Vocab screw-up that's been bugging the hell out of me

[jack_ryder]

For some reason, I keep seeing this time and time again:

Loose (i.e. not tight)

used instead of

Lose (i.e. not win)

Why has it suddenly become so prevalent?

Comments

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

"Suddenly"?

It has been a curse upon the internet for as long as I've been surfing the internet. And that's only the last five or six years.

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

It may just be one of those statistical things, like a cluster. I'm see it more and more now, almost as if it's common usage.

[flinthart.livejournal.com]

Cuz people are eejits?

I'll swap you. Loose/lose pisses me off, yeah, but honed/homed irritates me a hundred times more.

To hone: to whet, or sharpen, to make or improve a cutting edge.

To home (verb): to seek out a designated 'home', or target, as of a 'homing pigeon'.

To 'home in': to close in on a chosen target.

To 'hone in': complete fucking bullshit that has no meaning whatsoever.

Tragically, that last construction is used all to often by people who are otherwise literate... which is why it annoys me. Loose/lose is for random imbeciles. Hone/home is screwed up so often it's practically idiom by now.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever seen a "home"/"hone" error, but I see "loose"/"lose" regularly. And it seems to be much more common now than, say, a few years ago.

[chrisbarnes.livejournal.com]

Those bug me too. Along with other classic malapropisms such as 'formally' used instead of 'formerly', 'in one foul swoop' and 'for all intensive purposes'.

I suspect these are the result of limited reading; they are typically mistakes made by people who hear words far more often than read them, and who when they do read, read with poor comprehension.

[flinthart.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, yes. The "foul swoop" makes me think of farting in a hang glider.