Indeed, I have even been known to start and end sentences with prepositions and on occasion have even split an infinitive (although I have guiltily made compensatory sacrifices at the Altar of Grammatical Correctness shortly thereafter - as I will have to do again, it seems, and quite soon).
But just occasionally, along comes an example of mangled English which makes me either gasp or laugh out loud. And today, one such gem graced my inbox. In fact, it was such an irresistable specimen that my inner Mischievous Elf was awakened and stormed into action without my Conscious Mind having a chance to put on the brakes of decorum.
The offending word was "Circularise", which I don't think is a word anyway. At least not on this side of the Atlantic, and on the other side, it would almost certainly have been spelled with the obligatory Z.
So, not only a non-word, but an mis-spelled non-word Americanism. Well, alright, no problem. I have completely got over myself when reading American English. It is, after all, a foreign language that just happens to look and sound like ours for quite a lot of the time. Took me a few decades to get to that acknowledgement, but I'm there now and enjoying the guilty peace of acceptance.
But when applying what I consider a basic rule of grammar (so basic, and learned so long ago, that I could not actually quote the rule if you paid me in bullion) when I see "ise" (or "ize") on the end of a word, I think along the lines of "make into whatever the rest of the word suggests."
So, to me, "Circularise" means, "make into a circle," when in fact, what the sender actually meant was "Circulate," i.e. pass around.
I couldn't help myself. Mischievous Elf had already made a screenshot of the offending article, put it into Photoshop and this was the result, which Elfy-Boy had returned to the sender before Conscious Mind could utter so much as a disapproving tut...
Yes, well. It amused me for a few minutes anyway.
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