Through her The Monday Peeve prompt, Paula Light invites us to vent, to let off some stream, to get something off our chests. This week, my peeve is with people who use the wrong word in their writings.
This is especially tough when it comes to homophones — words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have totally different meanings. Hey, I know I sometimes am guilty of it, too, perhaps typing “your” when I meant “you’re,” “there” when I should have used “their” or “they’re,” or “to,” when “two” or “too” would have been correct. But sometimes, when I see people use a totally wrong word in a sentence, it drives me nuts.
Now, let me say upfront that you might think this ruckus I’m kicking up with this peeve is a bit much and that the vitriol I’m expressing is atrocious given the relative insignificance of the offense. Be that as it may, when I saw that today’s Word of the Day prompt was the word “pique,” it reminded me of a sentence that one of my coworkers (back before I retired) put in a formal email to me. That email read:
“I knew your email would peak her attention.”
OUCH! Hey, it’s not that I’m a grammar Nazi or anything, but seriously, one does not “peak” one’s interest or attention. The correct word in that sentence should have been “pique,” and not “peak.” A “peak” is a topmost point, such as a mountain peak. “Peek” is to take a glance or a quick look. “Pique” is to upset or excite someone or to stimulate someone’s interest. It’s not rocket surgery or brain science, folks.
Okay, I’m over my pique. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
In addition to being written for Paula Light’s The Monday Peeve, this post is also written for these daily prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (ruckus), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (vitriol), Your Daily Word Prompt (atrocious), and Word of the Day Challenge (pique).
That irritates me two
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Nicely played. I no what you mean!
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Same hear, Fandango.
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Nice peak to the climatic moment
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Peeking attention??😄🤭
Loved your post.
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Thanks!
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This annoys me too and it even happens in news articles. People don’t seem to remember that a spell checker will only pick up incorrectly spelled words not incorrectly used ones. Just the other day I read one where it said that someone had ‘changed tact” when they meant tack.
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I almost did the same thing in a post I wrote the other day. At first I wrote that I was going to take a!“different tact,” but when I proofread it before hitting publish, I corrected it to read a “different tack.” Phew, I dodged a bullet on that one. 😉
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I don’t think news articles are proofread by humans very often these days.
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Yeah, probably not.
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Haha! It happens all the time. I try to catch all my mistakes and typos but they do slip out.
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This is one of my peeves, too. Especially when people spell the past tense of “to lead” as “lead” instead of “led.”
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Yeah, I see that a lot. Grrr!
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I like Peking duck.
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😂
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Good peace! 😂
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Ha! Good one, Leigha!
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