www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/17-grammar-mistakes-that-are-technically-wrong-but-you-should-really-stop-worryi.html One of his 'corrections' is also incorrect, per MLA and Chicago Manual guidelines.
in in other words, if he wanted to say something to mean "souvenir" the character should have said "souvenir"?
Thingamabob and doohickey are interchangeable and can mean any object you don't know, or can't recall the name of. A geegaw is just an object that sits on the shelf and collects dust.
I grew up with "knickknack." My wife is from upper Michigan, they use "tchotchke" for this, which baffles me a bit, and they pronounce it "chotz-key."
And the Yiddish is why I don't understand the usage in that area of upper Michigan. It's very rural mostly people of French Canadian, Scandinavian, or English ancestry. Yiddish usages are far more common in the large cities in the East, like NYC area, NJ, and such.
How about the word "outing"? No issue here with the word itself, as "a brief stay or trip in the open", but baseball announcers are substituting "outing" for what they used to be called "appearance"-that is, when a pitcher enters a game, he makes an "appearance"; he "appears". Maybe the key part of the announcers' use of "outing" is the word "brief" in the Webster definition, meaning a relief pitcher knows up front his appearance will be brief. I'd hope to hear an announcer go back to saying a pitcher is making an "appearance". It would throw off those who use "outing". Hope I make sense here.
