I have spoken before of what I call “linguistic speed bumps”: egregious grammatical and/or spelling errors which interrupt the flow of reading (and which, in my case, cause a WTF? Moment).
Here’s one that never fails to set my teeth on edge, and I saw it only yesterday:
“None of this is to say that Trump is a shoe-in come November.”
“Shoe-in”? What the fuck does that mean? That somebody’s going to kick him into office?
The expression comes from the verb “to shoo” (usher gently) — one shoos away a goose, or puppy, when one wants it to move away. To “shoo” somebody into office (as in the above situation) means that his victory is assured, and requires only a gentle nudge to take effect — in other words, it’s an expected outcome.
“Shoe-in” doesn’t mean anything at all; the writer might as well have said “show in” or “schwing in” for all the sense it makes. And just as the last time I blew up about it, this bullshit was printed by The Federalist, which one would think might edit their writers’ input, but clearly does not.
I know: “spell-check” is at fault. [20,000-word rant deleted]
Where did I put that flamethrower?