PREPPY

"We regret for any inconvenience caused".

Does the sentence above look or sound correct to you?

The sentence above is an example of how Singaporeans like to add redundant prepositions to verbs. This entry reminds me of the lecture we had on 'leverage on'.

Other examples include:

Discuss about
Source for
Voice out
Request for

I did a quick google search on the phrase "voice out" and google shows that "voice out" is a Singaporean thing.

Google.com

If you noticed, the first link asked if "voice out" is correct. I read what people had to say and most of them said that it is incorrect and unnecessary.

Google.com.sg



Another example of redundant-ness is the case with colours. Singaporeans like to say things like red color, blue color when blue and red are already colours.

THE REAL MCCOY

My friend couldn't decide which brand of potato chips to buy at Cold Storage so she asked me for my opinion and i jokingly pointed at the brand below and said, "well, you should definitely buy the real mccoy shouldn't you!!" and she looked at me and said "nice meh? i've never heard of that brand before!".

My expression from :D turned to -_-".


So, it is safe to say that the Real McCoy though a brand of potato chips remained only a brand of potato chips for my friend. She probably doesn't know the real meaning of 'the real mccoy' so she wasn't lexically primed and hence, unaware of the pun and motivation in naming the brand such.

The meaning of 'The real McCoy" as wikipedia explains:

"The real McCoy" is an idiom used throughout much of the English-speaking world to mean "the real thing" or "the genuine article" e.g., "he's the real McCoy". It is a corruption of the Scots "The real MacKay", first recorded in 1856 as: "A drappie o’ the real MacKay," (A drop of the real MacKay), and this is widely accepted as the origin.^[1][2][3]

How it came to be "McCoy" is unclear – it is first recorded in this form in the US in 1908^[4] – and the phrase is the subject of numerous fanciful folk etymologies.

RAIN ON YOUR PARADE

My friend who just came back from London told me she was so tempted to buy Wellingtons when she was in Camden Market. But another friend didn't know what they were until we told her they were rain boots.



Wellingtons aren't new to me because I've read about them and seen them but it seems like this term is used mainly in the UK and NZ but not in SG which explains why my friend wasn't lexically primed so she didn't know what they were. And the term 'wellingtons' or 'wellies', unlike its US counterpart, 'rain boots', is not as semantically transparent which is probably why it requires some level of explanation.

And as dictionary.com, merriam-webster and longman show, the term 'wellingtons' is used mostly in the UK or NZ.

Dictionary.com
Wellington boot
n.
1. A boot extending to the top of the knee in front but cut low in back.
2. Chiefly British A waterproof boot of rubber or sometimes leather reaching to below the knee and worn in wet or muddy conditions.

Longman dictionary

wel‧ling‧ton also wellington boot [countable]
British English a rubber boot that stops your foot getting wet

Merriam-webster

Main Entry: Wel·ling·ton
Pronunciation: \ˈwe-liŋ-tən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Date: 1817

: a boot having a loose top with the front usually coming to or above the knee —usually used in plural

WALKING AMULET

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Everyone, get your copy of The Ridge this semester!



So, i grabbed myself a copy of The Ridge because I was bored while waiting for my friend and now i know why NUS students don't bother reading it. There was a huge stack on the rack outside of the arts canteen.

Anyway, the topic on CNY goodies caught my attention (as usual, my obsession with food.) so i flipped to the page and the first sentence read:

"Being an auspicious race of people, Chinese are big on believing that we are what we eat."

"OH MY GAWD! Did i just read it right?!?!" was the first thought which crossed my mind. So i re-read it but unfortunately, i read it right.

Everything in that sentence is so wrong but let's put the number of grammatical errors and the issue of essentialism aside. Instead, we shall just focus on the word 'auspicious'.

I didn't know I brought luck to people around me or that other Chinese people bring me luck.

Isn't the correct word to use 'superstitious'? Why then was the writer primed the word 'auspicious' instead of 'superstitious'? Perhaps both words are primed together when CNY is concerned and the writer got confused?

But shouldn't the editor know any better? Or was 'auspicious' lexically primed for him/her as well?

Quality control for The Ridge please.

RE-

Saw this 'poster' in one of the lifts in NUH advertising the upcoming seminars NUH is holding.



'Rejuvenate Intimacy' is the title of the workshop.

While using 'rejuvenate' isn't wrong since like revive and restore, it has the definition and idea of restoring something back to former state, i think this is where collocation comes into place.

To see if i was right and that most people do not use 'rejuvenate intimacy' together but rather 'revive' or 'restore', i did a google search and rejuvenate is not one of the options prompted.



'Restore intimacy' yielded 501,000 results
'Revive intimacy' yielded 237,000 results
'Rebuild intimacy' yielded 167,000 results

Rejuvenate intimacy on the other hand yielded 39,000 results and all of them had to do with some sex detox book -_-" so that is not counted!

So i guess other people indeed do not use 'rejuvenate intimacy' but rather, use 'restore intimacy' in a relationship.

However, unlike 'restore' or 'rebuild', 'rejuvenate' has the idea of making something young again and restoring something its youthful vigour. You know how they always talk about young people and their raging hormones? Maybe by using 'rejuvenating intimacy', the organisers want to connote the idea of getting couples who are tired of each other after being so long together to when they were young again.

FRIED ZITS

Was queuing up to buy food from this Taiwanese street snack stall and while waiting, I saw the URL of the company.



SNACKZIT?! SNACK ZIT?

No thanks. I'm not interested in eating zits! Imagine biting into a zit everytime you eat a fried mozzarella cheese stick or something and the cheese that oozes out reminds you of .....pus. EEW. i should stop being gross.

After going to the URL, i found out that the name of the company in English is actually Snackz It. Whose idea was it to name it Snackz It? The person probably did not realise how awful Snackz It looks together in its URL.

This reminds me of how people on IRC and MSN used to think it was cool to add 'z' or 'x' as a suffix to the last word of every sentence! I'm sure everyone is not unfamiliar to people who tYpE LiKe tHiS wOrZ.

BIG BIGGER BETTER

Was shopping in Sasa with my friend when I came across Maybelline's new mascara - Maybelline magnum volum' express mascara.



The first thing which came to mind was Magnum ice-cream. HAHA.

Anyway, I thought using 'magnum' to describe lashes is a bit awkward. So i did a quick dictionary check when i came home and the results from longman and merriam-webster only had to do with guns and volume of a bottle. Eg from longman:

mag‧num (noun) [countable]
1. a large bottle containing about 1.5 litres of wine, champagne etc
2. a powerful type of gun that you can use with one hand:
a .44 magnum

A search of the cobuild corpus revealed similar results.

However, it is not that I am unable to understand what 'magnum' means in '9x magnum lashes' despite it working as an adjective instead of a noun. It is not saying that the tube of mascara has 1.5litres worth of mascara but that their new formular is so powerful you'll get 9x longer, more volumunious lashes.

Oh and i just did a search on OED and it has an additional meaning of magnum which the m-w and longman don't. And this additional definition fits in nicely with the point Maybelline is trying to drive across.

Magnum
adj. N. Amer. [Apparently developing from magnum force n. at Compounds] Unusually large or powerful; huge.

1987 Random House Dict. 1158/1 Magnum, unusually great in power or size: a magnum spotlight; a magnum dosage. 1990 People 14 May 133/2 Beneath that Dresden china exterior..is an ardent feminist with a magnum intellect. 1994 Ontario Out of Doors Sept. 57/1 When you open the box, you can head directly into the field with a dozen magnum decoys (six drakes, six hens) in a handy totebag.

So yes, 9x larger, more powerful lashes which in this case powerful is used to mean flirtier longer lashes.