You can minister to someone by administering first aid. Note how the “ad” in “administer” resembles “aid” in order to remember the correct form of the latter phrase. “Minister” as a verb always requires “to” following it.
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People who avoid redundancies tend to object to the extremely popular phrase “added bonus” because a bonus is already something additional. Speakers who use this phrase probably think of “bonus” as meaning something vaguely like “benefit.” The phrase is so common that it’s unlikely to cause you real problems.
More people frown on the similarly redundant “and plus”: “I was fired, and plus I never got my last paycheck.” Just say “and” or “plus.”
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You can adopt a child or a custom or a law; in all of these cases you are making the object of the adoption your own, accepting it. If you adapt something, however, you are changing it.
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Do you find beer nuts addicting or addictive? “Addicting” is a perfectly legitimate word, but much less common than “addictive,” and some people will scowl at you if you use it.
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Seeing how often ad nauseam is misspelled makes some people want to throw up. English writers also often mistakenly half-translate the phrase as ad nausea.
This Latin phrase comes from a term in logic, the argumentum ad nauseam, in which debaters wear out the opposition by just repeating arguments until they get sick of the whole thing and give in.
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“In actual fact” is an unnecessarily complicated way of saying “actually.”
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“Actionable” is a technical term referring to something that provides grounds for a legal action or lawsuit. People in the business world have begun using it as a fancy synonym for “doable” or “feasible.” This is both pretentious and confusing.
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The chicken may have crossed the road, but did so by walking across it.
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One unusual use of the apostrophe is in plural acronyms, like “ICBM’s” “NGO’s” and “CD’s”. Since this pattern violates the rule that apostrophes are not used before an S indicating a plural, many people object to it. It is also perfectly legitimate to write “CDs,” etc. See also “50’s.” But the use of apostrophes with initialisms like “learn your ABC’s and “mind your P’s and Q’s” is now so universal as to be acceptable in almost any context.
Note that “acronym” was used originally only to label pronounceable abbreviations like “NATO,” but is now generally applied to all sorts of initialisms. Be aware that some people consider this extended definition of “acronym” to be an error.
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