Lose or Loose ?

[whiffey]

There is an irritating tendency these days to write LOOSE when you surely mean LOSE ?

Loose is ill-fitting trousers, worn dentures, etc, and has nothing to do with losing something.

Am I right, and why is this infuriating change taking place in the language ?

[society]

Well some might have lost their mind in their loose head. lol

[Loosehead]

I don't get it! I haven't lost my Loose head!

There are lots of irritating things happenning in the language, I hate it when people say "Can I get" to mean "May I have" aaaaarrrrrrggggghhhh.

[maxi2]

Loosehead - I agree - the "can I get" habit is irritating.
My particular current pet-hate is the word media being used in the singular - which should be "medium". Just this morning on BBC Radio I heard "This media is.........."
Dreadful. Or am I loosing the plot? ;-)

[Quizmonster]

The problem with the pronunciation of 'lose' is that - having only one 'o' - it has no obvious oo-sound indication. We don't call a nose a nooze, after all.
I would save your fury, Whiffey, for true language barbarities such as 'could of'...when clearly 'could've' is intended...rather than simple mistakes.
As for 'Can I get?" this is merely one of a multitude of Americanisms that we have been 'importing' for generations. Unless we stop showing their TV programmes and films, the tide is unstoppable, I'm afraid.

[THECORBYLOON]

Pronounce it the way I do, the way it is spelt, there will be no problems then.

[tiggertan]

I agree totally! One of my bugbears is people confusing advice and advise, to and too and their, there, they're when writing!

[nightmare]

My favourite hate (oxymoron or what!) is the mis use of the word gender.
Unfortunately, it now has an accepted meaning which is strictly incorrect.
People seem to use gender when they mean sex.
Gender is a term borrowed from grammar, where it is a categorisation of nouns etc. Genders are masculine, feminine, neuter and have become confused with male female etc.
The classic example of non- equivalence of sex and gender is the German word for a young girl:
das Madchen ( with an umlaut over the a )
sex = female, gender = neuter

[Quizmonster]

According to The Oxford English Dictionary - whilst 'gender' is primarily a grammatical term - it has also been used to mean 'the sex of a person' for centuries! The reason for its greater prevalence nowadays is thanks entirely to feminism.
Here's a quote from Lady Mary W Montagu dated 1709...
"Of the fair sex...my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them."
(Goodness knows what feminists would make of that sentiment!)
Given the historical background here, Nightmare, I guess you're fighting a losing battle.

[nightmare]

Quizmonster
I know I'm fighting a losing (!) battle, but I'm allowed the occasional rant about it.

[Rod Mac]

|While agreeing with the discussion thus far I would also like to introduce one of my pet hates in the use of language - namely use of 'They' when referring to ONE unnamed person

OR isit

Using 'different to... ' INSTEAD OF ' different from...'

OOPS I seem to have got started ... aaargh!!

[B00]

I hate.....could of, would of, should of instead of could have would have or should have.

[scousejones]

A large notice in Staples, the Stationers, announces ".....This does not effect your statutory rights" Another of my pet hates is the sin committed by many Estate Agents who describe the propetry they are advertising as "comprising of"

[Quizmonster]

Rod, technically, words such as anyone, everybody, nobody and one are singular, so some - including you, apparently - claim they should not be followed by plural forms such as they, them and their. However, this �rule' has been consistently flouted for centuries by quality writers using such phrases as "Nobody in their senses would..." rather than "Nobody in his senses would..." or - even worse - "Nobody in his or her senses would..."
This is because the idea of plurality is actually contained in these indefinite pronouns. It also gets around the problem that there is no genderless way of referring simply to both male and female persons in such structures. If we did not use "their", we would be obliged constantly to say "his or her", which is clumsy. These pluralised forms are here to stay and regarded as perfectly acceptable now.

[Oppala]

Ok, a lot of my pet hates have already been mentioned. Here are two more: the misuse of the apostrophe and the one that really gets me going, the use 're' to create non-existent words. Shall we re-look at this or should we look at this again?