"My Blonde"

In Quebecois French, the word "blonde" can mean "a girlfriend", irrespective of the woman's hair color. Once, when my sister had first started dating her boyfriend and her colloquial French of Quebec was still not good, she heard him talking on the phone. He was telling his friend about this blonde that he was dating and how amazing she was. My sister, whose hair is black, is no shrinking violet. As she listened to the conversation, she started getting enraged and began to imagine all kinds of horrors she was going to visit on the guy. It's a good thing he managed to explain this curious linguistic reality to her fast enough.

To Gift Or Not To Gift

It really really bugs me to hear people use nouns as verbs. Statements like "We gifted them a book" or "I birthed my son" make me want to cringe. Such verbal monstrosities are even more annoying to me than split infinitives or the ubiquitous "this is where we are AT", which I now hear even during faculty meetings. 

More often than not, people who torture English in this way don't speak any other language. I mean, if it's your only language, could you make a little effort to get it right? 

I'm very grumpy today.