Slips of Speech : a Helpful Book for Everyone Who Aspires to Correct the Everyday Errors of Speaking eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 164 pages of information about Slips of Speech .

Slips of Speech : a Helpful Book for Everyone Who Aspires to Correct the Everyday Errors of Speaking eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 164 pages of information about Slips of Speech .

Tasty

Often used in colloquial speech when tasteful would be better.  Tastily for tastefully is still worse.

Team

Properly this word relates only to the horses, and does not include the carriage.

Those kind, These sort

“It is unpleasant to have to associate with those kind of people.”  “These sort of sheep are the most profitable.”  Kind and sort are nouns of the singular number; these and those are plural, and, according to the laws of grammar, the adjective and noun must agree in number.  The corrected sentences will read:  “It is unpleasant to have to associate with this kind of people.”  “This sort of sheep is the most profitable.”  The fault arises by associating in the mind the adjectives these and those with the nouns sheep and people, which nouns are more prominent in the mind than the nouns kind and sort.  If the ear is not satisfied, the sentences may readily be recast; as, “It is unpleasant to have to associate with people of that kind.”  “Sheep of this sort are the most profitable.”
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Transpire, Happen

This word, from trans, across, through, and spirare, to breathe, means, physiologically, to pass off in the form of vapor or insensible perspiration, or, botanically, to evaporate from living cells.  Its general meaning is to become known, to escape from secrecy.

It is frequently employed in the sense of to occur, to come to pass, but this use is condemned by the best critics in England and America.  “The proceedings of the secret session of the council soon transpired.”  This sentence illustrates the true meaning of the word.

Make, Manufacture

These words may, in some cases, be used interchangeably, but make has much the wider range of meanings.  The following story, related by Eli Perkins, will illustrate this fact: 

I was talking one day with Mr. Depew, President of the New York Central Railroad, about demand and supply.  I said the price of any commodity is always controlled by the demand and supply.

“Not always, Eli,” said Depew; “demand and supply don’t always govern prices.  Business tact sometimes governs them.”

“When,” I asked, “did an instance ever occur when the price did not depend on demand and supply?”
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“Well,” said Mr. Depew, “the other day I stepped up to a German butcher, and, out of curiosity, asked: 

“‘What’s the price of sausages?’

“‘Dwenty cends a bound,’ he said.

“‘You asked twenty-five this morning,’ I replied.

“’Yah; dot vas ven I had some.  Now I ain’t got none, I sell him for dwenty cents.  Dot makes a repudation for selling cheab, und I don’t lose noddings.’

“You see,” said Mr. Depew, laughing, “I didn’t want any sausage and the man didn’t have any; no demand and no supply, and still the price of sausage went down five cents.”

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Slips of Speech : a Helpful Book for Everyone Who Aspires to Correct the Everyday Errors of Speaking from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.