"Honing in" is not meaningless. Just because industry has taken the verb "to hone" to mean something specific in metal working does not mean that that is its only meaning. To wit, it also means to refine or perfect something over time. So, for example, you "hone your skills" in something. And thus while you are in the process of improving them you can say, quite correctly, that you are "honing in" on a certain standard in that skill. You can claim to be "honing in on a black-belt" in a martial art while moving up the ranks. If you want to write a speech, you start with a draft and you hone it. You can thus hold up the final version and say that you have been "honing in on this version for a while". "Homing in" seems to inherently lack the connotation of improvement over time, other than just proximity. Where the goal/target implicitly requires improvement then that connotation can be implied by context, and so you could use both with regard the speech-writing, or getting a black-belt. But a missile "homes in", and doesn't "hone in", as there is no improvement or change other than location
This is not a US/UK difference, I feel, but just a gradual change in language. It simply shortens the "write to me" so that it is in line with "phone me", "email me", "call me", "text me". It's used as commonly in UK as it is in US, I'm sure. I rarely hear an American say "math" without me then going "ssssss". Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Yes you are quite right of course about honing a skill etc. However one does not hone “in”. One hones a speech. Honing in has no meaning. It’s just a malapropism for homing in.
Bear in mind that one never used to home "in", either. It had no meaning until it started to be used. I don't dispute that "honing in" was originally likely a subsequent malapropism, but that doesn't mean that it is now meaningless, at least metaphorically. It not only has meaning but has now been included in dictionaries. That is how language changes. It has an odd origin, sure, but, well, so what? It has a recognised meaning, and can be used to convey such. Anyhoo - it's also not a UK/US difference. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! More for the mix: Private school v Public school Public school v State school Soccer v Football Zucchini v Courgette Vacation v Holiday
Zucchino, surely? Or that too been corrupted, like "panini" being used for what should be a panino? (Reminds me of a guy at university that thought the plural of spectra was spectrae. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!)
It sounds odd to me too. Then again, when I was a child and would tell my mom, "Read me a story." She would respond with, "I can read a story to you, but I can't read you a story." My American spell check has "maths" underlined in red.
Teasing aside, it seems the differences arose largely from the way dictionaries were adopted in the respective countries when attempts were made to standardise spelling. British English tends to follow Johnson’s dictionary, whereas American English tends to follow Webster, who tried to simplify spellings or adopt the simplest variants then in use. British English also preferred to retain the influence of Norman French spellings, possibly for class reasons. But with aluminium, the American version is in fact the correct one and the British version is wrong.
Yeah, zucchini is singular in American, with zucchinis being the plural, cos, well, actually using the correct Italian would be against form. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Aluminium/aluminium - I've read that it actually began as "alumium", being derived from the base "alum". But the discoverer changed it to "aluminum". It was us Brits who didn't like that, and changed it to the -ium, so that it was in line with most other elements, and, of course, sounded more posh. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. We got it included in the formal standard list of elements that we use, and the rest of the world, other than the US, have sided with the Brits ever since. So origins be damned!! Aluminium it is. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Now that you've got me started, a couple more of my bête noire malapropisms are the widespread misuse, generally by journalists, but who of course then pass the disease onward into the reading public, of: - "careening" to mean some sort of rapid, out-of-control motion, i.e. a malapropism for "careering", as opposed to its actual meaning as the laying over on its side of a ship for hull cleaning or, by extension, sailing while heeling to an extreme degree due to the wind, and - "coruscating" when they mean "excoriating", as opposed to its true meaning of glittering or flashing like a brilliant jewel, fireworks etc. The above misuse of "careening" seems to be primarily American, while "coruscating" for "excoriating" seems to be prevalent on this side of the Atlantic.
I'm not so sure that the careening / careering is quite as bad as you think. Careering is really only to move along a path at full speed, often out of control in that regard. It doesn't really suggest (or didn't) that the motion/direction itself was out of control. It comes from the Latin cararia meaning a path for wheeled vehicles (and carrus meaning chariot, from which we get car). Career was often used to refer to the path of something (from which we now use it to mean the path of one's working life etc), but also "the career of the moon across the night sky" etc. "Careering" then became the idea of moving along that path at full speed. So you can be careering along the motorway to get to your destination in time for an important event. No wild movements or out of control is implied, just high speed. Careening is, as you suggest, a nautical term (coming from the Latin carina meaning the keel of a ship), for the vessel leaning over so far that you can see its keel - for one reason or another. But it metaphorically makes sense that vehicles can move so fast and out of control that they also lean over, lurching around. If you ever see a caravan that starts wobbling left and right behind a car... that's careening - at least in this metaphorical sense. And it can happen at relatively low speeds. It's quite possible that both careering and careening can describe the same situation - a car going so fast along its path (careering) that when it takes corners it is on two wheels etc (careening). I'm not excusing all uses of one or the other, of course, but are you perhaps not viewing careering somewhat more broadly than it should be, and into the realm of careening? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! As for coruscating and excoriating, I honestly have never even thought that these two have been mixed up. I've heard wit being described as coruscating, and then criticism as excoriating, but never have I noticed them used wrongly. So now I'll be seeing it all over the place! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And, of course, the dictionaries now include "scathing criticism" idea for coruscating, adopting the change in meaning. Thinking about it, though, we also have the phrase "when sparks fly" meaning a heated argument, or anger... so a coruscating attack could be based on that idea, that the attack is so scathing and angry that, metaphorically, sparks fly. That said, it doesn't quite fit with the idea of "glittering", which suggests the sparks implied in coruscating are more playful than angry. I guess the "sparks fly" comes from the anvil / metalworking, the grinding of metal on metal, type of thing, a rather angry image compared to the stars glittering in the firmament.
Good try at rationalising these but to me it seems obvious they are simple malapropisms, confusing one word for the other. But one of the niggles of getting old is to see the language getting warped over time, as it has always done of course. The perfect tense is now under attack, at least on the ads in the London Underground, as in: “I just forgot how to use auxiliary verbs”. This is one we can definitely blame on the Americans.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Brace yourselves for the suspense https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/...the-difference-between-braces-and-suspenders/ We say braces ;they say suspenders .Go figure . (I had to buy some compression stockings and am now in the know)
Not if you are an archaeologist.(assuming a rubber does rubbings.) Is a rubber over there what my old friend,now gone (who once worked in Shell) called a frotter(on the tube)
Well I too worked for Shell but I've no idea what that means. A rubber, in colloquial US parlance is, or at any rate at one time was, a term for a condom, rather than, as in British English, a term for a pencil eraser. So, like suspenders, it is useful for transatlantic double-entendre.
I have always heard them referred to as rubbers or rubber jonnies so I didn't quite get it.(didn't know the US only called them erasers) I wonder if a "rub of the relic" has the same meaning in the USA as here..
