I abhor winter, and get increasingly irritable as temperatures drop. If you utter the smallest grammatical goof or gaff in my presence, prepare for an icy stare. Here are a few sentences that recently grabbed my embittered attention.
• “She had the cutest little toe-headed children.” Toe-headed children are not cute, even if you keep their nails trimmed. Tow-headed children may be cute. At the very least, they have light-colored hair.
• “They reeked havoc on the enemy.” Unless they stunk up the place – literally – they did not reek havoc. To reek means to emit a strong, disagreeable odor. To wreak means to cause or inflict. So havoc is something one wreaks.
• “I’m so jealous of his new car.” You are not jealous of his car; you are envious of it. Envy is when you want something that belongs to someone else. Jealousy is when you protect something that belongs to you. So you can’t be jealous of his car, unless you’ve stolen it.
• “I’m anxious to learn how to write better.” Yes, and I’m eager for you to learn how to speak better. Anxious does not mean the same as eager. Anxious means nervous or fretful. Eager means enthusiastic or raring to go. (According to grammarist.com, raring to go is a colloquialism that originated in the Southern United States about 200 years ago. It refers to horses that were so eager to run that they were rearing to go.)
“He was butt naked when he arrived.” The accurate idiom is buck naked, but I would not suggest using this phrase since it is tied to historically racist images of Native Americans and African Americans. Naked can stand alone, anyway.
“They listened with wrapped attention.” Gifts are wrapped; attention is rapt.
“Baseball is the national pasttime.” It’s definitely past time for the baseball season to end, but the word is spelled pastime.
I feel better having vented. Now I can chill.