ' eg I don't think I like that. She would say ' I think I do not like it'

They was/ were sat/stood - awful and the overuse of "absolutely"

What about 'hung' for people instead of 'hanged' !

My teacher inthe 1960s used to say when we asked 'can we' you can, but you may not .

My nieces boyfriend always started his sentences with So. When I mentioned it to her she explained that he had been advised by his speech therapist to use it to give him more thinking time and relax him before speaking. He had a bad stammer.
Maybe there are a lot of stammerers around?

How about he use of the words ‘hence why’. It should be one or the other,but not both.
I agree with most of the sentiments on this thread and feel that it is getting worse. .

The use of 'uz' instead of 'us' really annoys me.

mags1234 did you mean 'burgalry' ?I think predictive text corrected it! ??

I'll find it hard to accept 'kneeled' and had a knee jerk reaction to hearing it on radio recently.

David Jason, in tv As Jack Frost always mispronounced " burglary" . He called it " burglary"

How about 'would of' instead of would have, beginning answers with 'so' and 'fewer' replaced by 'less!