Friday, March 26, 2004
More Word Geekiness
A couple more pet peeves on word and phrase usage. Both of these have come up in the past couple of days and I just need to vent:
- There are no degrees of uniqueness: a thing is unique if there is not another like it. Phrases such as "rather unique" or "very unique" are incorrect. Unique has an absolute meaning. Don't water it down.
- The proper phrase is "to nip it in the bud" not to "to nip it in the butt". It means to to stop something at an early stage. It comes from the idea of frost killing a flower before it blooms. The frost "nips" the bud of the flower.
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