"precedures" and "bullets"

[Steve Kl.]

On Mon, 28 Aug 2006, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

>  The careful enunciation - along with the 100,000 hits - suggests that
> this is a term of art.  But it may still be an established stupidism for
> "procedure."

To back up Page, I think it's unhelpful to call speech errors
"stupidisms".

It is extremely difficult to speak in at a conversational pace for an
extended period of time and not produce some slips of the tongue. I know
when I do radio shows, although I keep tabs on how I'm talking, I
invariably use "a" for "an" because I always get callers who say
sarcastically "I thought you were supposed to use 'an' before vowel
sounds" and then I challenge them to try to speak for half an hour without
making any mistakes whatsoever.

People like to "gotcha" linguists, but when you acknowledge that yes, you
did in fact misspeak, they're taken aback by the admission of such.

To call these slips of the tongues stupidisms, though, is needlessly
pejorative.

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