English, no doubt, is a tricky language. And as it is not the mother tongue of most of the countries, some phrases tend to get lost in translation. So here are some phrases we use on a daily basis but never thought them to be incorrect.
1. ‘Return back/ Revert back/ Reply back’.
We use these English phrases almost everyday. But these are completely incorrect. Apparently ‘return, revert and reply’ inherently have the essence of back in them. Hence we do not need to add ‘back’ to them.
2. ‘Most essential’.
‘Essential’ itself is an expressive adjective of how much important something is, therefore it does not need qualifiers like ‘more’ or ‘most’.
3. ‘I personally feel’.
‘Personally’ is not required following ‘I’. This is one of the English phrases which is usually used by us casually. But it is grammatically incorrect, because it is quite evident that after writing ‘I’, whatever follows is your personal opinion.
4. ‘Most nastiest/ most happiest’.
I’m guessing you already know how incorrect is this. We have learnt this in our Grammar books under the chapter Degree. Let’s refresh our memories. Anything added with ‘est’ is already in the superlative form, so another superlative qualifier ‘most’ is unnecessary.
5. ‘Got off scotch-free’.
‘Scot’ and ‘scotch’ are often confused in these phrases. The correct word would be scot-free.
6. ‘Hair are long’.
First of all hair is an uncountable noun and it is a collective term which is treated as one single entity, hence we cannot put ‘are’ with it.
7. ‘First come, first serve’.
This is very incorrect English. The phrase is “First Come, First Served”. People often forget the ‘d’. The idea behind this is there is no appointment system, the one who arrives first gets served first.
8. ‘Giving an exam’.
It is one of the phrases which cannot get any wronger. ‘Giving an exam’ never existed. It is just something people made up on their own. It has always been ‘taking an exam’.
9. ‘Try and do it’.
Try to understand, this is a very incorrect English. You must have gotten zero in your exams if you wrote this. It must be ‘try to do it’.
10. ‘Nerve wrecking moment’.
Though the meanings of ‘wracking’ and ‘wrecking’ are almost same, in this context ‘wracking’ is more appropriate.
11. ‘On the other hand’.
Trust me I did not know this till now. So basically I was always making this mistake. This phrase has no meaning if you have not used ‘on one hand’ previously in the sentence.
12. ‘Tender hooks’.
This has seriously been mispronounced by people, or somehow just got lost in the process of translation. What it means is keeping you hooked to something exciting. But the phrase would have been tenterhooks.