Mischievious Isn't a Word (And Yet Here We Are)

 I was watching a 20/20 interview when an investigative reporter confidently dropped the word “mischievious.”

Not mischievous — the real one. The bonus syllable version. The “buy one, get one free” pronunciation. And the worst part? Nobody flinched. Not the interviewer. Not the editors. Not the universe.

Which is how I know we’re officially living in the era of confidently wrong English being treated like a personality trait.  But it isn't a cute little personality quirk.

It’s not the language naturally changing — it’s the rest of us being told, “Stop being annoying. Just accept it.”  And it doesn't just stop with this one word.

“Accepted Vernacular” is just a fancy way to say “we gave up.”

We used to have a system:

Someone says something wrong. Someone corrects it. Everyone moves on

Now it’s:

Someone says something wrong. Enough people repeat it. It becomes “common.” And suddenly it’s rude to act like it’s wrong

At some point, the error stops being an error and starts being a choice.

And if you don’t accept the choice, you’re the problem. You’re the uptight one. You’re the villain in the story.

Not the phrase that makes no sense.

“I could care less” is the hill I will die on!

People confidently say “I could care less” when they mean they do not care at all.

Which is like saying:

“I am starving.”
“Oh wow, when was the last time you ate?”
“Two hours ago. I could eat less.”

If you could care less, then you still care.
You have room to care less.
There is emotional wiggle room left in the tank.

What you mean is couldn’t.
As in: “My caring has hit rock bottom. It cannot go lower. We are done here.”

But no — now it’s so common that we’re expected to just accept it as “a phrase people say.”

Not because it’s correct.
Not because it makes sense.
But because it’s so common.

We're not evolving, we're just lowering the bar—  and I think that’s what bothers me most.

It’s not that people misspeak sometimes. We all do. Everyone has a word they’ve been saying wrong since 2006 and only found out last week. That’s normal.

It’s that we’re now treating correction like it’s a hate crime.

Like the mere idea of saying, “Hey, just so you know…” is somehow worse than the phrase being wrong in the first place.

We’ve created a culture where: accuracy is “snobby,” clarity is “nitpicky,” and being correct is somehow less important than being confidently incorrect.

So now we just… move on.

We accept it.
We absorb it.
We watch the English language slowly become a group project where nobody proofreads, but everyone insists it’s fine.

And I guess it is fine.

It’s just also annoying.