The growing power of linguistic hypertrophy in present-day American English (in particular) can be measured inter alia by the incorrect rendering of fixed phrases, wherein the traditional form is replaced by a longer one. This is happening to the normative version of the expression the last straw, which is increasingly heard as the final straw (for instance, in a report by my namesake Ari Shapiro on today’s installment of the NPR program “All Things Considered”).

Recently I was waiting to pick up some laundry early in the morning at a cleaning establishment in Westwood, Calif. when an elderly gentleman came in and said to me “the early bird gathers the worm.” I couldn’t restrain myself and corrected him: “You mean ‘gets’ the worm.” He said nothing and looked at me with incredulity.

Note the greater length of gathers vis-à-vis gets.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO