Solecism

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Solecism

A solecism is a grammatical mistake or absurdity. The word solecism was originally used by the Greeks for mistakes in their language. Ancient Athenians considered the dialect of the inhabitants of their colony Soli

Soli, Cilicia

Soli was an ancient city and port in Cilicia, in present day Turkey, 11 km west of present day Mersin . It was a colony of Rhodes, founded c....
in Cilicia to be a corrupted form of their own pure Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
dialect, full of "solecisms".

Here are some examples of usages often regarded as solecisms in standard English:

What is considered a solecism in one register of a language may be acceptable usage in another.

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Soli, Cilicia

Attic Greek

"This is just between you and I" for "This is just between you and me." (hypercorrection
Hypercorrection

Hypercorrection is a linguistic phenomenon which may take any of the following forms:# an elaborate, Prescription and description based correction of common usage, often introduced in an attempt to avoid vulgarity or informality, that results in wording commonly considered clumsier than the usual, colloquialism;...
to avoid the common, non-standard "you and me" form in the subject of sentences while "me" is, nonetheless, the standard pronoun for the object of a preposition.)
"He ain't going nowhere" for "He isn't [or he's not] going anywhere." (dialect
Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
ic usage; see "ain't
Ain't

Ain't is a contraction originally used for "am not", but also used for "is not", "are not", "has not", or "have not" in the common vernacular....
")
"Whom ate the food?" for "Who ate the food?" (hypercorrection resulting from the perception that "whom
WHOM

WHOM is an United States radio station which airs an Adult Contemporary format. It transmits from atop Mount Washington in New Hampshire and has a broadcast area of 5 states and 2 Canadian provinces....
" is a formal version of "who")
"He's the person whom I believe is the fastest" for "He's the person who I believe is the fastest." (hypercorrection resulting from the perception that the relative pronoun is functioning as an object in the dependent clause when, in fact, it is a subject, with the predicate "is the fastest"; contrast "whom I believe to be the fastest," in which "whom" is the object of "I believe")
"Irregardless
Irregardless

Irregardless is a term meaning in spite of or anyway, that has caused controversy since it first appeared in the early twentieth century....
" for "regardless" (nonstandard neologism
Neologism

A neologism is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language . Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event....
from analogy with constructions like "irreverent," "irrespective," and "irrevocable," where the negative prefix in- changes to ir-).
"Substituting A for B" when the intended meaning is "substituting B for A" or "replacing A with B", ie. "removing A and putting B in its place".

What is considered a solecism in one register of a language may be acceptable usage in another. For example, "The world keeps turning for you and I" (10cc

10cc

10cc were an England art rock rock band who achieved their greatest commercial success in the 1970s. Initially comprising four musicians ? Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme ? who had written and recorded together for some three years, before assuming the ?10cc? name in 1972....
) is acceptable as a song lyric (see poetic license
Poetic License

The Poetic License is both a poem and a permissive software license BSD licenses license, originally based on the text of the MIT License and ISC license licenses....
) but is considered a solecism in standard English.

Note that a solecism is an error of syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
, while a barbarism
Barbarism (grammar)

Barbarism refers to a non-standard word, expression or pronunciation in a language. The term is little used by linguists today, because of its pejorative tone, and the fact that it is not clearly defined....
is an error of morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
.

Solecism

See also