An unreasonable number of my friends and acquaintances are pregnant right now, which is why I must bring up a pet peeve of mine. In recent years it has become popular to say that a couple are pregnant. I hear expectant parents gleefully announce "we're pregnant!" and anxious grandparents divulge "our son and his wife are pregnant."
Men don't get pregnant. I appreciate the conotation of paternal involvement, although I fear that some of the "we" talk comes from a societal addiction to ever-politically-correct inclusivity. Regardless of the reason for the faulty plural, when it comes down to cravings, exhaustion, back pain, insomnia, weight gain and contractions--he's a spectator, and she's on her own. He might be a sympathetic, helpful, considerate and supportive spectator, but he's not pregnant.
For the record: I have no problem with "we're expecting," since men anticipate the births of their children.
Thanks for letting me blow off steam on this one, and I'm sorry if I stepped on any toes (which I kinda think I will). But, from my linguistically-oriented mind, "we're pregnant" doesn't make people sound smart.
So, do you have any word-based pet peeves?
9 years ago
6 comments:
No toes stepped on here! I can't stand it when people say that (especially now 8 and a half months into this gig...and as much as Ken is doing a wonderful job of doing as much as he can for me, he doesn't have the terrible pain to go along with it...AND he can drink wine...boo!!!).
Ken actually had to catch himself a couple times when he'd accidentally say it and clarify...'no, I mean GILLIAN is pregnant'. When you hear it so many times, it's hard not to pick up on it yourself.
My own personal peeves are when people pronounce 'sherbet' as 'sherbert', and also I wish that we could all learn to say 'raspberry' instead of 'razzberry'...the only reason being that I had no clue there was a 'P' in that word until college...and I lost a bet on it! And I'm a good speller...for real! How terrible is that!
Hey G--Who'd you make that bet with? See you next week!
It was Jill...I should have known better. :)
ok, so i hate when people say "valentimes day"...and "libary"...and it happens ALOT! ugh. Roby hates "supposebly"...and, of course, there is always the ever-incorrect usage of the word "ironic"...i don't even use the word now. alanis morisette ruined it for me.
i know i have a ton more...but i can't think of them right now. oh! i remember that Judy K hated when she said, "Thank you" and peeps would reply "no problem!" As if she was implying by her politeness that it was a problem to begin with. ha!
(and yes, i like to use .... incorrectly. you're not going to get on me about that, right? :)
Oh dear--I'm SURE that I said "no problem" to Judy hundreds of times. As a fellow ellipses over-user I can't complain. As you know, I'm also over-fond of hyphens. And now Scott is on my case to capitalize four letter prepositions (from,with) in titles. Apparently your years of harassing on the subject weren't enough!
I've already got another post semi-started and saved as a draft about two more of my word-peeves. So I'll be sharing them soon.
I keep saying "suppose-bly" aloud and I don't think I've heard it before. Is it a southern thing? A Philly thing? Did you mean that Roby dislikes "suppose-ably" when people mean "supposEDly"?
yeah, when people mean supposedly :)
Yes dear, any word that is four letters or more, whether or not it is a preposition, should be capitalized in a title...it's so good to hear that scott has taken over my harassment editing tasks...he he he.
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