25. You say: processees
What you mean: processes, with last two syllables rhyming with "dresses"
Why you like this barbarism: You know that the plural of crisis is crises and that the
plural of thesis is theses, with the last syllable pronounced "sees" in both cases. So why not
processees?
Why you are wrong: You haven't studied any Greek or Latin and you fail to realize that crisis and
thesis are Greek words that have kept their Greek plurals but that process, an anglicized word of
Latin origin, is not one.
24. You say: hors d'oeurve.
What you mean: hors d'oeuvre
Why you like this barbarism: To you the sequence of consonants -vr- sounds strange, and you
can't think of any other English word that ends in -vre.
Why you are wrong: Because the term is hors d'oeuvre, not hors d'oeurve.
23. You say: Goerthe, with a distinctly pronounced Canadian "r".
What you mean: Goethe, with both the "oe" and the final "e" pronounced something like the "e" in the
English word "the"
Why you like this barbarism: You haven't studied any German, and you actually checked the pronunciation
of this name in a dictionary of
biography, where you found Ger-tuh.
Why you are wrong: Your dictionary of biography was from England, where the final "r" in a syllable
not followed by a vowel is not pronounced. It never occurred to the author of your dictionary that some Canadian
like you might pronounce this name with a Canadian "r"!
22. You say: The announcement was made to whomever would listen (A favourite of national
journalists who want to sound sophisticated!)
What you mean: The announcement was made to whoever would listen.
Why you like this barbarism: You really want to speak correctly, and you know that in careful English
one says To whom are they listening?, not To who are they listening?
Why you are wrong: You have failed to identify the object of the preposition to. It is not
whomever, but the whole clause whoever would listen. The word whoever here is not an
object, but the subject of the verb would.
21. You say: We will be airborne momentarily.
What you mean (hopefully): We will be airborne in a moment.
Why you like this barbarism: You are a flight attendant or airline pilot, and you think
momentarily
sounds more official than in a moment.
Why you are wrong: The adjective momentary means "lasting only a moment" (Oxford Dictionary of
Current English), and the adverb momentarily means "for only a moment" (as in He lost
consciousness momentarily). If your airplane is airborne
momentarily, it will come crashing to the ground after being aloft for only a moment.