Solecism sweepstakes

A solecism is something perceived as a grammatical mistake or absurdity, or even a simply non-standard usage. The word was originally used by the Greeks for what they perceived as mistakes in their language. Ancient Athenians considered the dialect of the inhabitants of their colony Soli in Cilicia to be a corrupted form of their own pure Attic dialect, full of "solecisms."

Here are some common solecisms.

• "This is just between you and I" for "This is just between you and me" (hypercorrection to avoid the common, nonstandard "you and me" form in the predicate of copulative sentences, despite the fact that "me" is the standard pronoun for the object of a preposition)
• "He ain't going nowhere" for "He isn't [or "he's not"] going anywhere" (dialectal usage; see "ain't")
• "He's the person whom I believe is the fastest" for "He's the person who I believe is the fastest" (hypercorrection resulting from the perception that "whom" is a formal version of "who" or that the relative pronoun is functioning as an object in the dependent clause when, in fact, it is a subject, with the predicate "is the fastest"; contrast "whom I believe to be the fastest," in which "whom" is the object of "I believe")
• "Irregardless" for "regardless" (nonstandard usage from analogy with constructions like "irreverent," "irrespective," and "irrevocable," where the negative prefix "in-" changes to "ir-")
• "The woman, she is here" for "The woman is here" (nonstandard usage with the double subject "she")

Score yourself one point for each one you hear today. Give yourself two points for each one you catch yourself using. Score 100 points for correcting your boss when he utters one.

Good luck with your job search!