What word or phrase irritates you whenever you hear it?
Post your answer in the LEAVE A COMMENT section below. I’m not the boss of you, though. Don’t write anything for all I care! Just know that there’s a word or two for people who do irritating things like that.
. . .here are my thoughts.
What word or phrase irritates you whenever you hear it?
Name the following item: two blades, fastened in the middle, opened and closed by thumb and finger inserted through finger holes on their handles, used for cutting thin material. Hopefully that rough description gets you to the correct answer: scissors. Or, as my wife’s side of the family says: a scissors. My wife taught high school English for more than two decades, thus understands the concept of subject-verb agreement. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, assuming she simply refuses to spout off the understood words “pair of” between the singular “a” and plural “scissors.” In the phrase “a pair of scissors,” “a” and “pair” are both singular; “of scissors” is just an adjectival prepositional phrase along for the ride. I assume “scissors” plural nature results from its two blades working in tandem. If you have only one blade, you no longer have scissors. You have a knife with a weird handle. The only singular form of “scissor” is the verb—an action I believe my wife has zero first-person experience with. Although, to get her English degree and teaching certification, she did spend plenty of time in college.
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