Moot vs Mute
 

I see folks referring to something that is inconsequential as being a "mute point". The proper label would be "moot point", as moot indicates "having little or no practical relevance..." (Wikipedia).
Ron

Precision is always good :-)

Ron, I see a lot of misused words and I've learned to ignore them if the intent is clear. If you correct someone, they accuse you of being a "grammar Nazi" and it's simply not worth it. Besides, I was not a good student of English grammar or spelling.

A true grammar nazi here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM
(And yes, it is Luger-related. ;-) )

Like when someone writes, "pre-band". Or gun band.

Greg, you really mean, rights, or its red by a person, who was wandering what ewe where righting

Wow, Ide shore hate to be a grammar Nazi...ain't nothing worser than somebody that thinks they knows good English.
Ron

Write on, Ed.

In a book of wordplay called Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21 st Century, Liesl Schillinger humorously defines a mute point as follows:
“When somebody in a group makes a good suggestion, but somehow nobody hears it.”

In a similar vein, Urban Dictionary defines it as “addressing the participants of a conference call while your phone is on mute.”

Fans of the TV show Friends may have heard a third variation: moo point (because, according to Joey, a cow’s opinion doesn’t matter). http://i.imgur.com/NXpGI.gif

The only people who really knows good English was teached it in some foreign country.

I live in the South now and just say "Bless your heart"

When someone corrects a mistake I made I consider that a kindness.

Lefties have rights too....

My wife used to say "The poor thing" when speaking of someone who didn't have a clue about what they were talking. She was from Vicksburg.

I always thought my grammar was more gooder than most, but now, I ain't so sure. That busts my bubble and I don't have enough wind to blow a new one S**t!

My Mother spoke flawless, un-accented English, learned ih a Berlin high school (gymnasium) before the war. The only clue to her foreign birth was her refusal to use contractions, like isn't for is not and aren't for are not (the use of ain't was unthinkable). I was a product of the British educational system, from nursery school through university and when, at age 22, I emigrated to the US back in 1960 my mother made me promise to write weekly (transatlantic phone calls were shockingly expensive back then). Every once in a while she would return my letter with errors in grammar and spelling circled in red.
Norm

Norme, Bless her heart. She raised you well.

I know of what you speak. My mother had been a teacher before she married my dad and started a family. I got corrected at school, and at home!! :grr:

For anyone interested, the book "The Mother Tongue, English and How It Got That Way" by Bill Bryson is an amazing read. It's not, as you might expect, dry but interesting. Bryson is considered to be one of the better authorities on the English language.

For instance, he discusses common American words that the British have newly adopted but complain are crude and yet were, in fact, commonly used in Britain until they were dropped long ago. He claims that the "F" word is the most useful in the English language and explains why. Over 10,000 English words are of French derivation while words from the German are far fewer.

You can find it on Abebooks.com for less than $5 with free shipping.

just me!?
 

The one that tortured me way back when, was, the difference between "taut & taunt" turns out I was just ridiculing large amounts of rope?... learned eventually... I got better?.... best, til...lat'r...GT:cheers:

Grammaticist.........

tomaustin, We have been doing vocabulary, we have not begun to get into grammar :-)

Poor grammar and punctuation can be annoying, but what gets me are those that don't know history or simple math.

Just watch one of those shows where the reporter hits the streets to ask questions a first grader could answer.
Many don't know the difference between WWII and the Civil War. Some can't identify a photo of Thomas Jefferson.

Here are two videos from a few years back. Funny, but at the same time it is pathetic and sad. Welcome to the new America, well, at least we have another federal holiday ...... Happy Juneteenth!

https://youtu.be/oUTyRPB7AlU

https://youtu.be/dDu_rEo74i4

Ron, good point about annoying misuse of words. One butchered cliché that I find amusing, is when folks say, "I could care less", when they really mean the opposite. That is they "couldn't care less". LOL

What really irritates me is someone quoting the second amendment using "bare arms" instead of "bear arms". They must be thinking it can't be bear cuz that's a four legged animal.

I kind of like it when a pretty girl says “bare with me”; it means I might get lucky. :-D

I remember years ago Jay Leno doing his skit of asking people on the street random basic history questions. Going up to a stereotypical surfer dude and asking "when was the War of 1812?", his response "Dude, I don't even know!"
Jim

A mute trumpet sounding retreat after loss of a battle is moot testament to the valor of the fallen.

The curious carpenter picked up his hammer and saw!

When I moved to the South, I always wondered what was meant by, "I'll get up with you later"...

- - - -

The multiple meaning of same or similar sounding words has always kept language "living" as people either play with the words, or unintentionally confuse them. English is full of examples over time. So are other languages like German, which evolved into old English. (corrected per below)

Words like "irregardless" have made their way into language in my area, including a cafe by that name.

Language is living. My state (ranging from coastal Gullah communities to the Scotch-Irish roots of the mountain folk, has a huge range of accents and language usage.

I try to use language correctly, but am sometimes amused by what I hear from time to time...

When I was helping produce television, we had a program on regional accents in our state. The production process includes closed captioning for hearing impaired, which is done by hand by people with court reporting skills. The caption files for this program didn't come back on schedule, and the caption encoder finally called us and asked us never to send a program like this one to him again... We finally got the files, but it was difficult.

The correct interpretation of similar sounding words is a real challenge in automated voice recognition. Much of the artificial intelligence used in modern systems chews up processing power on this problem.

Quite the opposite; English evolved from German.

"English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. ... The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant."

Only one King in Britain is called "Great" and that was King Alfred the Great who likely kept the English language from extinction. He insisted that court affairs and education be conducted in English rather than Latin.

On Grammar...

On grammar police. http://i.imgur.com/NXpGI.gif
https://i.imgur.com/IgobI1t.png