HotelVitale wrote:puja21 wrote:Pickled Prunes wrote:There won't be any champing in POR while Scoot is their PG... but lots of chomping. Chomping all day!
Believe it or not, champing and chomping are both correct... The more you know!
Chomping is only correct in the same way that both "irregardless" and regardless are (now) correct; due to a preponderance of (mistaken) normalized usage ... eventually the error is added to Webster's.
I imagine one day the former (incorrect) for all of these will be deemed correct:
"could* care less" joining "couldn't care less"
"for all intensive* purposes" versus "for all intents & purposes"
"french* benefits" versus "fringe benefits"
in tote* versus "in tow"
It's the grammatical equivalent of surrender.
Lol no. Those are examples of people mishearing a totally different word or phrase and changing the meaning of the saying completely. 'Champing' is just an old version of the word that has now became 'chomping'--both meaning to chew or bite at something--and 'champing' has completely fallen out of use in English anywhere in the world.
So insisting on using 'champing' is insisting on using an older version word that we don't use, which is weird in and of itself. (Be like saying 'no you have to say 'fringe bienefit' since that's the word origin.') But in this case it also means that people can't understand what the phrase means, just sounds like random words to them (even if they get the gist of the expression). It's also not like 'champing at the bit' is some direct quote from Shakespeare or something that people know the original of, it's just an old phrase, no reason not to update it to like 19th century English.
i will concede you are more likely to confuse people who don't know about champing
But this is wrong:
"'Champing' is just an old version of the word that has now became 'chomping'-"
1) it's not "Old English" -- champing is still common 21st century parlance within equestrian, stabling etc... most people are just not in that world.
2) It's merely a coincidence that chomping sounds "similar" -- they do have different etymology/meanings. Champing is specifically impatient/restless chewing and chomp describes "noisy" chewing.
And the colloquialism is specifically restless anxiety, ergo "chomp" is wrong.
But chomp is a more commonly heard word and is misapplied by users of who aren't familiar with the other word or the origin. It "feels" right in the same way that "in tote" kind of makes sense and feels right.
This is also a bad reason to champion any mistake: "it also means that people can't understand what the phrase means"
Half the country says "real-it-ter" instead of "real-tour" and "sherbert" instead of "sure-bit" (sherbet).
There was a time when we demanded the ignorant to adapt.
And today we put obvious warnings on things like ammonia, bleach and paint reminding people "DO NOT DRINK'" and societies entertain frivolous lawsuits ... and most importantly facts are no longer facts.
We need to get back to the era of personal accountability -- force the masses to step it up
As a great comic said: You wanna drink paint? Do it. Have a Sherwin-Williams Christmas.