This Week: bon a petite/bon appétit + more food-related terms on the podcast

bon a petite/bon appétit 
The traditional French phrase to utter when you serve the food is bon appétit: “good appetite” (and pronounced “bone ah-puh-TEE”). It implies “may you enjoy your food with a good appetite.” (For some reason I think this is fine but get irritated when a waiter tells me “enjoy!”)

You see all sorts of misspellings of this phrase: “bon a petite,” “bon à petite,” “bon á petite,” “bona petite,” “bonapetite,” “bon a petit,” etc. All of these are bon à rien—good for nothing.


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This week on the podcast we pick up from last week and discuss more food-related terms: “What’s on the Menu? (Part 2).” Bon appétit!

This Week: bologna/baloney + other food-related terms on the podcast

bologna/baloney 
“Bologna” is the name of a city in Italy, pronounced “boh-LOAN-ya.” But although in English the sausage named after the city is spelled the same, it is pronounced “buh-LOAN-ee” and is often spelled “baloney.” Either spelling is acceptable for the sliced meat product.

Then there is the expression “a bunch of baloney.” “Baloney” in this case probably originated as a euphemism for “BS.” When it means “nonsense,” the standard spelling is “baloney.” People who write “bunch of bologna” are making a pun or are just being pretentious.


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This week on the podcast we discuss this entry and several other food-related terms: “What’s on the Menu? (Part 1).” It’s not a bunch of baloney.

This Week: Canadian geese/Canada geese + "Star Wars" on the podcast

Canadian geese/Canada geese
“Canadian geese” would be any old geese that happen to be in Canada. What people usually mean to refer to when they use this phrase is the specific species properly called “Canada geese.”


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This week on the podcast it’s more sci-fi movie talk with “Star Wars.”

This Week: core/corps/corpse + "Busted" on the podcast + Paul Brians is shown an interesting menu item

core/corps/corpse
Apples have cores. A corps is an organization, like the Peace Corps. A corpse is a dead body, a carcass.

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This week on the podcast it's all about “busted.”

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Paul Brians' latest blog post talks about an unfortunate error discovered by a reader.

This week: cut of tea/cup of tea + New Podcast Episode on the Language of 2001: A Space Odyssey

cut of tea/cup of tea
An astounding number of people write “cut of tea” when they mean “cup of tea,” especially in phrases like “not my cut of tea” instead of “not my cup of tea.” This saying is not about fine distinctions between different ways the tea’s been harvested; it just refers to the ordinary vessel from which you drink the stuff.

Is this mistake influenced by the expression “the cut of his jib” or is it just a goofy typo?

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While everyone is Ziggying and discussing “A Space Oddity,” this week on the podcast we are zaggying and talking about the language of Stanley Kubrick’s famous movie whose title served as inspiration for David Bowie.

This week: biweekly/semiweekly + New Podcast Episode + New Blog Post

biweekly/semiweekly
Technically, a biweekly meeting occurs every two weeks and a semiweekly one occurs twice a week; but so few people get this straight that your club is liable to disintegrate unless you avoid these words in the newsletter and stick with “every other week” or “twice weekly.” The same is true of “bimonthly” and “semimonthly,” though “biennial” and “semiannual” are less often confused with each other.


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Paul Brians' latest blog post looks at a strange sentence from The Washington Post.

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This week on the podcast it's the history of Common Errors in English Usage (Part 2), covering the origins of the Web site and book, including some glimpses into the early days of the World Wide Web.

This week: Ceasar/Caesar + New Podcast Episode—The History of Common Errors in English Usage

Ceasar/Caesar
Did you know that German “Kaiser” is derived from the Latin “Caesar” and is pronounced a lot more like it than the English version? We’re stuck with our illogical pronunciation, so we have to memorize the correct spelling. (The Russians messed up the pronunciation as thoroughly as the English, with their “Czar.”) Throughout America thousands of menus are littered with “Ceasar salads,” which should be “Caesar salads”—named after a restaurateur, not the Roman ruler (but they both spelled their names the same way).


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This week on the podcast it's the history of Common Errors in English Usage (Part 1), covering the origins of the Web site and book, including some glimpses into the early days of the World Wide Web.