Grammar and Syntax

 Pet Peeves

When it comes to written and verbal expression most of us have our pet peeves.  Here are a couple of ours:

1. The misuse of the adjective "historic".  The dictionary defines "historic" as follows: notable, renowned, famous, famed, memorable, epic.  A vast swathe of people, however, use the word in common parlance to mean something which has merely happened in the past.  In other words, they are confusing the adjective "historical" with "historic".  

For example, we read in the newspapers of "historic sexual abuse allegations", or "historic treaty claims" and the reference is simply to sexual abuse which happened a long time ago or treaty claims about injustices alleged to have occurred in the nineteenth century, not about something momentous.  "Historic" is too important an adjective to be thus abused and misused.