Dialect variation. For me, saying “the car needs washed” sounds truly strange but millions and millions of people say it. You’re experiencing similar with this phrase.
I think you’d call this elision. Assume that the phrase is originally “the car needs to be washed” but you cut out “to be”, making it into a shorter form. It’s pretty common in language to shorten things to make it faster to speak. Think of the endless contractions in English or perhaps leaving part of a sentence completely unspoken because the content is easily assumed by the interlocutors.
Funny enough I learned about it in a linguistics class from a professor out of Michigan. Never heard the concept before and I think a lot of people had their minds blown.
But that’s just a ‘bone apple tea’ of “chest of drawers”? It’s not a correct term.
(I figured surely there’s an actual word for misheard terms being butchered in writing, but a quick search failed me so I went with the colloquial name.)
Dialect variation. For me, saying “the car needs washed” sounds truly strange but millions and millions of people say it. You’re experiencing similar with this phrase.
Is there a name/term for this abomination? I’ve only ever heard one person speak in that form (omitting “to be”), and it has haunted me ever since.
I think you’d call this elision. Assume that the phrase is originally “the car needs to be washed” but you cut out “to be”, making it into a shorter form. It’s pretty common in language to shorten things to make it faster to speak. Think of the endless contractions in English or perhaps leaving part of a sentence completely unspoken because the content is easily assumed by the interlocutors.
Worse, to me, is that there is a perfectly grammatically correct way to be just as brief.
Wrong:
Right:
And for a linguist the question is really whether there are native speakers who consider it correct. Here there are millions who say yes.
I believe you, I had just never heard it was “wrong” and it’s never stood out to me.
Funny enough I learned about it in a linguistics class from a professor out of Michigan. Never heard the concept before and I think a lot of people had their minds blown.
‘chest of draws’ was a weird one for me!
But that’s just a ‘bone apple tea’ of “chest of drawers”? It’s not a correct term.
(I figured surely there’s an actual word for misheard terms being butchered in writing, but a quick search failed me so I went with the colloquial name.)
There’s “malapropism” that is sort of close, but even that is more like accidentally combining parts of two idioms.
It was named after a character in a play that always did it.