A Few Snotty Usage Errors

We all make linguistic mistakes. It happens. If you're really good at debating, you can even argue that your mistake is really a form of linguistic evolution, and that precriptive grammar is bollocks. I do this quite a bit, which makes the following post fairly hypocritical. To argue the importance of the following list, however, I would like to point out that the differences listed, in some cases, are rather necessary for clear communication. For instance, as in #4, to say that you "saw a person hung" means that you saw a living person suspended, and that person continued to live through the suspension, which is generally not (in my limited experience) what people mean when they say that they saw someone "get hung."

So here are a brief few of my least-favorite usage errors, thanks to every writer I've read and every fastidious English major I've ever known.

1. Electrocute
• To be electrocuted means to die from exposure to electric shock. If a person gets zapped while trying to get a piece of toast from the toaster with a fork, chances are she is shocked (and not electrocuted).
2. Nauseous vs. nauseated
• "Nauseous" is an adjective that means "to bring about a state of nausea," as in:
•  The convenience-store bathrooms were stinky and rather nauseous.
• "Nauseated" means "to feel a sense of nausea" as in:
•  I went to the stinky, nauseous bathroom and immediately felt nauseated.
• To say "I feel nauseous" is to imply (at least according to prescribed definition):
• I feel so disgusting and unappealing that any poor soul to encounter me would likely run screaming to the nearest bathroom, trash can, or bush.
3. General use of trademarks to describe generic products
• Jell-O, Xerox, Band-Aid, and Kleenex are respective brand names for gelatin dessert, photocopiers, adhesive bandages, and facial tissues. When these trademarked brand names become so commonly associated with their associated generic product, the trademark becomes genericised and therefore no longer belongs to its creator, which seems rather unfortunate--after all, the person who coined the term "Jell-O" shouldn't be punished for inventing such a catchy term. This bothers me much more than it probably should.
4. Hanged vs. hung
• "Hung" is both the past tense and past participle of the verb "hang," and it can refer to any object (animate or otherwise) which is suspended or dangled. "Hanged," on the other hand, is a bit more specific, in that it refers to a being which has been killed by hanging. A person who is being hung above a crowd on a bungee cord cannot be said to be hanged unless she dies as a result. Therefore, it is correct to say:
• The puce-green streamers were hung from the rusty rafters in the old prison gym.
• The wrongly-convicted prisoner was hanged before a small crowd in Lansing.
• I had no idea this this difference existed at all until seventh grade, when I went to my first concert. Upon coming home, I exclaimed to my dad, "It was so cool! Alice Cooper hung himself!" The mistake was promptly corrected.
  
5. Internet
• This one's a bit controversial (so controversial, in fact, that it has its own Wikipedia page), but I personally like to capitalize "Internet," as it is technically a proper noun.*
  
  *Full disclosure: I don't always capitalize "Internet," especially if I'm typing on a cell phone or feeling generally lazy, which is much more often than I'd dare to admit, especially in this post on the public space of the Internet.

I'm curious as to whether anyone who's reading this feels similarly about these or other common prescriptive misusages. If you're feeling particularly fired up about the difference between "horde" and "hoard" or "Champaign" and "Champagne," please leave a comment or send me a note! Especially considering that you trudged through this rather tiresome post, I'd love to hear about your linguistic sore spots as well.