Common Sayings You May Be Saying Wrongly
- Blog
- Tuesday, 04 October 2016
- Language Line
Native English speakers don’t always speak very clearly and this could prove a problem if you are listening to them speak. This means that you may pick up common sayings with the wrong pronunciation without realizing they are wrong. The meanings of these misheard sayings will also puzzle the language learner. For example “deep-seated belief” (a belief held strongly) sometimes sounds in the untrained ear like “deep-seeded belief” (a belief deeply buried in the ground)!
The following are more common sayings said wrongly and their corrections:
| Incorrect | Correct | Meaning |
| Doggy-dog world | Dog-eat-dog world | A cruel, competitive world |
| Giving leadway | Giving headway | Giving somebody (figurative) room to do something |
| For all intensive purposes | For all intents and purposes | Seeming as if; looking as if |
| Beckon call | Beck and call | Ready to obey someone at a moment’s notice |
| Take it for granite | Take it for granted | to believe that something is true without first thinking about it or making sure that it is true |
| Mute point | Moot point | A debatable question, an issue open to argument; also, an irrelevant question, a matter of no importance |
| Fall by the waste side | Fall by the wayside | Fail to continue; drop out |
| Make an escape goat | Make a scapegoat | someone made to take the blame for something |
You may notice that these all idioms (common fixed sayings). Try to put them in sentences for really colloquial English!
As a fun exercise, give the wrong sayings to someone to see if they can guess what they should be!
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