I don't really get this discussion. Why do you have to teach tricks? Teach them that a stationary vehicle is stopped and stationery is the stuff you buy at the stationers for writing and such. I'm not sure this one is actually a problem. Yes people get it wrong but that's because they have never bee...

Well, fancy that! Another word that has lost its N to the indefinite article. And what an interesting etymology. This from a website called Quick and Dirty Tips. www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-a-napron-became-an-apron? A Noumpere Becomes an Umpire Another less common example is “ump...

Beautiful word of course and adding richly to the language because it fills a gap in meaning between petty quarrel (where did petty come from? Perhaps direct from French petit?) and and a stronger argument. The thing about a quibble it seems to me is that it may be only a small point, but it is ofte...

Poor Percy! Sounds like workplace harassment to me.

I'm not sure that it can't be used figuratively.

For example "take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves". For me, look after the pounds; the pennies are mere stationery.

And presumably corsage shares the same horticultural origin?

Let me tell you, the Ambarrow at my British boarding school was a great deal more than a mound, especially if you had to run up it in a cross-country race, as we did. It was a monolithic mountain.

Today I read in an august newspaper the word augur as a noun, presumably (from the context) meaning omen. "The augurs are not good". Here is the dilemma. Should I write to the author and explain that the word they want is augury and that augur already has a clear meaning - seer, or prophet? Or do we...

I will be interested in others on this question, but I think these examples are a different anomaly. In them, the problem seems to be that it is not immediately obvious which word is the verb. I recall a local newspaper headline: Ducks Walk Flats Out. In this case there is no verb or at least only a...

We spell cumquats with a c in Australia. But of course the original word was Chinese so you can spell it any way you like.

And we don't eat them off the page. We turn ours into a delightful zesty marmalade.

Perhaps all related to the Yiddish schnozz.

Or for those of more of an Old Testament bent, Cain and Abel. Or Esau and Jacob?

I suspect Phillip, that your anacoluthation has not been a life-long feature of your conversation. If you are anything like me, the problem gets worse as I age (I think that's an example of the first meaning of the word - in my view, it is bad English). I start a sentence, and before I finish it, I ...

I like this one. It doesn't quite fit the bill but is close enough to remind me of my father's verbal invention of a quasi-non-sequitur. It's a clause that doesn't strictly follow its predecessor, but you vaguely know what they mean. Dad's main example was "The peaches are not for the children becau...

Yes, smooch is an important omission. But well before my time, of course. I do like the suggestion that it might have a Scottish origin. It all reminds me of a girl I knew who had been propositioned (in the 60s) by a young Scotsman with the words "Hoo aboot a bash of the pash?" I don't think she too...