Gun terms that get misused or misspelled

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entropy said:
Like Bodark for Bois D'Arc? :D

If you are a Texan it's Boad-ark. :D



GUY-sell-ah.

See above.



Actually, it's LOY-poldt. Leupold is a German name, and 'eu' is pronounced 'oy' in German. as in 'Oy-ro' for.
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Actually I got the Loo-pold from watching a Leupold Company video. I would suspect that the Leupold business knows the correct way to say it. I certainly wouldn't tell someone they didn't know how to pronounce their name. My sur name is the same as that of a large US city and I have had to explain to someone numerous times that my name is spelled and pronounced exactly like it is. It is not a difficult name either.
 
I can always tell a Recenter when they call the city north of Lafayette Colorado Loo-ee-ville.

'Round hereabouts it's Lou-iss-ville.

https://www.mapquest.com/us/colorado/louisville-co-282040036

Most of my other irks have been covered already and over the years I've learned to let a lot of that stuff go, attributing it more to either spell checkers or regionalisms.

This one always gives me a laugh:

"Spell checkers are my worst enema."

Terry, 230RN
 
Tourists in NYC get confused with Houston St in Manhattan, locals pronounce it "house-ten", not like the TX city.

It's a misspelling of William Houstoun's name, a founding father.
 
I believe there are a couple of those ß s in the original Declaration, no?

I remember as a kid seeing them in Mom's old King James, too. I thought they were mißpellings.

Terry, 230RN
 
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Shivahasagun said:
For bdickens,

If you think Bespaßen is pronounced the way it looks that would be "Bes-spa-ben", and that isn't correct.
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I don't think, I know. And you are 100% wrong. Not even close.

The letter ß is not a b, it is a double s. The closest equivalent to the German SP sound in English is SHP.

bəˈʃpaːsn̩. Exactly like it is spelled.

You must have slept through your German class. This is the most absolute basic stuff.
 
Yes, I watched the link Legionnaire posted, and it probably was "Americanized" somewhere around WWI, a lot of German names were. In this case, the spelling stayed the same, pronunciation was changed to sound less German.
This does not change the fact that the correct pronunciation is LOY-polt. Das ist richtig.
 
I like people who get upset about people who use the word "pistol" to mean "any handgun"!

The word "pistol" had been around for a few centuries now. Just looking it up, it's apparently been around since 1570.

That's 452 years.

Historically, that means it was used to describe a handgun, period. In fact, it ALSO described a knife, as it originated from the Middle French word "pistolet", a word which originated about 20 years earlier which meant a small gun or knife.

As technology evolved, different types of pistols were created and different names were used to differentiate between them.

So "pistol" is actually an inclusive term which describes any handgun. Other terms, then, go on to further delineate what type of pistol, such as revolver, semi-auto, Derringer, single-shot breach loading, etc.
 
bdickens said:
Its pronounced just like its spelled. Like most of the world's languages, everything in German is written the same way it sounds.
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Except when it's not. My German teacher used to say that. Then she proceeded to teach us all the exceptions throughout the next two years.

On the OP. I try to educate myself on proper pronunciation. But I generally don't get up at arms about it.
Telling me you scope is a 3x9 will aggravate me a bit because a lot of folks don't add the objective measurement.
Most of it isn't worth the hair loss. I'm already halfway bald... But I have a glorious beard according to my nephew.
 
I had a bunch of spelling mnemonics drummed into my head as a kid, but I can only remember a couple of them. Most of them have resulted in automatic correct spelling without the mnemonics, through plain old usage. Right now, I recall these offhand:

There is an EEEk ! in cemetery.
There is A RAT in separate.
Gauge is spelled alphabetically, A, E, I, O, U, with A before U. (I made that one up myself.)

Und so weiter.

What bothers me still is in German, ie and ei words are pronounced as in the last letter: ei = "eye" and ie = "eee."
I always found that to be wierd in English. Kinda throws me when I read about a boat pulling into the peir.

And there's a member here whose name I believe is "Heir kommt die Sonne" which should be "Hier kommt die Sonne," I think. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, plural for the mouse, the digital graphical user interface (GUI). I had occasion to pack up a bunch of meeses that I intend to repair some day (hah!) and didn't know how to label the box with the plural for mouse. If I had two computers driven by mouses, would it be mice or mouses or meese or GUIs? I suppose I could pull a fast one and say I have a computer with a mouse, and by the way, another computer with a mouse. For the box, I could have labeled it "Bad mouse. Oh, and some more, too."

If there's a Chicago Style Manual item on this, let me know.

Terry, 230RN
 
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Site, as in nite sites. My boss would put that on hang tags. I'd write mine up as "night sights".
Then there is slang from certain groups: point, for hollow point. Beam for laser. Lots more of those.
 
The use of the term "minute of ..." has become so over used it has become aggravating. Minute of squirrel, minute of soda can, minute of apple, minute of whatever random target you're shooting at. What it really means is your rifle isn't very precise/accurate if the best it can group is the size of a squirrel or soda can.
 
Mal H said:
And there's the ever popular "muzzle break" used instead of "muzzle brake". I have asked some members how they get good groups if their muzzle is broken
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In general, that one bothers me. A "break" is not a device. Whether it's on your rifle or your car. So is your device broken or resting?


Colt/Colt's reminds me that if Jack Daniels ever made whiskey, it never really caught on like the whiskey Jack Daniel made...which is of course, Jack Daniel's Old #7.

A lot comes down to being able to understand. I try to use correct terminology when explaining "car stuff" to customers. Sometimes I have to dumb it down so as to not overwhelm them. Sometimes people have to do the same for me when explaining something I'm not that familiar with.
 
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"Minute of soda can..."

"What it really means is your rifle isn't very precise/accurate if the best it can group is the size of a squirrel or soda can."

I b'leeves the point of that was the gonne was satisfactorily accurate for that kind of target.

Besides, a 360 degree circle is stupid, let alone minutes of those degrees. "A minute of angle accuracy" should be stated as "0.0002908882 radian accuracy," which can be understood even on Arcturus IV since radians are universal.

"Arcturus".... get it? Arc turus?

I also b'leeve in a decimal clock with ten hour days. Right now it's 3.26 hours MDT here in Colorado. Don't want to convert that to Universal Time --not enough coffee yet this early.

I'm not signing this one so nobody will know who posted it.
 
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Howland937 said:
A lot comes down to being able to understand. I try to use correct terminology when explaining "car stuff" to customers. Sometimes I have to dumb it down so as to not overwhelm them. Sometimes people have to do the same for me when explaining something I'm not that familiar with.
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When talking to someone through an interpreter, standard procedure is to direct your conversation to the person you are speaking to, ignoring the interpreter. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to explain technical jargon to the interpreter in order to get the correct translation. I have had to do that many times in telephone contacts with a deaf customer, using a relay service,
 
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