Common sayings that are wrong or butchered

[Torvy]

What is the plural of bison and buffalo?

Edit: Had to look it up. Buffalo can be the singular or plural form and buffaloes is also correct and bisons is the plural of bison. JasperFrank has it right.

Bison is usually the plural of bison, but bisons is also used. My spell checker flagged bisons.

What's the Plural of Bison?

The plural and singular of bison are the same: both are bison.

www.grammarflex.com

 

[bcp]

You can't roller skate in a BISON herd?

Bruce

 

[goeduck]

Don't let the bed bugs fight

 

[thepumpguysc]

How about: hose pipe..??
Makes me cringe just typing it..

 

[Helogabals]

How about cement and concrete. Cement is an ingredient in concrete.

For me as for not native English homonyms are mess. "concrete" is one of first which comes in my head when asked about those words
For concrete we have "beton". That is actually German word and somehow I like how it sounds. Solid

In our language there are a lot of those homonyms either. Like we dont have enough words Most common mistake is with word "laiks". That means either "time" either "weather". I have noticed people which learns Latvian makes mistake with that very often

And from my professional life - as we do productivity calculations for furniture fabricants we are rooting our mathematics in cycles / min. = pieces / min.
In Latvian "piece" = "detaļa". "detaļa" is very "powerful word, it can be a single piece of some complex item or spare part whatever. And everybody, literary EVERYBODY of my customers, when talking in English about machine productivity is talking about "details per minute". LOL

And more fun thing is that "detaļa" is homonym. Guess what is other meaning - yeah it is "detail"

At least when talking in English about spares we speak correctly - "spare parts" not "spare details" In Latvian it would be "rezerves detaļa" - somehow tempting

 

[Truckerger]

Take some time and watch the movie Idiocracy. If you’re looking for a language wrecker, that’s it.

 

[jjeff]

How about cement and concrete. Cement is an ingredient in concrete.

1st pic is a cement truck used for bulk transport of cement to batch plants 2nd is a older school rear discharge concrete truck, can't imagine the reaction if you ordered a hundred yards of "cement" and the 1st picture showed up to your job site .

 

[Jim Shooz]

But your concrete truck is not made of concrete.

 

[NHBX]

And a wood stove is not made of wood.

 

[reb]

I was in my teens before I realized a chest of drawers wasn't a "chester drawers."