"A genuine document," "a genuine surprise," and the like.
"The soldier was given a rifle." What was given is the rifle, not the soldier. "The house was given a coat (coating) of paint." Nothing can be "given" anything.
In this country goatee is frequently used for a tuft of beard on the point of the chin – what is sometimes called "an imperial," apparently because the late Emperor Napoleon III wore his beard so. His Majesty the Goat is graciously pleased to wear his beneath the chin.
If this is correct we should say, also, "got dead" for died; one expression is as good as the other.
This has gone out of good use, though in such compounded words as begotten and misbegotten it persists respectably.
"A gratuitous assertion." Gratuitous means without cost.
Used chiefly by newspaper reporters; as, "He was subjected to a grueling cross-examination." "It was grueling weather." Probably a corruption of grilling.
Eschew it; it is not English, is needless and bombastic. Leave it to those who call a political office a "chair." "Gubernatorial chair" is good enough for them. So is hanging.
This is not defensible as an idiom, as those who always used it before their attention was directed to it take the trouble to point out. It comes of such contractions as he'd for he would, I'd for I would. These clipped words are erroneously restored as "he had," "I had." So we have such monstrosities as "He had better beware," "I had better go."
"He hails from Chicago." This is sea speech, and comes from the custom of hailing passing ships. It will not do for serious discourse.
"I have got a good horse" directs attention rather to the act of getting than to the state of having, and represents the capture as recently completed.
A transposition of words hardly less surprising than (to the person most concerned) the mischance that it fails to describe. What is meant is heels over head.
"A healthy climate." "A healthy occupation." Only a living thing can be healthy.
In Genesis Adam's wife is called "an help meet for him," that is, fit for him. The ridiculous word appears to have had no other origin.
Hereafter means at some time in the future; henceforth, always in the future. The penitent who promises to be good hereafter commits himself to the performance of a single good act, not to a course of good conduct.
Moon here means month, so it is incorrect to say, "a week's honeymoon," or, "Their honeymoon lasted a year."
A singularly senseless and disagreeable word which, when used, as it commonly is, with reference to hippophilism, savors rather more of the spit than of the spirit.
We have no single word having the general yet limited meaning that this is sometimes used to express – a meaning corresponding to that of the word animals, as the word men would if it included women and children. But there is time enough to use two words.
A bell, or a curtain, is hung, but a man is hanged. Hung is the junior form of the participle, and is now used for everything but man. Perhaps it is our reverence for the custom of hanging men that sacredly preserves the elder form – as some, even, of the most zealous American spelling reformers still respect the u in Saviour.
To hurry is to hasten in a more or less disorderly manner. Hurry is misused, also, in another sense: "There is no hurry" – meaning, There is no reason for haste.
"It does no hurt." To be hurt is to feel pain, but one may be harmed without knowing it. To spank a child, or flout a fool, hurts without harming.
"I had no idea that it was so cold." "When he went abroad it was with no idea of remaining."
"He is closely identified with the temperance movement." Say, connected.
"Men of that ilk." This Scotch word has a narrowly limited and specific meaning. It relates to an ancestral estate having the same name as the person spoken of. Macdonald of that ilk means, Macdonald of Macdonald. The phrase quoted above is without meaning.
There is no such word as illy, for ill itself is an adverb.
The adjective is needless. Geometrically, every line is imaginary; its graphic representation is a mark. True the text-books say, draw a line, but in a mathematical sense the line already exists; the drawing only makes its course visible.
"He was put in jail." "He went in the house." A man may be in jail, or be in a house, but when the act of entrance – the movement of something from the outside to the inside of another thing – is related the correct word is into if the latter thing is named.
Inauguration implies some degree of formality and ceremony.