Page 23 - The Gluckman Occasional Number Six

Casebook of the Language Police:

2. Disfigures of Speech

Again, the charge is an egregiously solecistic erosion of English. The
evidence is gathered from print and broadcast media, the perpetrators
abusing the power of the press to disseminate deformed and degraded
idioms. Is ignorant conflation and confusion of figures of speech
justifiable as harbinger of a new demotic? The decline in literacy among
people given access to microphones and keyboards cannot simply be
attributed to free association (harmless and potentially productive in
poetry, not in public pronouncements). These examples are all too real.

DISFIGURE OF SPEECH CONFUSES/CONFLATES

Attorney Mark Geragos said the 1) give/show no quarter
entertainer's legal team would 2) take no prisoners
“take no quarter” in its defense.

“Would not step foot into” 1) set foot in
2) step into

“Right out of the bat” 1) right off the bat
2) right out of the gate

“We believe that making progress in 1) outside the box
cancer research means sharing ideas 2) out-of-the-box
and encouraging out-of-the-box
thinking,” said Greenblatt.

“It's bigger than a bread basket” 1) bigger than a bread box
2) going to hell in a hand
basket

Mr Myard, himself a fluent English 1) ape
speaker, said it was not appropriate 2) monkey with
that, in a European contest, France
should “monkey another's culture.”

“I really hit the lid!” 1) blew/flipped my lid
2) hit the ceiling