Common English Blunders

“… you will not feel any air being blowned …”

Common English Blunders, Outsider's Perspective, Verbs

I saw this on a website this morning.

Problem:
The past participle is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
I was researching which way a ceiling fan should turn in the winter versus the summer when I discovered this.

The full sentence was “In the winter, you will not feel any air being blowned to you since it will be pulled up to the ceiling.”

Admittedly, seeing the past participle of the verb “blow” as B-L-O-W-N-E-D is essentially humorous, but there is instructional value in discussing this blunder.

The verb “blow” has these basic forms:

  • Blow — present simple, as in “The fan at top speed can blow the dust away.”
  • Blew — preterite, as in “He blew up the balloon.”
  • Blown — past participle, as in “She has blown it out of proportion.”
  • Blowing — present continuous, as in “The wind is not blowing.”

A common English blunder for young children and for those who are learning English as a second language is to write or say “blowed” — spelled B-L-O-W-E-D — as the preterite or past participle of the verb “blow”.

In other words, the blunder is to add E-D to the present simple form because many preterites and past participles are formed in this way. For example, the verb “form” has “formed” — spelled F-O-R-M-E-D — as its preterite and as its past participle.

Here are examples of use of the nonsense word “blowed”:

  • As a preterite:
    • “He blowed up at her.”
    • “The wind blowed last night!”
  • As a past participle:
    • “She has blowed her chances.”
    • “If you guys had not blowed the money in Atlantic City, you would not be begging me for a loan today.”

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “blew” — 19,800,000 matches
  • “blown” — 33,100,000 matches
  • “blowed” — 541,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “blew” or the correct “blown” versus the incorrect “blowed” by a ratio of 36.6-to-1 or 61.1-to-1, respectively, each of which is very good, but over a half million instances of “blowed” is nothing about which to brag.

Another blunder is to say or write “blown” as the preterite of the verb “blow”, as in “He blown it.”

I had never heard or seen the word “blowned” until today. I suppose that it would be reasonable to add E-D to the end of B-L-O-W-N, if someone believed that “blown” were the preterite — because some past participles are formed in this way.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “blown” — 33,100,000 matches
  • “blowned” — 86,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “blown” versus the incorrect “blowned” by a ratio of 383-to-1, which is superb.

Solution:
“… you will not feel any air being blown …”

“Safety Deposit Box”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders

I kept hearing this the other evening in a TV drama.

Problem:
“Safety” is the wrong adjectival modifier here.

Explanation:
I was watching an episode of the Fox TV show “Fringe”, and the drama began with thieves using a bizarre method to break into a bank safe filled with depositors’ boxes so that they could steal a particular box.

All of the actors referred to the mystery box in question as a “safety deposit box”.

The correct phrase is “safe deposit box” because the deposit boxes reside in a safe.

Using “safety” instead of “safe” in front of “deposit box” seems to be a common English blunder.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “safe deposit box” — 4,570,000 matches
  • “safety deposit box” — 2,000,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “safe deposit box” versus the incorrect “safe deposit box” by a ratio of 2.29-to-1, which is awful.

Solution:
“Safe Deposit Box”

“If your husband was trapped in a car, would …”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I saw this during a television commercial.

Problem:
The “If” clause should have been written in the past subjunctive mood.

Explanation:
The TV commercial was on the Discovery Health channel.

“Could You Survive?” is the title of the show that was being advertised.

The premise of the show is to ask viewers whether they would be prepared to survive in the event of a disaster or other emergency.

The complete sentence that I saw was along the lines of “If your husband was trapped in a car, would you be able to rescue him?”

The problem with this sentence is that “was” is the wrong form of the verb “be” to use in the if-clause.

The if-clause is a subordinate clause — also called a “protasis” — in this conditional sentence.

A conditional sentence discusses one of the following:

  • a factual implication, as in “If you cool water to 0 degrees Celsius, it freezes.”;
  • a hypothetical situation, as in “If you were king, would you make me a knight?”

If the hypothetical situation is described with a contrary-to-fact present conditional, then the past subjunctive must be used.

In other words, as noted at Wikipedia, the past subjunctive is used after the conjunction if to express hypotheses.

It is a common English blunder to use simply the past tense, and that is the blunder made by the TV ad writer.

Solution:
“If your husband were trapped in a car, would …”