Missteps

Many reliable writing guides tell us to visualize all figures of speech. This is almost always good advice. It’s particularly good advice while reading a piece of bad writing. The infelicitous but visualized figure of speech is the one true joy of bad writing.

But sometimes this good advice fails. Each of the following is a surprisingly plausible misuse of the English language, made more so by being susceptible to visualization and/or other reasonable-sounding but incorrect explanations. French seems particularly to blame here, probably owing to its long history of abuse at the hands of both the Normans and their subject peoples.

Please take notes.

A “miscue” is a misstep. It’s from the theater, in which actors memorize their lines and blocking based on cues. A miscue is when an actor either doesn’t notice a cue or responds to it incorrectly. A “misqueue” is an incorrect usage, and thus a miscue, though one mustn’t use it as a substitute for the word miscue. Although it does visualize well — it suggests standing in the wrong line, which is annoying.

A “faux pas” is also a misstep, and also of French origin (faux pas = “false step”). A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, however, and particularly of French: I’ve seen people who know just this much French, write “faut pas” instead, thinking that the phrase comes from il ne faut pas, or “one mustn’t.” Plausible, but wrong.

“Without further ado” is the only proper usage. Ado is fuss. Adieu is French for good-bye, and one might imagine it working here. But it doesn’t.

“Hear, hear” is used to exhort people to hear something. “Here, here” is not an exhortation. It’s a declaration. Exhortations may be redundant, particularly exhortations to hear, which may after all go unheard. Declarations shouldn’t be redundant, as it is assumed that your hearers are already hearing.

Aversion is an emotion. One is “averse” to something one wishes strongly to avoid. One is never “adverse” to anything, except at law, and in the adversarial system. The adversarial system being often unpleasant, the mistake is understandable.

A “wont” is not a “want” in fancy dress. A “wont” is a custom or a habit. And yes, a habit can be a fancy dress, but in this case, it isn’t.

One does not “tow” a line, at least not when speaking of obedience to a directive. The phrase lends itself to error because it visualizes plausibly either way. The correct usage, however, is to toe the line, as when military personnel stand at attention — they place their toes on a line.

I invite others in the comments, or just chatter about whatever.