Category: English Usage

Wrong words

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Many people use words that are not in any English dictionary (although when a new word comes into common use, it can be added to an official dictionary). Here are some examples.

Prepone

This is supposed to be the opposite of Postpone, but there is no such word. You bring forward a meeting, not prepone it.

Updation

IT outsourcing companies love this word. The verb “to update” cannot be turned into a noun. Use two or more words to describe what

Softwares

Software is a collective noun, like the weather. It is never plural.

Upto

This word is very popular in India but it is not correct. It should be two words, up to.
Do you know of other examples?

Stepney

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When your car gets a puncture (increasingly called a “flat tyre” in the non-American parts of the English speaking world) in India, you open the “dicky” (“boot” in British-influenced countries), (“trunk” in America) and get the “stepney”.
What’s a stepney? No, not some suburb of London or Adelaide, but the spare wheel (and its fully-inflated tyre). Try to search for it in Google and at least in Australia, you’ll not find the Indian meaning of stepney, namely, the spare tyre. Even the car-related results are simply car dealerships and service stations in Adelaide. (The definition in the Urban Dictionary is most unkind and we won’t go there.)

Stepney, aka spare tyre
Stepney, aka spare tyre

Origin of “Stepney” as a spare tyre

The explanation is that a mechanic in Llanelli, Wales had a shop on Stepney Street and he was the first to sell spare tyres when cars did not come with them. The coat of arms of Llanelli Borough Council (not the current city’s coat of arms) even had a spare tyre on it!
For an excellent article on its origins, please visit the entry for Stepney at World Wide Words.
:mrgreen:
 

One premise, or premises?

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When you talk about a building or some other fixed enclosed space, it is “the premises”. It is never “the premise” or “a premise”.
e.g. “She entered the premises.”
A railway compartment is never “premises”. A building or a hut is “premises”. 🙂
That’s all.
There is a singular “premise” but it refers to something that is a given, to support a point of view.
e.g. “She based her argument on the premise that the incident occurred before the law was changed.”
 

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