James Baquet

    Mark and his classmate Ming continue chatting in the common room of their dorm.

    Ming: Hi, Mark. Can you help me with more of those misheard words?

    Mark: Oh, yeah, the ones where you wrote them the way they sounded to you?

    Ming: Yes. I have to finish correcting my paper and give it to my teacher tomorrow.

    Mark: No problem. Let’s see the next one. “Next, let’s take a sneak peak at some of the problems in customer service.” Uh-huh. You spelled “peek” wrong.

    Ming: Sorry?

    Mark: P-e-a-k is like the top of a mountain. You wanted p-e-e-k, which is a sort of secret look at something.

    Ming: Oh, like the children’s game “peek-a-boo,” where you cover your face and show it to the child suddenly.

    Mark: Yes. And they laugh like crazy!

    Ming: Okay.

    Mark: By the way, there’s another word that sounds the same: pique, p-i-q-u-e.

    Ming: What does that mean?

    Mark: It’s a little like the word “whet” that we talked about before. It means to stimulate or increase something.

    Ming: Ah. I think I’ve heard that in the phrase, “to pique someone’s interest.”

    Mark: Yes, that’s right.

    Ming: Okay, got it. What else did I do wrong?

    Mark: Don’t be discouraged, Ming! Even native English speakers make these mistakes!

    Ming: If you say so.

    Mark: You wrote, “Being yelled at by customers is a shoe-in for the worst experience an employee can have.”

    Ming: And?

    Mark: Believe it or not, this should be s-h-o-o, shoo-in, not s-h-o-e like footwear.

    Ming: Really?

    Mark: Yup. To “shoo” something is to chase it away —

    Ming: Like shooing a fly out of the house.

    Mark: Yup. But also, it was used to describe horses being encouraged to cross the finish line. Maybe they said, “He ran like he was shooed in.”

    Ming: And then the idiom developed: “To be a shoo-in.” That makes sense.

    Mark: Right. A “shoo-in” is something like a “sure winner,” or the thing that everyone expects.

    Ming: And certainly no one likes being yelled at.

    Mark: I know I don’t! Next, you say a manager should “hone in” on the most common complaints his customers make.

    Ming: And that’s wrong?

    Mark: Sorry, yeah. It should be “home in.”

    Ming: What does that mean?

    Mark: It means to improve your aim, to become better at hitting a target.

    Ming: Like the target is “home?”

    Mark: Sort of. To “hone,” on the other hand, means to sharpen —

    Ming: Again!

    Mark: Yes, words meaning “sharpen” keep coming up. Anyway, adding “in” after the word “hone” doesn’t make any sense.

    Ming: So you can hone your customer service by homing in on the common complaints.

    Mark: Good one!

    Ming: Once again, I owe you, Mark.

    Mark: Please! Think nothing of it!