Words you use wrong, part 1
“Apropos” is a French word meaning “relative.” It DOES NOT mean “appropriate.”
But, hey, who wants to sound like a/he’s educated? How boring.
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MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Words you use wrong, part 1
Words you use wrongly.
Oh, and incidentally, there is no French word apropros. There's a French phrase à propos, which literally means 'to the purpose', and would be better translated as 'relevant [to]' rather than 'relative [to]'. So it's actually used to mean the same thing in English.
Other than that: winner all round!
How a propos !
Here's one I once discovered I was using wrongly : contumacious - I was using it wrongly to signify one who was congenitally splenetic.
Not sure I've ever had cause to use the word 'contumacious'. Sounds like it should be one of those Victorian literary terms for, I dunno, bowel issues or something. Having looked up the definition, I'm going to start using it now though. Opportunities abound.
share"Golf" is one I'm guilty of using incorrectly (i.e., it's not a verb). I tend to say, "I golf from time to time," instead of, "I play golf from time to time." However, I'm trying to get better at speaking more properly! 😃
shareI only, on extremely rare occasions, 'play at' golf - what I do could not properly be considered 'golf' or even 'playing golf'.
shareI understand how you feel! 😃 I think even Tiger Woods said he never really mastered it and he pretty much was swinging a golf club right after he came out of his mother's womb! It's just a hard sport.
shareI think that unless we are in formal or some business settings, society in general has become very casual with grammar - to the point that most mistakes aren't even noticed, but there is more of a problem when we start writing the way we speak and then the mistakes become more obvious.
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