- Medal as an intransitive verb, e.g. in a report by Gwen Ifill: "American Ryan Lochte failed to medal Monday..."
- Team followed by a country name or abbreviation, or by a political candidate's name, as "Team USA" (349,000) and "Team GB" (142,000), "Team Romney" (4,680) and "Team Obama" (4,360)
- Double down, as in a news story by Matt Viser: "Mitt Romney on Tuesday night doubled down on his argument..." (2,830 for "doubled down")
- The new normal (7,340)
- Go viral (7,790 for "went viral")
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Latest Linguistic Pet Peeves
Numbers represent total hits just on Google News today.