Solecism
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Look up solecism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
A solecism is a grammatical mistake or absurdity. The word was originally used by the Greeks for 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" (Greek: σολοικισμοί, soloikismoí; Sing.: σολοικισμός, soloikismós).
Here are some examples of usages often regarded as solecisms in standard English:
- "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 subject of sentences while "me" is, nonetheless, the standard pronoun for the object of a preposition)
- "He ain't going nowhere" for "He isn't [or "he's not"] going anywhere" (dialectic 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")
- "She can't hardly sleep" for "She can hardly sleep" (actually a double negative, as both "can't" and "hardly" have a negative meaning)
- "The issue is, is his attitude" for "The issue is his attitude" (see double copula)
- "Substituting A for B" when the intended meaning is "substituting B for A" or "replacing A with B", i.e. "removing A and putting B in its place."
What is considered a solecism in one register of a language might be acceptable usage in another. For example, "The world keeps turning for you and I" (10cc) may be more acceptable in a song (see poetic license) than in prose.
Note that a solecism is an error of syntax, while a barbarism is an error of morphology.
