By Sam Segan
Malapropisms, or misused words, fill the student essays I read every day. Let’s see if you can spot the mistakes I’ve collected in the below paragraph (Hint: There are eleven):
It is with upmost regret that I consider the propagation of malapropisms online. Maybe I’m bias, but I contribute this problem to people watching videos when they should of been reading. I see new mistakes everyday, literally millions. I try to curve my impulse to correct people, and for all intensive purposes, I succeed. It’s just hard to workout why there are so many. Irregardless, I could care less.
Ready?
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Think you found them all?
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Here are the mistakes:
“Upmost.” The real word is “utmost” and it means “greatest.” “I have utmost respect for Maya Angelou.”
“Bias.” When you say you are biased, you need the -ed. “I am biased.” The word “bias” itself is a noun: you might say “I have bias. Therefore I am biased.”
“Contribute.” In this context, it should be “attribute.” To contribute means to provide something, as in “I contributed a lot to our group project.” To attribute something to something is to say it is caused by that thing. “I attribute my dry skin to my lack of moisturizer.”
“Should of” should be “should have.” “Of” is a preposition. “Should have” is the past tense of the verb.
“Everyday.” When it’s one word, it means it’s an adjective! “It’s my everyday habit to drink coffee.” But when you use it as a noun, as in “Every day, I go shopping,” you want it to be two words–“every day.”
“Literally” means “actually.” I don’t actually see millions of mistakes–it just feels like that sometimes!
“Curve.” Here, the word you’d want is “curb.” A “curve” is a rounded shape, or possibly what your teacher does to the grade. When you talk about reining in your impulses, you are curbing yourself. “I curbed my impulse to yell at my teacher.”
“For all intensive purposes.” Nope! It’s “for all intents and purposes.” And it means “in effect,” or “basically.” “For all intents and purposes, that’s all you need to know to use this phrase right.”
“Workout.” When it’s one word, it’s a noun–“I had a great workout Saturday.” When it’s two words, it’s a verb: “I can’t quite work out how you did that cool trick.”
“Irregardless” simply isn’t a word. You want to say “regardless,” meaning “despite that,” as in, “Regardless of your objections, let’s continue.”
“I could care less.” The real phrase is “I couldn’t care less,” which is a funny double negative that means you care as little as you possibly could–you don’t care at all. “I couldn’t care less about what music is fashionable. I listen to what I like.”
Here’s the corrected paragraph:
It is with utmost regret that I consider the propagation of malapropisms online. Maybe I’m biased, but I attribute this problem to people watching videos when they should have been reading. I see new mistakes every day. I try to curb my impulse to correct people, and for all intents and purposes, I succeed. It’s just hard to work out why there are so many. Regardless, I couldn’t care less.
