SOLECISM

In prescriptive linguistics, a 'solecism' is a grammatical mistake or absurdity. Some examples of usages often regarded as solecisms in standard English are:

★ "This is just between you and 'I'" for "This is just between you and 'me'." (hypercorrection to avoid the common, non-standard "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 'no'where" for "He 'isn't' [or he's not] going 'any'where." (dialectic usage; see "ain't")

★ "'Whom' ate the food?" for "'Who' ate the food?" (hypercorrection resulting from the perception that "whom" is a formal version of "who")

★ "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 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")
What is considered a solecism in one modality of a language may be acceptable usage in another. For example, "The world keeps turning for you and I" (10cc) is acceptable as a song lyric (''see poetic license'') but is considered a solecism in standard English. Rejecting convention in favor of consensus, modern descriptive linguistics generally dismisses the notion of solecisms, concentrating on how language ''is'' used, rather than how it ''ought'' to be used.
Note that a ''solecism'' is an error of syntax, while a ''barbarism'' is an error of morphology.

Contents

See also

See also

★ Corruption (grammar)

★ Disputed English grammar

★ Fowler's Modern English Usage

★ Prescription and description

★ Soli, Cilicia