So I was sitting in class today and all the sudden...
- Thread starter Vintage
- Start date
I think the hurdle you have to get over is this Honey Badger shit... the UK Badgers are less mental and more like... big smelly rabbits that just get aggro when you threaten their babies. Which, IMHO, makes it all the funnier. They usually stay well away from people (even half-people)
He's bound to have been trying to fuck them...
He's bound to have been trying to fuck them...
Last edited:
Try again.
Better.
The phrase you're looking for is "all of a sudden".
all of a sudden - definition of all of a sudden by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.
Put simply, the idiom is "all of a sudden," not "all of the sudden." That may be all you need from me on this matter, so if it is, feel free to click on out of here.
Most of you probably don't make this error, but I know you have seen it and heard it. What surprises me is not only how often I encounter this butchered idiom, but where I encounter it. I have read it in papers by graduate students in English, and I have heard it from the mouths of pretentious and pedantic newscasters and talking-head pundits on television.
It is difficult for young people to learn the proper forms when so much of the language they hear comes from the mass media, and the mass media so regularly offer up the wrong forms.
Even those young people who read are likely to do much of their reading in mass circulation newspapers and magazines. Unfortunately, those who write for such publications are often not well-versed in matters of grammar and usage, and even those who edit their writings--if indeed much editing is done at all, which I am beginning to doubt--may not be quite as knowledgeable in those areas as we might wish.
"All of a sudden" is an idiom. There is no logical or grammatical reason why we say "all of a sudden" rather than "all of the sudden." It's just that, until recently at least, no native speaker of English would say "all of the sudden," just as no native speaker of English would say "She was hit with a car."
True, idioms are shaped by widespread usage, so that if enough people over a long enough period of time say "all of the sudden," eventually that will become the preferred idiom, and someone many years hence will write an article deploring the fact that some benighted speakers and writers don't know any better than to say "all of a sudden."
But that day has not yet arrived, and until it does, the proper phrasing remains "all of a sudden," and those who use "all of the sudden" will be marking themselves as imperfectly educated, or at the very least as careless in their use of language.
Most of you probably don't make this error, but I know you have seen it and heard it. What surprises me is not only how often I encounter this butchered idiom, but where I encounter it. I have read it in papers by graduate students in English, and I have heard it from the mouths of pretentious and pedantic newscasters and talking-head pundits on television.
It is difficult for young people to learn the proper forms when so much of the language they hear comes from the mass media, and the mass media so regularly offer up the wrong forms.
Even those young people who read are likely to do much of their reading in mass circulation newspapers and magazines. Unfortunately, those who write for such publications are often not well-versed in matters of grammar and usage, and even those who edit their writings--if indeed much editing is done at all, which I am beginning to doubt--may not be quite as knowledgeable in those areas as we might wish.
"All of a sudden" is an idiom. There is no logical or grammatical reason why we say "all of a sudden" rather than "all of the sudden." It's just that, until recently at least, no native speaker of English would say "all of the sudden," just as no native speaker of English would say "She was hit with a car."
True, idioms are shaped by widespread usage, so that if enough people over a long enough period of time say "all of the sudden," eventually that will become the preferred idiom, and someone many years hence will write an article deploring the fact that some benighted speakers and writers don't know any better than to say "all of a sudden."
But that day has not yet arrived, and until it does, the proper phrasing remains "all of a sudden," and those who use "all of the sudden" will be marking themselves as imperfectly educated, or at the very least as careless in their use of language.
one of my coworkers said "pacifically" in an email once
I started sending her emails that used the phrase "atlantically". I don't think she ever got the joke.