Anyone who has edited copy has pet peeves. “Ironically.” Split infinitives. “Stamping ground vs. stomping ground” and “gauntlet” vs. “gantlet.” Well, and “pet peeves” is more than a little worn, isn’t it?

Many of these peeves we editors share. Some are primarily personal.

One of mine:

The reckless use of the word “surreal” — a back-formation of “surrealism” — by people in sports.

If I hear one more dunderhead jock talk about how a rally from a two-run deficit was “surreal” … well, it would be about the 10,000th time I’ve heard  it.

I have listened to thousands of professional athletes, and I am convinced not 1 percent of them know what “surreal” really means or has any notion what surrealism is about.

First, let’s look it up:

Since the word “surreal” is thought to come from “surrealism” let’s check the definition of the latter.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “surrealism” is … “the principles, ideals or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations.”

Apparently, the word “surrealism” was coined in Paris around 1917, became the name of a cultural art movement in the 1920s … and now has been appropriated by bad writers and dopey athletes attempting to sound more intelligent than they are.

What athletes ought to be saying is that this or that workaday sports situation is “unreal.” (But why stop with a perfectly good word when you can use a sound-alike often confused with unreal that its users hope might confer a triple-digit IQ?)

You probably could do a web search for any athlete you know and the word “surreal” and get scads of hits. (I just tried “Pete Carroll Seahawks surreal” — and got 24,400 hits.)

A few I have seen in the past few days:

Colby Lewis of the Texas Rangers, on playing in the American League Championship Series after playing in Japan for two years: “It’s kind of surreal.”

C.J. Wilson of those same Rangers, on watching his team blow a 5-0 lead to the Yankees: “We were all kind of like pacing the dugout because it was just kind of surreal, in a way.”

Roy Halladay of the Phillies, after his no-hitter last week against the Reds: “It’s surreal, it really is.”

Given the definition of surrealism, above, do any of these situations seem to measure up?

No. The world the jocks want is “unreal.” Remember, these are guys who generally believe “juxtaposition” is what you might call the spot a 10th man plays in a slow-pitch softball game.

Anyway, I just wanted to share. Note how many times athletes use the word “surreal” when most of them (and the rest of us) have little or no understanding of the expression. We can edit it out of reporters’ prose, but if it is a quotation, we’re often stuck with it. Again and again and again.

It’s unreal.