THE English language is complex so it’s easy to make mistakes. But these mangled phrases are never acceptable:
A damp squid
It’s bad enough that no one has shown up to your 30th birthday party, but to make matters worse you’ve described the event as a ‘damp squid’. Cephalopods have nothing to do with the fact that you can’t make any friends, and the word you’re looking for is ‘squib’, a type of firework that doesn’t go bang when wet.
An escaped goat
A swing and a miss for the term ‘scapegoat’, which you’ve just embarrassingly used in a heated meeting at work whilst being blamed for the entire sales team underperforming. Expect to see ‘can’t use basic English’ written on the reference for the next job you’ll be looking for soon.
Carpet Demon
A valiant effort at carpe diem, which you struggle with because it’s in a different language, perhaps French or Dutch. You know it means you should enjoy life and have adventures, but you’re still perplexed as you’ve heard it translates as ‘seizure day’ which doesn’t sound like much fun.
Bite your nose to cut your face
Wrong on every conceivable level, this horribly mangled version of ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’ requires a lot of mental gymnastics to even attempt to decode. By the time the person you’re talking to has registered what you’ve just said, they’ve also registered you are a halfwit.
In lame man’s terms
The correct phrase is ‘in layman’s terms’, which means to explain in a way that is free of obscure technical words. This means that for your whole life you have been telling people you’re going to explain something to them slowly and clearly because they’re so f**king lame. You’re an idiot.
