Not Washed or Cooked, # 203

The John Holloway backlog continues with a typographical error (source not supplied) that would have been picked up by a spell-checking routine and/or proofreading. It‘s quite large!

venner for veneer

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 70

Another one (original source unknown) from John Holloway:

formally for formerly

Double-take, # 132

John Holloway spotted this in Tesco in Colchester:

John asks: ‘Is it “stir fries” or “stirfrys”? I feel as though it should be the former.’

Standard dictionaries don’t show a plural, which suggests that the term follows normal English rules, with one fry becoming multiple fries. Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries and Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary confirm this, but all sources checked show that the term should be hyphenated: stir-fry and (where shown) stir-fries.

stir frys [noun]

Not Washed or Cooked, # 202

This mangle was found (location not supplied) by John Holloway, who comments: ‘An internet clip. I fully support the intent, of course…’

cancer awarness

Double-take, # 131

This word came into English from French and, like most loanwords from French, lost its accent. As John Holloway has discovered, Disney — or at least some franchise riding on the back of Frozen — is trying, in its own mangled way, to put it back:

Decór

Double-take, # 130

This week is largely given over to a backlog of submissions from John Holloway. Today brings a puzzling sentence in correspondence from ZestLegal:

we have returned to the examining for the necessary amendments

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 70

Mo Juste contacted me a while ago to say he’d seen a mangle in a poster advertising a particular event, but hadn’t been in a position to take a photograph. I was fairly sure that I’d be able to find the error replicated somewhere; and, in the event, deciding which of the very many examples to use was the difficult part. So, in commemoration of the famous Scots poet, and based on an idea by Mo Juste, here are some apostrophe catastrophes:

Link: TalentScotland, ‘Burn’s Night celebrations’

Link: Bedford School, ‘Burn’s Night’

Burn’s Night; Burns Night

Double-take, # 129

This seems a very odd construction to use in the context:

Link: The Sunday Times (subscription access only), ‘Superfit Jools eyes up 5th child’

For clarification, the article suggests that Jamie Oliver and his wife, Jools, may be considering an addition to their family. Oxford Dictionaries confirms that ‘eye up’ means ‘Look at someone in a way that reveals a particular, especially sexual, interest’; while Collins English Dictionary doesn’t offer a non-sexual variant, defining the term as: ‘to look at in a manner indicating sexual interest; ogle’ (eyes, number 40).
    Even without the sexual dimension, it would be difficult to ‘eye up’ someone who does not yet, and may never, exist.

Jools eyes up 5th child

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 69

Mangled breadcrumbs and links again; this time a persistent problem with a placename, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

The mountain’s name was consistently spelt correctly on the linked page, though it‘s unclear if the mangle in the links (perhaps a hypercorrection) was made by human or automatic agency:

Link: BBC News, ‘El Capitan — the world's toughest climb? in 90 seconds’

El Captain for El Capitan [a couple of times]

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 68

Another mangled breadcrumb:

The headline actually reads:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Up to 5,000 Europeans pose terror threat after going abroad to fight jihad’

which makes more sense.
post for pose

You Cannot Be Serious, # 35

This paragraph, with its dubious noun-verb agreements, shifting perspectives and overall bizarre syntax, directly quotes a person of seniority in tertiary education — Ed Byrne, the principal of King’s College London — making the case for maintaining levels of funding in tertiary education. Judging by this, it needs all the money it can get:

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Labour’s tuition fee cut “would kill universities”’

 If £3,000 per student was […] one would destroy […] and one would make […]. Labour must identify clearly if […] and that university funding must not be reduced; &c

Double-take, # 128

Doesn‘t one subsume the other?

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Not on the team? Then no more sport for you’

overweight and obese