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Pop Culture dictionary

grammar nazi

or grammar Nazi 摆听gram-er naht-see ]

What is a grammar nazi?

“It’s not ‘me and Billy.’ It’s ‘Billy and I,'” so scolds the grammar nazi.听A grammar nazi is a pedant who compulsively criticizes or corrects people’s grammar mistakes, typos, misspellings, and other errors in speech or writing.听

Related words

feminazi, doggo, Godwin鈥檚 law

Where does grammar nazi come from?

Nazis need no introduction: they were the German government and military who slaughtered over six millions Jews during World War II.

A nazi, especially as written in lowercase,聽became a figure of speech for anyone seen as extremely authoritarian. This use of nazi dates back to at least the 1950鈥60s, with self-styled聽surf nazis聽admitting their fanaticism for the waves.听A grammar nazi聽is obsessively strict about formal rules of “grammar”鈥攖ypically the little, often arbitrary stuff that a schoolmarm would correct a pupil for, like ending a sentence with a preposition. (You can totally do that, folks.) The phrase is recorded on a peeves-themed Usenet forum as early as 1990, five years before the TV sitcom聽厂别颈苍蹿别濒诲听featured its domineering Soup Nazi聽character.

The irony about grammar nazis is that many of the “rules” they like to impose on people are just flat-out bogus. Like splitting infinitives (e.g., to boldly go). This “rule” came into force when English grammarians were just trying to make the language more like Latin, viewed as a more perfect tongue. The thing is, it’s just impossible to split infinitives in Latin, because they are always one word (e.g., 补尘腻谤别 is “to love”).

Grammar nazis are not to be confused with editors and copyeditors, though some of them may occasionally fancy themselves as grammar nazis. Grammar nazis also ignore the fact that Standard English is just one register of English, with other forms just as equally complex and valid, e.g., Black English or Appalachian English.听This means they confuse a popular sense of so-called good/proper grammar (rules about what’s considered formal, good speaking, and writing) with linguistic grammar, which concerns the deeper structure of language. This means they may also be exhibiting some racism or classism.

Still, they persist.听In 2016, writer, designer, and musician Reese Lansangan released the song 鈥淕rammar Nazi鈥 about a woman upset with her love interest’s grammar.听It went viral and is even used to teach English in Thailand.

Examples of grammar nazi

Isn't it funny how if you correct a troll's spelling you get called a grammar nazi, but if you call and actual nazi a nazi, you get suspended for a day?
@Billablog, August 17, 2018
You probably wouldn鈥檛 call yourself a grammar serial killer or a grammar terrorist or say that you鈥檙e part of grammar ISIS, so don鈥檛 call yourself a grammar Nazi.
Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl, August 17, 2017
So I used to call myself a "grammar nazi" and I so regret it. So now I do my best to educate people that "proper grammar" is a myth and that grammar is subjective based on region, race, and class. Now I guess I'm a Grammar Anarchist and I want a t-shirt for it.
@EmiMonster, August 20, 2018
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Who uses grammar nazi?

Nobody likes a grammar nazi …

… except for grammar nazis.

People generally find them irritating because they make a point of calling out small errors that are usually done by mistake and in a way that distracts from the larger substance of the content.

The mid-2010s saw the rise of white supremacists groups who’ve variously identified with Nazism. Not cool. So, if you insist on being such a pedant, maybe call yourself grammar police instead of feeding the trolls? In an age of rising far-right nationalism around the world, the original senses of the word Nazi (and fascist, for that matter) have taken on renewed urgency in culture and politics.

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Note

This is not meant to be a formal definition of grammar nazi like most terms we define on 亚洲网紅露点, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of grammar nazi that will help our users expand their word mastery.