(no subject)
Malapropisms.
Don't like 'em. Occasionally commit 'em because hey, I'm human, too.
But the one that makes my head explode is "concerted effort" by one person.
Kids, "concerted" means two or more people acted "in concert," i.e. together, at the same time, as a team.
It does not mean "concentrated," which, while clunky and vague, would at least be accurate. An individual can make a concentrated effort; presumably this means they concentrated very hard, or tried to pack more effort into a short time than they usually exert. Or they were making frozen orange juice.
And I have just realized that my real objection to "concerted effort" by one person isn't that it's inaccurate. Words change meaning all the time, and what the heck, this one might too. No, what bothers me is that the only reason anyone uses the phrase at all is because they absorbed it wholesale from other writers. This makes it that dreaded thing: a cliche. If you don't know what a word means, why are you using it? You are falling back on stock phrases rather than saying what you want to say.
Don't like 'em. Occasionally commit 'em because hey, I'm human, too.
But the one that makes my head explode is "concerted effort" by one person.
Kids, "concerted" means two or more people acted "in concert," i.e. together, at the same time, as a team.
It does not mean "concentrated," which, while clunky and vague, would at least be accurate. An individual can make a concentrated effort; presumably this means they concentrated very hard, or tried to pack more effort into a short time than they usually exert. Or they were making frozen orange juice.
And I have just realized that my real objection to "concerted effort" by one person isn't that it's inaccurate. Words change meaning all the time, and what the heck, this one might too. No, what bothers me is that the only reason anyone uses the phrase at all is because they absorbed it wholesale from other writers. This makes it that dreaded thing: a cliche. If you don't know what a word means, why are you using it? You are falling back on stock phrases rather than saying what you want to say.