I Shutter to Think.

One of my biggest pet peeves (behind slow-walkers and mystery-brakers) is when people screw up idioms. ...I don't think the similarity between idiom and idiot is coincidence.

Here are some choice ones, as heard in person:

• "I shutter to think!"
• "That's the last raw!"
• "Nip it in the butt!"
• "It's all geek to me!"
• "Don't look a grift horse in the mouth!"

I used to get very upset about things like this for several reasons, but mainly because it betrays that people just don't read enough anymore. Clearly, the people who used these bastardized idioms have never EVER (ever never neverev) seen them written down.

I'm also bothered by the fact that these changes (these terrible, nonsensical changes) will become permanent...It's how language evolves and changes, an accumulation of colloquialisms until the differences are too great to lump the old and the new together under one name.

The new English (or maybe we should just call it "American") will be filled with idioms that make no sense, all mumbled around KFC double-downs and Gatorade. No one will stop to reflect on the complete nonsense of "shuttering to think", or what constitutes a "raw" regardless of its place in an order.

One does not nip anything in the butt, unless one is a dog. But in defense of the ill read, I guess the general public just isn't as into horticulture as it used to be.

The Futurama writers were probably painfully accurate when they decided that in the year 3000 one axes a question.

I guess what I'm saying is: