Kirk Mahoney . com

I heard about this phrase the other day.

Problem:
The preposition “in” is incorrect.

Explanation:
My friend Nickie F. told me about this phrase.

It seems that someone was telling her about his popularity with his boss.

He said (quote) “Oh well, I guess I’m not the apple in her eye anymore.” (unquote).

An “apple in one’s eye” is a humorous misstating of the idiom “an apple of one’s eye”, which means a person that one loves very much (FreeDictionary.com).

Good catch, Nickie!

Solution:
“… the apple of her eye …”

My wife saw this the other day on Oprah.com.

Problem:
(Quote) “for free” (unquote) is an informal idiom that bothers many readers.

Explanation:
For fun, I checked Google for the idiom “for free” (with the quotation marks) and got about 348,000,000 matches. Wow!

Many readers are bothered by the “for free” idiom because the word “for” is a preposition, prepositions should be followed by nouns or pronouns, and the word “free” is neither a noun nor a pronoun.

The word “free” is either a verb or an adjective. Some use the word “free” as an adverb — as in (quote) “running free” (unquote) — but the correct way to make “free” into an adverb is to add the letters L-Y to the end — as in (quote) “running freely” (unquote).

One of the definitions of the word “free” as an adjective is without charge, cost, or payment — as in (quote) “free nachos with every beer purchased this evening” (unquote).

This gives us our solution, given that any preposition — such as “for” — should not be followed by an adjective — such as “free”.

Solution:
“Download it without charge.”

My wife saw this the other day in a seminar handout.

Problem:
The word “apart” — spelled A-P-A-R-T with no spaces — does not belong in this phrase.

Explanation:
The word “apart” as an adverb means into parts or pieces, as in (quote) “The tornado blew the house apart.” (unquote).

The word “apart” can be combined with “from” to form a prepositional idiom that means besides or in addition to, as in (quote) “She wrote to no one apart from Jim.” (unquote).

The word “apart” as an adjective means having unique or independent characteristics and is usually used after the noun that it modifies, as in (quote) “an institution apart” (unquote).

The word “apart” is NOT a noun, but a noun is what the phrase required, given that the writer was referring to someone not being a member of a group.

Solution:
“… no longer a part of the group”

I saw this in a technical document.

Problem:
“Do” is the wrong word here.

Explanation:
“Due” is the right word here because “due to” is an idiom that means attributable to.

The writer could have missed the mistake because “do” and “due” sound alike to most Americans.

The writer could have made the mistake because he or she did not know that “due” is the correct word.

In any case, I believe that use of “do” in place of “due” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to write “do” (two letters) than to write “due” (three letters).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “due to limitations” — 703,000 matches
• “do to limitations” — 505 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the idiom correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 1,392:1, which is excellent!

Solution:
“Due to limitations …”

I heard someone say this recently.

Problem:
This sometimes is a mispronunciation of another idiom.

Explanation:
The other idiom is “It doesn’t cut muster.”

The noun “muster” means an assembly of military troops for inspection.

The verb “cut” in the idiom refers to “making the cut” — that is, “meeting a certain standard, below which whatever is being inspected is cut”.

So “It doesn’t cut muster.” means that something does not meet a certain standard following inspection.

Given that the noun “muster” is not as commonly used as the noun “mustard”, I suppose that it is not surprising that some say or write the idiom as “It doesn’t cut mustard.”

For fun, I searched Google — with the quotation marks included in the search box — for “doesn’t cut mustard” and “doesn’t cut muster” and got about 61,700 and 1,070 matches, respectively.

According to a post at Washington State University’s website, “cut the mustard” first appeared in a 1902 O. Henry story and was used there to mean to achieve the required standard.

Solution:
“It doesn’t cut muster.” or “It doesn’t cut mustard.” — your choice! Simply be conscious about which one you’re using — and why!

I heard this in a conference call.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation of an idiom often heard in American English.

Explanation:
The speaker in the conference call was trying to indicate to use a manner of speaking at the end of his statement.

Instead, he probably was unaware of the correct words in the idiom.

So he pronounced what he probably believed that he had heard others say.

Solution:
“… , so to speak.”