British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

Brendan F · Strong Club Player

RE: The weird & wonderful world of English grammar...

indiana · Tennis legend

www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/rivalize

Not saying I think it sounds great, but hey ...

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
Here's one to upset you, SC:

Fery faces the winner of Grigor Dimitrov vs Matteo Berrettini in the fourth round on Monday. He added: "Yeah, I've practiced with both of them. I don't know either of them well. Obviously two very established players. They've had great careers. So it's going to be, yeah, a great challenge for me to play one of those guys.

"I'm looking forward to it. I feel confident in myself. I feel confident in the fact that I can rival-ize with them and put a good performance in."

You're welcome

Pathetic! I give up! evileye It's also irritating that he uses "yeah" every other word!

I take issue with "I've practiced", too...

JonH · Tennis legend

I hope this goes down well! Not my work, its the person at the bottom of the text

A grammar book walks into a bar

* An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

* A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a ****tail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

* A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

* An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

* Two quotation marks walk into a bar.

* A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intents and purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

* Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

* A question mark walks into a bar?

* A non sequitur walks into a bar.
In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

* Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

* A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

* A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

* Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

* A synonym strolls into a tavern.

* At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

* A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

* Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

* A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

* An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

* The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

* A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

* The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

* A dyslexic walks into a bra.

* A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

* A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

* A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

* A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony .

Jill Thomas Doyle

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

From today's Metro:

Teenage TikTok slang: it's often just a load of old cobblers...

Jessica Lindsay

Younger generations have always coined their own era-defining slang, leaving parents struggling to keep up.

Thanks to social media, the teen lexicon is now moving faster than ever - with a US study finding new expressions 'rise to popularity, saturate the vernacular and become obsolete at the speed of TikTok'. 'For parents, it can feel like [sic] the dictionary changes every week,' said trends expert Madeline Enos at language learning app, Preply. But if you're tearing your hair out trying to translate your child, never fear - we've got the 411 (as Millennials & GenXers among us would say) on 2026's top terms.

Quiet on the creek

Since rapper Saucy Santana coined Quiet On The Creek, the phrase has 'exploded' on TikTok, Ms Enos said. Videos have been posted 'deliberately refusing to explain it, making it even more appealing as an inside joke'. Essentially, it is instructing someone to keep something secret or stay discreet.

Crash out

No, they're not about to go to sleep. 'It describes someone who's about to lose their temper, overreact or completely spiral emotionally,' Ms Enos said. The phrase is thought to have originated from African American slang a decade ago and made its way to the vocabularies of UK youngsters, replacing tantrum, meltdown and hissy fit.

Corny on the bob, off the bob

One of TikTok's oddest phrases is used to call out someone who's acting differently, depending on who's around. 'Like many viral sayings, people repeat it simply because it sounds funny.' For once, this piece of slang is inoffensive and stems from TikToker Patty Miller calling sweetcorn 'corny on the bob'.

I had to look up "411", but I'm not a millennial or a GenXer!

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Social media had several posts this morning about some American guy on a radio call-in show calling Trump a 'chode'

This was a completely new one on me ....

JonH · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
Social media had several posts this morning about some American guy on a radio call-in show calling Trump a 'chode'

This was a completely new one on me ....

My kids (24 and 28) use it. Chode has a ruder meaning I won't repeat here but in this context is used as a generalised insult for an obnoxious or contemptible person (similar to calling someone a jerk or a loser) - I think it feels it was used appropriately to me!

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

JonH wrote:
Coup Droit wrote:
Social media had several posts this morning about some American guy on a radio call-in show calling Trump a 'chode'

This was a completely new one on me ....
My kids (24 and 28) use it. Chode has a ruder meaning I won't repeat here but in this context is used as a generalised insult for an obnoxious or contemptible person (similar to calling someone a jerk or a loser) - I think it feels it was used appropriately to me!

I think the male anatomy part was also relevant - well, for Trump, it would be, wouldn't it? biggrin

But, yep, you live and learn .....

JonH · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
JonH wrote:
Coup Droit wrote:
Social media had several posts this morning about some American guy on a radio call-in show calling Trump a 'chode'

This was a completely new one on me ....
My kids (24 and 28) use it. Chode has a ruder meaning I won't repeat here but in this context is used as a generalised insult for an obnoxious or contemptible person (similar to calling someone a jerk or a loser) - I think it feels it was used appropriately to me!
I think the male anatomy part was also relevant - well, for Trump, it would be, wouldn't it?
But, yep, you live and learn .....

biggrin

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Here's a little gem from today's Metro:

A recent social media trend, where smartw@tch users share the tan lines left on their wrists after training outdoors, has birthed a new term for summer 2026: watch rot.

An unfathomable social media trend & a journo (Jessica Lindsay, the paper's so-called "Assistant Lifestyle Editor") too bloody lazy to say "given rise to"!

christ · Challenger qualifying

I suppose neologism is unsuitable for public consumption?