VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Deirdre · Last edited by Deirdre on Thu Jul 26, 2007 9:37 am; edited 1 time in total

From Paul Brian's Common Errors in English:

Diane Maggipinto · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 9:17 am Post subject:

I have this site bookmarked and to which I refer when sending email from my grammarpolice addy.
It helps cut the muster, for sure.

And now I know what is the lion's share. This is important to a Leo.
Wink

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Deirdre · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 9:36 am Post subject:

jrodriguez315 · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 11:10 am Post subject:

todd ellis · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 11:24 am Post subject:

i thought it was "cut the CHEESE" ... hmmm
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Diane Maggipinto · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 11:26 am Post subject:

indeed it's NOT cut the mustard. or the cheese. or the crap.

m-u-s-t-e-r
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Deirdre · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:21 pm Post subject:

It's "muster"—look it up!
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Vance Elderkin · Contributor IV Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 133

As a former writing teacher, my biggest pet peeve is people who misuse hopefully as in: "Hopefully, I'll get that high-paying job." Hopefully is misused as a substitute for I hope, and it makes me crazy.

I am also annoyed by people who use the non-existent word alright instead of all right, and people who use the wrong homonym. And I don't mean the critters in Gulliver's Travels.

I still remember the student who wrote a story about a "bazaar" murder in downtown Raleigh...

jrodriguez315 · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:59 pm Post subject:

Cut the mustard
Here is the article on “cut the mustard” from the faq (frequently asked questions list) of the UseNet newsgroup alt.usage.english:

This expression meaning “to achieve the required standard” is first recorded in an O. Henry story of 1902: “So I looked around and found a proposition [a woman] that exactly cut the mustard."

It may come from a cowboy expression, “the proper mustard", meaning “the genuine thing", and a resulting use of “mustard” to denote the best of anything. O. Henry in Cabbages and Kings (1894) called mustard “the main attraction": “I’m not headlined in the bills, but I’m the mustard in the salad dressing, just the same.” Figurative use of “mustard” as a positive superlative dates from 1659 in the phrase “keen as mustard", and use of “cut” to denote rank (as in “a cut above” ) dates from the 18th century.

Other theories are that it is a corruption of the military phrase "to pass muster” ("muster", from Latin _monstrare_="to show", means "to assemble (troops), as for inspection” ); that it refers to the practice of adding vinegar to ground-up mustard seed to “cut” the bitter taste; that it literally means “cut mustard” as an example of a difficult task, mustard being a relatively tough crop that grows close to the ground; and that it literally means “cut mustard” as an example of an easy task (via the negative expression “can’t even cut the mustard” ), mustard being easier to cut at the table than butter.

The more-or-less synonymous expression “cut it” (as in “” sorry” doesn’t cut it” ) seems to be more recent and may derive from "cut the mustard".
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scottnilsen · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:01 pm Post subject:

The only context I have ever heard "cut the mustard" it was being used as a synonym for "cut the cheese."
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bobsouer · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:07 pm Post subject:

Deirdre · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:07 pm Post subject:

Yeah, a county fair in Egypt, maybe.

Another peeve of mine is the misuse of the word ANXIOUS when EAGER is meant.

Meh!
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Diane Maggipinto · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:09 pm Post subject:

the peeps here think 'ornery' (pron.: AHHNree) means ignorant (pron.: iggnernt)
and ignorant means cranky.
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mcm · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:26 pm Post subject:

I hate it when people say "there's always a first time" as if there HAS to be a first time. When all it means is that, if there's going to be a time at all, there has to be a first one, well... first.

Deirdre · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:31 pm Post subject:

Another shriek is "First Annual".

Impossible!

It might be the "first", but it's not "annual" until it actually occurs again the following year.
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