A cow's opinion

"Is the cancer in your bladder or your prostrate?"

I'm sorry folks, but really . . . if you possess the body part, then you should bloody know how to prounounce it. I overheard a man ask that to his friend and I just think it is so pathetic.

Is there an equivalent for women? I can't think of one off the top of my head--the important part is that prostrate is actually a word, it's just doesn't mean what he thought it means.

Prostrate: 1) stretched out with face on the ground in adoration or submission; also : lying flat 2) completely overcome and lacking vitality, will, or power to rise (was prostrate from the heat) 3) trailing on the ground

Prostate: (gland) a firm partly muscular partly glandular body that is situated about the base of the mammalian male urethra and that secretes an alkaline viscid fluid which is a major constituent of the semen

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PROSTRATE CANCER, GENTLEMAN!

I'm still trying to figure out an equivalent for females. Breast and best is about the breast I can do. You wouldn't say you have "best cancer."

There so many examples of the misuse of words, but there are two coming to mind that I hear a LOT, and it just makes my armpit hair curl.

Taunt and taut.
Moot and mute.

These are four different words! They can not be used interchangeably.

I can not tell you how many times I've heard people substitute the word taunt for taut. The words do not sound the same, and their meanings are completely different. Taunt is similar to jeer. You might say: the cool kids were taunting the nerdy kid on the playground. Taut means to be tight, say in reference to a rope or to muscles: hearing words misprounced draws the noose taut around my neck in frustration.

Moot and mute are killers too. It's a moot point, not a mute point. A mute point would be a silent point. Mute is silence, quiet. Moot is irrelevancy, obsolete.

If you're going to mispronounce it, at least do it with flare like Joey from Friends. He doesn't realize there's a T on the end of the word, and says "It's a moo point." When asked to clarify what a moo point is, he explains "It's like a cow's opinion. It doesn't matter. It's moo."

All joking aside, I think that's actually a pretty brilliant definition of moot.

To the man that doesn't know how to pronounce the various bits of his own anatomy: when it comes to a person's prostrate, it's a mute point. The surgeons will do their breast.