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Language
MORE Words and Expressions You’re Getting Totally Wrong
Deep-seeded makes me grind my teeth into dust
Posts like this don’t make me popular, but I can’t help it. Some people think language is fluid and prescriptivism is evil, while some people believe words have dictionary definitions for a reason. Those in the latter camp are my people.
Just in time for me to stop being annoyed about the last set of misused words that was bothering me, more have popped up, like heads on hydra. Help me slay them.
Deep-seeded
I’ll start with the most egregious one. I hate it so much. For one thing, no one ever hyphenates it as they should when it appears before a noun, as it usually does.
I also hate it because I have trypophobia and seeds sometimes freak me out.
However, more than for any other reason, I hate it because it is just plain, flat-out wrong. The correct expression is deep-seated.
I’ll give you that deep-seeded sounds like could be right. Deeply rooted (you don’t typically need to hyphenate compound adjectives where the first word ends in a ‘y’) is correct if you want to go for that sort of language.
