Mispronunciations

“We need to error on the safe side.”

Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Nouns, Verbs

I overheard a conference call in which someone said this a few days ago.

Problem:
The speaker used the wrong word for the verb after “We need to” in this statement.

Explanation:
The speaker who said “We need to error on the safe side.” was discussing a company policy with others on the conference call.

The word “error” is a noun and not a verb.

What the speaker should have used is the word “err”, which looks like “error” but is a verb that means to be mistaken or incorrect.

Perhaps the speaker simply mispronounced “err” (the verb) as “error” (the noun).

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:

  • “err on the safe side” — 23,600 matches
  • “error on the safe side” — 1,260 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used “err on the safe side” versus “error on the safe side” by a ratio of 18.7-to-1, which is good by not great.

Solution:
“We need to err on the side of caution.”

“Perogative” Revisited

Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I got an interesting email message last Sunday from one of your fellow readers of this blog.

I will refer to him simply as “Ian” because I don’t have permission to use his surname.

Ian had read “Perogative” and wanted to share his own perspective from the United Kingdom.

When I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) for my original blog post, I got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,750,000 matches
  • “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,610,000 matches

This told me that Web authors had favored the incorrect word over the correct word by a ratio of 1.02-to-1, which is horrible!

When Ian tries to access Google.com in the UK, Google auto-redirects him to Google.co.uk, where he got these statistics:

  • “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 244,000 matches
  • “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 4,000,000 matches

I could not exactly reproduce Ian’s results, but I searched at Google.co.uk and got nearly the same ratio that he did.

The 16.4-to-1 dominance of the correct spelling at Google.co.uk puzzles Ian and his fiancée, given that they agree that the incorrect pronunciation and spelling of “prerogative” is very common in the UK.

“antidotal evidence”

Adjectives, Mispronunciations, Nouns

I saw this yesterday in a message about story-related evidence.

Problem:
The adjective “antidotal” has nothing to do with story-related evidence.

Explanation:
The word “antidotal” is the adjectival form of the noun “antidote”, which means a medicine for counteracting a poison.

The word “anecdotal” is the adjectival form of the noun “anecdote”, which means a short account of an incident as an unpublished narrative.

Those who confuse these two adjectives probably are distracted by

  1. the fact that both adjectives have “dotal” — spelled D-O-T-A-L — in them because both nouns have “dote” — spelled D-O-T-E — in them,
  2. the fact that both adjectives start with A-N, and
  3. the fact that both adjectives are nine letters long.

The noun “antidote” is constructed from the prefix “anti-“, which means against, and “dote”, whose origin essentially means given. In other words, the roots of “antidote” when assembled mean given against.

The noun “anecdote” is constructed from the prefix “an-“, which means not, and “ecdote”. The “ecdote” part of “anecdote” is a combination of “ec”, which means out, and “dote”, whose origin, as just noted, means given.

So the “ecdote” part of “anecdote” essentially means published. In other words, the roots of “anecdote” when assembled mean not published.

Solution:
“anecdotal evidence”