ROTFLMAO!

This gives a whole new imagery to query letters.

Woot!

The professor didn't count this observation against the student, though. "After all," she said, "it *is* a Doggy-Dog world."

Then she sighed and took another sip of her drink.

"Their cloaks bellowed behind them."

Given a strong enough wind, that might happen....

"for all intensive purposes"

(spelling intended!)

Gah.

This actually led to a pretty good pun when Diana Ross's concert in Central Park was rained out. She told everybody she was going to have to stop, and to please leave the park in an orderly fashion, but she kept singing while they did. Getting soaked the while. The Post, which I normally hate, headlined the story as "Diana Rains Supreme." Now that's just brilliant.

I'm driven crazy by the little common ones, like "This has lead to..."

"he was the hunter, and she his query"

It makes me giggle every time I read it.

JK

My most common is inserting "eyes" instead of "eye". I honestly cannot get rid of it. At least I'm not the only one - for awhile there the misspelling of idiot as didot was so common, didot actually became a slang word among OWW writers :)

And the Kansas City Star can be counted on to use the wrong homonym almost every time they use one. (hair, hare, heir; there, their; etc.). When she retired, my mother-in-law, took it upon herself to write correction letters to them. Good hobby, it isn't helping.

And in terms of the current ordinary-language meaning of the words involved, “deep-seeded ignorance” makes sense, while “deep-seated ignorance” doesn’t. Ignorance can be planted deep and thus have deep metaphorical roots, but deep-seated ignorance would have to be ignorance cut with a lot of room in the crotch, or maybe ignorance sitting in a badly-designed armchair. - Mark Liberman, of Language Log

When the mistake was pointed out to me, I wanted to die. Fortunately I got over it enough to laugh hysterically.

She galloped passed his manor.
The arrival of a somnambulist peaked/peeked his curiosity.
The mummies stood in a cue.
"Bare with me," said the stripper.
"I should of brought my trebuchet," Melvin said.
"I should never have excepted his application as viceroy," Bitsy mused.

And not that I expect everyone to spell perfectly in French, but:
Vlad makes boo-koo bucks.
I'll fetch your arsenic toot-sweet.

I also get testy about the confusion between affect and effect (since I teach science, this comes up a lot), or the misuse of nauseous (which means "to induce nausea") and nauseated. So if you say, "I'm nauseous," (meaning "I induce nausea") expect me to give you a funny look and to slowly back away.

More good 'uns on my site here:
Self Editing

Reminds me the time I wrote a response to a yearly review and my spell-checker asked about my manager's name whether it should be replaced by valuator or violator.

Yes, I'm kidding.

Writerious, I'm pretty sure the boat has sailed on 'nauseous', much as I sympathize.

Chryss, I learned that one before I learned what the expression meant. I had a joke book containing the line "the cat ate cheese and waited beside the mousehole with baited breath." By the time I figured out why that was funny, I was pretty much vaccinated against that particular error.

This sounds like something from Trial by Jury.

I kid you not.

It is incontinent to vote.

Love is something everyone indores.

The ration desires for knowledge and national eros.

Democracy has been running rapid in the Middle East over the past fifty years.

African Americans fall at the button of this category too.

Everyone won’t to live comfortable.

Dirty Davey: The editor should have had his neck (w)rung.

Then again, I have family in Mississippi; no matter how much I get told otherwise, my fingers automatically type it mischevious — because there IS an extra vowel in there if you were raised on the Gulf Coast. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Earnest is an ex-patriot Englishman, escaping from his sorted passed in New York. Jack is his wealthy American cousin (a reel blew bloodied type, to the manner bourne). When Earnest looses his job righting insincere rejection letters for TOR Books, he moves in with Jack in his stately sub urban home.

Hijinks insue.

Unfortunately, I feel it's not "gone wrong" but "gone away". The prevailing attitude among my students (especially coming in) is that it doesn't matter, 'cause spell check fixes everything. So none of them even try to remember.

What I have found particularly horrifying in papers all through this year is the substitution of "thrown" for "throne". As in, "Hamlet reflects the uncertainty about the succession to the thrown." Or "The Victorian era is named after Queen Victoria, who sat on the thrown throughout this period."

These give a whole new perspective to the old "I trust him about as far as I can throw him", but are not words I'd have expected 'easily confused'.

It's neat for me to see you professional writerly-type-people enjoying these eggcorns (and thanks! I hadn't known of that site either), because from my POV as a complete amateur, they're really wince-worthy. I read a lot of fanfiction (hey, it's free) and homonym abuse is everywhere, even in stories that are otherwise pretty good. I've tried puzzling out the reason, but I think Theresa has the likeliest idea... those of us who grew up with arual saturation from TV/radio just remember sounds with more clarity than words. I know I find that snippets of songs can bring up memories just as powerfully as certain smells.

Aren't these also malapropisms?

Well, this gets into another kind of confusion with English usage, but could that be influenced by the fact that you "hold your peace" when you've decided not to "speak your piece"?

Another one I see all the time that makes me want to kill things is "diety". As in, "Artemis is the diety of the hunt."

THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD, GENIUS. *sporksporkspork*

This is from the U.K. Guardian paper this morning:

Imagine how many more copies Jane Eyre might have sold in its first run if Brontë's publishers had run a campaign featuring a smouldering Jane and Rochester and a burning Thornfield.

The Guardian, Monday 1st May

It's not really a dreadful phrase (homonym/spellcheck mistake) like the others posted, but I really liked the idea of Thornfield actually setting Jane and Rochester on fire.

Incidently, I blame this on people hearing the phrase, but not reading it often enough to get the correct spelling implanted in their memory. So, when they pop up with it, they pick the spelling they think is most right.

And ditto for the reign/rein transpositions. I still boggle whenever I see a phrase like 'He took the reigns of the situation'.

So write.

"I'll try an see if I can start later. Would that be exceptable or not?"

And this is someone we are allowing to work as a teaching assistant? The mind reals!

'What the hay' and 'to hit the hey'.

Okay, they're colloquial, but still.

I was going to post about eggcorns, but I see that several zillion already have. So instead, I will point to the book of the Anguish Languish

I could blame a number of different bad influences, but I’ll just say it’s my fault now. I need to take responsibility and work to improve my writing.

This post is a good example of why I read this blog. I don’t feel as though I’m smart enough or experienced enough to be posting here, but I know that if I hang around I will learn something and, I hope, improve myself.

L. Pullers: Now that's a malapropism; some eggcorns would qualify, some would not. A lot are just mistakes involving homonyms. A malapropism involves a words that is similar in sound, but different, like "professional" and 'professorial."

Of course I see this sort of thing all day long, but I can't recall a lot of good ones right this minute. There are a bunch of homonyms such as leach/leech and sheer/shear that even good writers have trouble with.

Oh yeah--I do see:

He poured over the textbooks for hours.

all the time.

"He put her hands around her waste."

Um, eww?

A TA for a history course on Western Civilization found an even better one: "The medieval system of government was considered pointless and ineffective. That is why it was called futilism."

I suppose it prevented spelling mistakes, but I still twitch when I think about it.

Coulda been the spider calling.

The one mistake which most rankles me is defiantly/definitely. I would issue a blanket condemnation of the use of "definitely" as a wek intensifier at the start of every semester -- it never seemed to help.

I don't find myself accidentally typing homynyms, and I avoid spell checkers. But I do have one personal howler to relate.

It doesn't make any difference in spelling, but I took it for granted that the expression "the die is cast" referred to the process of making a mold.

In the Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce wrote that the die is not cast, it is cut. For some reason missing the context of "dice", I emphatically agreed. After all, a die is USED to cast, so I assumed the original expression about casting the die had been garbled somehow.

:: aaarghghghhhahhh ::

Another thing that is disappearing fast is correctly formulating conditional tense -- if it were [to be].

Where I work, we are dealing with 'outsourced' copyediting, and whether it is an autochanger or a person, correct usage -- 'if it were [to be] found that ...' -- is invariably replaced with 'if it was found ...'.

I once was the third person in an email chain where the first person spelled it "chord" and the second person spelled it "cored." Unfortunately, the word they wanted was "cord."

"passed history not with standing"--perhaps he just got a C-minus?

Because I just can't imagine making any of these mistakes. It's impossible - reading them makes my eyes hurt. Maybe that's just a matter of practice, for I've been a fanatical reader for many years. But I also wonder if it's because I don't hear words as I read them. They feel like abstract shapes to me. (I believe, from the sort of verbal slips I make, that words are filed in my head by approximate length, and by first letter - like a Scrabble dictionary. Unfortunately, even if this is true, it doesn't make me good at Scrabble, because I can't anagram worth a damn.)

If I want to hear words as I read them, I have to consciously turn the sound up in my mind. I used to avoid doing this, because the sound in my head slows me down. At some point I figured out that good writing gets a lot better if you listen to it in your head instead of just reading it, so now I read novels a bit more slowly - but with a lot more enjoyment.

I've also had to practice listening to my own writing as I type - that's a learned skill for me.

Does everyone read this way, or just some of us?

So many writers choose the wrong read/red where/wear the other belongs. No doubt you have seen this epidemic yourself. It's one that spell checkers can't prevent.

I do this myself. The wrong word is a physical wrench to the reading process. Certain common mistakes (teh for the, for instance) I've learned to gloss over, but most still make me wince.

I also tend to typo real words--thing for thin, for instance, or this for thin. Bah, humbug.

I think the tendency to type 'speak my peace' is possibly influenced by the confluence of 'peace of mind' and 'give you a piece of my mind'. I've taken to using 'speak my peace' as a type of written pun that, if spoken, simply wouldn't register.

You are nearly responsible for my wife choking to death, luckily jello isn't too good at blocking the airway. I suppose I have to share some of the blame for my part in relaying the bellowing cloaks line.

On a local news broadcast, I once saw a graphic listing charges that had been brought against someone, including "wreckless driving".

i had a teacher in high school who always said "serendipitous" when he meant "surreptitious". & he said it more than you might imagine, too.

i was listening to a radio program about the state of mental health care in the us yesterday, & it would have been a very interesting program, except the speaker kept saying "intimate danger" when he meant "imminent danger." aaaargh. & this was a former writer for the new york times.

The spellchecked version had half again as many mistakes in the final count, including some that were not in the original piece.

If I weren't at work, I'd google-fu a reference for this.

(guiltily ducks back under her rock)

It is actually all too easy in a long spell-checking job to hit the wrong option and authorise a misspelling. I've done it, and I'm about the most pedantic speller I know, though less so about other solecisms.

I always hear words when I read them, but I'm still stunned by spelling mistakes like these. I think there must be an additional component in the filing system, though, because "rein" and "reign" definitely (indeed, defiantly) occupy different parts of my brain. I tend to think it is more of a meaning thing than a visual thing, because I don't think of myself as a visual person at all. That said, I always have trouble pronouncing a name or a new, complex word until I know how it is spelled; after that, I generally have little trouble. Beats me, then.

As for student essays, most of the ones I've kept have contained sentences amusing mostly for their bathos. But there were a few of these things too:

“[Caesar’s] invasion of England was looked upon in awe as it was the first Roman sea exhibition outside the Mediterranean…”

"Cleopatra ... memorised the Roman men."

"Both [Pompey and Crassus] sited their views in public..." and (from a different essay) "were dually elected".

And my favourite student citation, of Suetonius' Life of the Defiled Julius.

Those are all from the same set of exams last year.

People who spell visually are generally better spellers than people who spell aurally. "Sound it out," which is how I was taught spelling in grade school, is terrible advice for anyone who is trying to learn to spell English! Only when I discarded it did I become a good reader; and a good reader is (barring neurological problems I don't know about) a good speller.

The more times you see a word spelled correctly, and see the correct choice made between homophones, the more likely you are to get it right when you write...so I'd say "read, and having read, write right, and your paper will be read, but less red."

BTW I think children (as opposed to adolescents or young adults) should not be taught the word 'homonym' at all. Appallingly, it's used for both homophones AND homographs, which are entirely different things. This makes it virtually impossible to explain the situation of 'red', which is homophonous with 'read' (past), which is homographic with 'read' (present), which is homophonous with 'reed'.

Not that I believe in using 'homophone' and 'homograph' in grade or junior high school either. If your goal is to teach them Greek, sure. If your goal is to improve their spelling by getting a concept across, no. Call them 'sound-alike words' and 'look-alike words'.

Doesn't anyone have any damn SENSE any more?!?!?!

OK, end rant. This has driven me crazy for decades.

For instance: I doubt that the word "shuttering" occurs very often in the wild. If it turns up in a paragraph it's probably a typo. Or consider "excepted his application": surely it wouldn't take a very sophisticated computer program to know that "accepted" and "excepted" are phonetic cousins, and that "accepted his application" is a common phrase while "excepted his application" is rare.

Of course, once Google gets bored making real money and decides to invent this software, a lot of pro writers will probably turn it off, lest it surround every novel turn of phrase with a swarm of dialog boxes. Terry Pratchett wouldn't be able to see his own prose for all the underlining.

the two sides often stay as distant as rival cliques at the high school reunion. Without a guiding principal, the dud tracks sound even weaker

I'm pretty sure that was unintentional, anyway.

I'd define 'wreckless driving' as 'driving without ever totalling a car'.

"Cleopatra ... memorised the Roman men."

Well...I'm sure she tried.

Which is interesting, because within living memory that is how reading was taught in a great many American elementary schools -- the infamous "look-say" system, which was later denounced as the primary source of American illiteracy, phonics being touted as the Only True Way to do it. (The issue is anything but simple, and as you'd expect with something involving public ed, has political components, and I'm not trying to start a fight about it.)

Most of the examples I remember have already been cited, though not "comprise" for "compose." I would put "comprised of" in the same category as "I'm nauseous;" it's not usually an issue of the person mistaking one word for another ("compose" and "nauseated" are not particularly esoteric words) but of someone who assumes they are synonyms and is trying to sound elevated.

An invented one does come to mind,** though it's more of an in-joke, as I can't imagine the people who would use the phrase making this error:

"Speech is privilege."

You know, there's at least one F/SF story in that.

*Speaking of popular typos. . . .
**Come on, you knew I would do this.

"He gave her organism after organism."

To which I can only say that they should have been using protection.

After a moment I realized that, rather than suggesting one person turning into another, or in disguise, it was supposed to be "Why are you here?" But by then it was too late.

(I am also very tired of muscles being described as "taught"; even if spelled correctly, that's a cliche.)

Re: when the "mistake" sounds more accurate than the real term-someone close to me says "stay within earshout."

Makes sense to me, since we don't have to fire a rifle 'cross the holler to get in touch with our neighbors.

so i've always been a very good speller. if i've seen a word a couple of times, i can usually spell it. i thought it was a silly skill to have past elementary school, what with spellcheckers.... but it does make one feel smart on the internet.

I can remember words once I've seen them written down, but I can't remember spoken words well. I have a friend who collects folk ballads, and she can learn lyrics by ear, which to me is an inexplicable magical skill. I can pick up tunes by ear, to some extent, but the words fall right out of my head. I have better luck if I translate the spoken words into typewritten text on an imaginary piece of paper in my head - but that's so slow and mentally taxing that I usually prefer just to forget.

A side effect of remembering words as they appear on a page: when I read a book, and then read a different edition of the same book, I am occasionally distracted because the line breaks have moved and now the book is different.

John Ford: I was taught phonics in first grade. Fortunately, although phonics seems to have made no impression on me whatsoever, my growth does not appear to have been stunted!

Janet: a CATALOGER made that mistake? And they hired him? Ouch.

Mike and John: it's nice to know that there's something real about visual language skills. I learned to read when very young and can, by now, manage several languages well and others not-so-well. I've noticed that even at the early learning stages, I visualize the words and will pick up on those that look "wrong". I've had teachers insist I couldn't possibly know from the shape of the word alone, but I do!

It's a problem when I am dealing with Romance languages, where there are close-enough words, and I have to remind myself which language I am using.

A while back a friend of mine did some etymological research on the nauseated/nauseous thing and tells me that the two have swapped meaning several times over the years.

OTOH, applications and exceptions go hand in glove in my world - software.

Where I work, we are dealing with 'outsourced' copyediting, and whether it is an autochanger or a person, correct usage -- 'if it were [to be] found that ...' -- is invariably replaced with 'if it was found ...'.

if clauses—the traditional rules. According to traditional rules, you use the subjunctive to describe an occurrence that you have presupposed to be contrary to fact: if I were ten years younger, if America were still a British Colony. The verb in the main clause of these sentences must then contain the verb would or (less frequently) should: If I were ten years younger, I would consider entering the marathon. If America were still a British colony, we would all be drinking tea in the afternoon. When the situation described by the if clause is not presupposed to be false, however, that clause must contain an indicative verb. The form of verb in the main clause will depend on your intended meaning: If Hamlet was really written by Marlowe, as many have argued, then we have underestimated Marlowe’s genius. If Kevin was out all day, then it makes sense that he couldn’t answer the phone.

Remember, just because the modal verb would appears in the main clause, this doesn’t mean that the verb in the if clause must be in the subjunctive if the content of that clause is not presupposed to be false: If I was (not were) to accept their offer—which I’m still considering—I would have to start the new job on May 2. He would always call her from the office if he was (not were) going to be late for dinner.

Another thing that is disappearing fast is correctly formulating conditional tense -- if it were [to be]

English is losing syntax more basic than the conditional tense: Participles are vanishing. For instance: "carry handles", "shave cream", and "bake time". And, of course, "spell checkers".

Granted, English has a history of jettisoning the "complicated" parts, but it seems we're starting to lose some of the essential bits,

N dbt vwls wll b nxt t g.

73, JMF

By way of TBogg, Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist wants to be the "marquis candidate" for the Constitution Party.

Unless Tancredo runs, of course.

The first semester I was a grader, one of the students wrote: "The head of Nefertiti has long been arousing to archaeologists and art historians." Fortunately this was not in the fall, when the first grading time tended to correspond all too closely with ArmadilloCon.

Then again, I learned how to read and write the same way I learned to play the piano, which is to say I cheated. I figured both things out not by studying the rules, but by imitating what I heard or read repeatedly until they were ingrained and unbreakable sets of pattern recognition. Or something.

So, in the same way I barely remember how to read music, but can still play Mozart from muscle memory, I remember virtually nothing about the rules of phonics and grammar (subjunctive mood? Mine eyes glazeth over), yet very rarely seem to make mistakes in sentence structure.

Other than the unfortunate propensity for run-on sentences, of course.

Murgatroyd, if by "outsourced copyediting" you mean using freelancers rather than in-house employees, I've been one of those freelancers, I've hired more of them than I can count, and they can be extraordinarily good. If yours aren't good, get better ones. They're out there.

One of the things we never did was accept offers from "copyediting firms" who proposed to have their (nameless) copyeditors work on our manuscripts. That never works. Quality control goes all to hell. As Martha Schwartz said, "If they're good enough to work on our books, they're good enough to take our copyediting test and work for us directly." Also: "We don't use anonymous copyeditors."

On general spelling theory: your real killer-bee mutant spellers remember spellings visually, and double-check them kinesthetically. Unread misspellings in their peripheral vision generate a Sense of Wrongness. Some of them report perceiving typos as literally sticking up above the surface of the page, or flashing, or being a different color from the rest of the text. On occasion they can spot typos that are going past faster than anyone can read, when they don't perceive themselves as reading the passing text. Some can orally spell out words at auctioneer speed -- see Detective DeLongpre (played by Lyle Lovett) spelling "Gudmundsdottir" in The Player. I can do it for whole phrases. Orally spelling antidisestablishmentarianism isn't harder than spelling townsfolk. It just takes longer.

I don't know how that kind of spelling ability correlates with being able to pun and rhyme. If it does, I suspect it's an inverse correlation. It took half an hour for "misquote spray" to decode for me, and I'm still stymied by "speech is privilege."

The only use I have for phonetic spelling is as a mnemonic device, and then only in a few cases, such as fuchsia: it's rude, but it works.

"Nauseous" to mean "experiencing feelings of nausea" hasn't advanced quite that far, but I think it's almost there. When I was a boy I was taught to say "nauseated" instead of "nauseous," and to reserve the latter to mean "inspiring nausea" ("A nauseous odor issued from the slaughterhouse.") Now, I know more than one person who says, "It made me nauseous," and I often don't bother to correct such usage when I'm editing fiction (depends on context).

Somehow in all this talk of eggcorns and malapropisms, I am also reminded of the list that Ellie Lang used to have of titles of books that customers had requested at some bookstore or other. I've forgotten a lot of them, but the two that stood out were those great classics of African American literature, Color Me Purple and The Autobiography of Malcolm the Tenth.

But I have to disagree slightly with Teresa - how common they are in spoken English depends who you're speaking with, I think. There aren't any on that list which I'd be particularly surprised to have come up in conversation with friends, in one way or another.

(But then, we have some strange conversations at times.)

I still can't get what "misquote spray" is supposed to be...

The only times when I hear the words in my head rather than assimilating them soundlessly are when there's a strong regional idiom. I always heard the British accents in Douglas Adams.

Did this quirk give you the same trouble reading aloud as I had? I could never make my voice go as fast as the words were coming into my head.

And a tenement of faith is an argument based on faulty premises.

The Bellowing Cloak.
Yolk of Alien rulership.
Baited breath.
The pre-imminent experts.

Of course, "a doggy-dog world" is not a word selection mistake, it's a spelling mistake. "A Doggy-dogg world" was generated by rapper Snoop Doggy-dogg, intentionally.

Long ago, in a Christmas card, someone wrote my parents in those tones of triumph, exclaiming "Viola! (as we say in Peoria.)" This amused my father inordinately.

Ever afterward, when a Higgins triumphed, or when a string quartet was spotted, the cry was heard.

"Viola (as we say in Peoria)!"

If you believe the internet is the fount of all wisdom, giving free rein to bloggers to exercise their vocal cords, think again. Ancient English cliches and expressions are being mangled by the culture of cut and paste and the spread of unchecked writing on the internet.

According to the Oxford English Corpus, a database of a billion words, dozens of traditional phrases are now more commonly misspelled than rendered correctly in written English.

"Straight-laced" is used 66% of the time even though it should be written "strait-laced", according to lexicographers working for Oxford Dictionaries, who record the way English is spoken and written by monitoring books, television, radio and newspapers and, increasingly, websites and blogs.

"Just desserts" is used 58% of the time instead of the correct spelling, "just deserts" (desert is a variation of deserve), while 59% of all written examples of the phrase in the Corpus call it a "font of knowledge or wisdom" when it should be "fount".

It has become so widely used that the wrong version is now included in Oxford dictionaries alongside the right one.

Interestingly, both of these mistakes don't bother me the way a lot of the other ones do, because the words themselves still imply a meaningful symbol or metaphor, even if they're more... bizarre than their original forms. (Once upon time, religion and wisdom were nearby on semantic webs, and you don't get dessert until you've earned it.) Also, I didn't even know "Just deserts," which just goes to show you that the internet is a fount of information.

Similarly, "toe the line" v. "tow the line" both mean something even if they mean different things.

On the 'look-say' vs 'phonics' battle, both are wrong, in that they are based on flawed cognitive theory.
Look-say falsely applies an analogy to how oral language acquisition works, and on how mature readers see words as a whole, effectively requiring beginning readers to re-derive all orthography themselves.
Phonics teaches post-hoc spelling 'rules' as predicates, which is equally inappropriate for children, as resolving predicate logic is hard enough in math, let alone when misapplied to spelling.

What works is teaching phonological awareness - that sounds are primary, and letters are representations of them, and that there are multiple 'sound pictures' for each phoneme in english. Then resolving homophones can be done by memory.
As this fits well with how the brain represents language, it can be taught relatively rapidly (Rosie, my wife, gets children from stumbling incoherence to fluent reading in 12-16 1-hour sessions using this method, called Phono-Graphix).

Sesame Street is perniciously bad, as it teaches chanting letter names rather than sounds. Between the Lions is a lot better.

This is be cause the product, off a copywriter's work is the copywrit.

You use a copywrit in caught too proof that the defendent has no write to copy your copy (the low says they must rite there one copy).

--Your friendly neighborhood copy editor

strike/struck a cord
hair-brained

And here's another choice gem from a student paper: "Animals often behave according to instinked..." (not a common misusage to be sure, but it made me laugh).

"This paper will compare the judicial and penile system of post-apartheid South Africa with the judicial and penile system of the present-day United States, with reference to black men."

That one moment made several hours of grading worthwhile.

Putting my Shylurk mask back on-
Tom

And I've had too dire a day** to search the thread, but did we really miss that other minor classic of the form, "straight-jacket"? I don't remember actually seeing it, but surely there must be an instance of "Straights of Hormuz" out there. (Long ago, when the TV show being parodied was still on the air, Mad ran "The Straights of San Francisco, which was fairly inspired, by Mad standards.

I realize that Closed Captiousness is a different Department of this Office of the Inquisition, but earlier tonight the Weather Channel offered up Tor Nay Does. Doubtless these are a frequent excuse for Flatiron traffic accidents.

*Yes, I know. Let's Not Go There, though we're already in There's Central Business District.

**See previous footnote.

I'm one of these - on the rare occasions I hesitate over something, usually an ei/ie problem, writing both down solves it. Like you say, I spell out words at high speed - in fact, people usually have to ask me, say that again but slower? because it's easier for me that way. I don't have any conscious impression of visualizing it, but I think it must work this way - I'm reminded of Feynman's experiments with counting while distracted, and people who keep track of the count visually vs verbally (in Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman, I think). Being able to manage with one input mode and one output mode seems to help streamline things a lot, compared to doing both through the same channel. I also can't learn a word until I know how it's spelt - it's just a noise for me until I relate it to written language, then it clicks into place.

Typo-spotting, yes... the sudden intrusion of something that's Not a Word into language stands out like, er, something that stands out a lot. I perceive that kinaesthetically, though, like a bump in the road, not visually.

I don't think there is a correlation between this and punning/rhyming - I'm fond of both, if not actually good at it. (I'm told the only way to be actually good at punning is to refrain. That one, of course, comes up depressingly frequently... by now, I'm well versed in it.)

I don't know if it makes any difference, but I process most things that way. I test die cut mechanicals in my head too (although mental origami is much harder to do under distracting conditions, since unlike the properly-spelled word, I've probably never seen the finished product)

Teresa: "Kinesthetically" feels exactly right! When people ask me to spell a word, I am compelled to write it on a chalkboard (real or imaginary) and look at it until my stomach, or possibly the back of my neck, tells me whether the spelling is correct or not. Alas, I can't do this at warp speed, and the other superhero powers which you mention are also beyond me.

I would guess that the ability to see typos leaping out of the text, or turning colors, is a mixed blessing at best. To one with such a gift, surfing the Web must feel uncomfortably like being drunk.

That doesn't describe my reaction, which is more of a mild revulsion or despair, coupled with an immediate feeling that the balance of the content is untrustworthy. "If the writer can't even spell..."

I spell words the way I ran into them - it's resulted in some British spellings that I can't shake. I hear the words when I'm thinking, but reading is more like watching movies or television: the whole sound-and-picture bit. Reading math and science texts is a lot quieter, but can be harder to understand.

... and the rein/reign thing is sneaky and evil even if you know better. Just sayin'.

Dire a day? He's Alan's cousin, isn't he? Part of the Marry Men? Works for Robbing Hood?

I might be wrong, of course.

*Drummer, bassist, lead guitar, and 2nd-level Bard.

Another one from the local writer's group: "Don't tell Jane! Shed freak!"

This one annoyed a friend so much that she made a slew of LJ icons around it and passed them out hither and yon. If you see one ('Could it be... SHED FREAKS?') that's what the joke is.

Re: heiroglyphic/hieroglyphic: dagnabbit. Another one for the personal "Check this" list.

On look-say and phonics: I was taught both ways. It left me with superior reading skills, but no obvious superpowers--I don't spell like lightning, for instance.

I can, however, spot the one typo in a piece of someone else's prose, even if that prose has already had three other people spell and/or grammar check it. It's embarrassing.

MikeB, I'm not one of the ones who gets gaudy typo alerts. For me, it's more like there's a sesame seed lying on the desk directly under the typo, so that when I mentally run my fingers over it, I can feel a bump. That's if I'm proofreading or otherwise doing close reading.

Surfing the web is more like crossing an unswept floor in a busy concourse: you can see that there's a lot of stuff scattered around underfoot, but you do your best not to look at it.

The glorious thing about this is that if you transpose the spellings in the other direction, one of Terry Gilliam's films is suddenly about Goatse. Everyone loves Goatse, don't they?

hammy downs
back round
poke-a-dotted
prime Madonna

Meaning that what one thinks WILL affect the conclusion?

This sounds like something from Trial by Jury.

Could have been Cop Rock.

I can't imagine quaffed hair. Wouldn't it stick in the throat?

Here's another one: I heard the word "pontiff" used for "plaintiff" recently in some news article about some court case; I don't recall there was a single pope or bishop involved.

According to dictionary.com (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Ed., Houghton Mifflin) "font of knowledge" is correct usage. (4. An abundant source; a fount: She was a font of wisdom and good sense.)

Under "fount" we also find a specific size and style of type within a type family. So they appear to be interchangeable for at least two different usages.

Dunno how the two words got tied together, or whether they just started that way. (Faint sighs of OED-lust can be heard, followed by the tappings of a price-search, then a sudden, terrible silence.)

I've been trying to align myself with one of them, and I can't quite do it. I get a visceral rather than a visual reaction to typos and grammatical errors, and good writing gives me a kind of physical pleasure. I also love puns and rhymes and have a good feel for verse rhythm, I think. But I wish I could do the thing my friends can do of visually rearranging the room in my head. I don't ever see *any* pictures in my head. (I don't even dream in images, that I remember at least.) Somehow it seems like I 'see' the words conceptually. Possibly this is only what you were describing.

Looking at the discussion again, I seem to have the same kind of mind for these things as Sam Kelly, which is a relief. I was beginning to feel left out among all these visual thinkers.

And no place for "dually elected"?

Now, of course, I always find my typos the moment after I post them.

It's not just the physical act of typing that produces such effects, either. I often find the same kinds of "typos" in my handwritten drafts.

FWIW and all that.

Isn't that supposed to be "doe see d'oh?"

"Hail Mary
Full of Grapes"

The other night, I was reading David Maraniss' new biography of Roberto Clemente and ran across "vocal chord" [sic]. (In the 7th game of the 1960 World Series a bad hop caused a baseball to hit Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat, injuring his vocal cord. It was the second worst thing to happen to the Yankees in that game, notes the evilly-grinning Pirates fan at the keyboard.) I was wondering which player misfielded that error: the spell-check or the copyeditor with a bad ear for eggcorns. Although most likely it was a double play, and they both botched it.

P.S. After his playing days, Kubek became an announcer.

Usually I wind up noticing before I get to the end of whatever I'm trying to wright, because it allays ends up boing an embarrassing sound-alike weird of one short or an udder.

And they say you don't learn from TV.

(Begging your pardon if that was intentional, of course. Otherwise, I think you meant 'indelibly'.)

Growing up in south Georgia *mumble* years ago, we used to say "boo-koos," meaning a lot, and we pronounced it exactly as it's spelled here. It wasn't until I took high school French that I realized we were mangling the word. I later learned they didn't say boo-koos in north Georgia, so I'm guessing it was a local language artifact.

I've been reading so much lewt speech and Singlish lately that I had to read some of these twice to see the problem.

cya ard m8

About visual spelling/reading: I taught myself to read by age 2ish (according to my parents), and to this day, I am something of a speed-reader. When I read, I recognize entire words by their shapes, and will occasionally read an entire line at once. This, as you can imagine, is much faster than sounding out the words. From my experience, people who learn to read via the phonics method will read slower than those who read by shape, even after they (the first set) no longer need to sound out the words.

Finally, I'd pay to read a story titled "Under the Alien Yolk."

You know, there's at least one F/SF story in that.

Been done: "The Man Who Had No Idea", by Thomas Disch.

More on-topic to the thread: Elf Sternberg of all people said recently on rasfw, "It is a tenant among evangelical Christians that 'atheism is impossible'".

I also know a person who thought for a long time that when haggling with a seller one tried to "chew them down". He told me that he wishes he could find everyone he unintentionally offended over the years, to apologize and explain; but this is impossible.

"It's not like I like alcohol in my protein," Cheese heard someone say as he hunted and pecked his way around the bar. "It's just that I'm denatured." It was a Beefbone voice and a Beefbone joke. The Coop -- at least the MIT side -- was a bar for professional eggheads; you could drink there for a week and never hear two clucks. . . .

. . . and that will be quite enough of that.

I've seen boo-koo bucks by people who know the difference between an é and an è; I've always read it as an ironic idiom. (I apologise; alliteration appeared, and afterwards avoided apprehension.)

I once saw "since time in memorial" and thought "the park?"

I expect that the use of beaucoup in south Georgia comes from the presence of Ft. Benning. The US Military took beaucoup (often spelled boo-koo) from its experiences in French Indochina. I believe it's service-wide.

I can only assume the author meant "erectile," but the image is...stunning.

Indeed.

And I wonder, does anyone else find their pleasure in rock songs to be directely proportional to the lyricist's ability to use the subjunctive correctly, or is it just me?

And don't get me *started* on Christmas carols.

In calling folks in "Versailles", I learned that it is, in fact, pronounced Vur-sales, accent on the 2nd syllable. Of course, how foolish of me. Silly Yankee.

And as a complement to that, I should mention the game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, based on his earlier Civilization, which has a research-based faction called The University, whose bases are named for schools, laboratories and so on. One of the pre-generated base names is Climactic Research. Makes me think the Kinsey Institute made it on to the colony ship.

protected static, there's a North Versailles near Pittsburgh, and it's also "Ver-SALES."

Hey, another Pirates fan! I heard Bob Prince's voice on a radio ad for that book, and it took me WAY back...

Well, probably better than if we would allow Alaska to fail.

But I'm an empirical storm-trooper, not a research one, so I haven't even tried to test these hypotheses.

You flaunt your bodacious booty. You flaut the law...

I also have to print things out to do a final proof-read. Or two or three. It looks different on paper somehow -- things leap out at me more.

Which reminds me of Waugh's Loved One, where the English protagonists pronunciation of Medici is ridiculed as 'making Mr Medissy sound like some kinda wop'

Archaic terms like "just deserts"*, and even "kid gloves", are particularly likely to run through the mangle and come out like so many of the terms English has absorbed/stolen from other languages. (If not for that, we might still be limited to Anglo Saxon or Celtic.)

Some of you have some interesting talents -- seeing typos in red, etc. I have a little bit of synaesthesia (associating certain numbers with colors), and years of doing British cryptic crosswords have given me the occasional ability to decode anagrams instantaneously. (Doesn't always work, but it's handy when it does!)

*Incidentally, there used to be a bakery (in Berkeley, I think) called Just Desserts.

Yes, I know it's a losing battle.

It's gotten so no one can trust what's meant by the word "bimonthly". If you have to follow it up with "And by that I mean [once every two months | twice a month]" then you might as well not use the word at all. The loss of viable words is a sad thing.

*sigh*

I'm guilty of correcting "faze" to "phase" though. I was under the (apparently) mistaken impression that "faze" wasn't a real word, but a corruption of some verb version of "phase".

Subjunctive, now--the cure for that is to learn a second language. Granted, I was in my sixth year of Spanish before I could use the subjunctive with any confidence, but once I could, I suddenly understood it in English much better.

Versailles, KY is down the road apiece from Athens, KY (pronounced w/ a long 'a').

What about Athens, Georgia?

I thought "different than" was standard American. Is it frowned upon in the US too? I think I saw Teresa complain about it a short while ago.

years of doing British cryptic crosswords have given me the occasional ability to decode anagrams instantaneously

Yes, I can sometimes do that, and for exactly the same reason. I also have the strange habit of automatically reading words backwards as well as forwards, as if to check whether there is some hidden meaning. I have no idea why I do this, as I can't think of many circumstances in which it would be a benefit. But it's just ingrained now.

I felt that approaching you with a synapse rather than an unsolicited manuscript.....

The more times you see a word spelled correctly, and see the correct choice made between homophones, the more likely you are to get it right when you write...so I'd say "read, and having read, write right, and your paper will be read, but less red."

Too true, and not just for spelling. It's also a real argument against the "Fix these sentences" sort of grammar worksheets: Studies have shown that after a class reads and "corrects" 25-50 sentences with errors, more students -- although not always the same ones -- will start having trouble with the errors they've been working on -- thank you visual reinforcement!

BTW I think children (as opposed to adolescents or young adults) should not be taught the word 'homonym' at all. Appallingly, it's used for both homophones AND homographs, which are entirely different things. This makes it virtually impossible to explain the situation of 'red', which is homophonous with 'read' (past), which is homographic with 'read' (present), which is homophonous with 'reed'.

Not that I believe in using 'homophone' and 'homograph' in grade or junior high school either. If your goal is to teach them Greek, sure. If your goal is to improve their spelling by getting a concept across, no. Call them 'sound-alike words' and 'look-alike words'.(/i>

Weird. When I was growing up they taught us homophones were the sound-alikes (bear/bare; to/too/two) and homonyms ["same name"?] were the ones that were spelled the same (bear n/bear v). Wonder if it's a local variant or a "personal error"?

galley slave:

He gave her organism after organism

That's the plot summary of "A Partridge in a Pear [NOT Pair] Tree", isn't it?

As Scott pointed out, they all mean something. This is what makes it fun. As I have pointed out elsewhere, even "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" has meaning, even if it's a struggle to find it; sentences are not constrained to "make sense" any more than they're constrained to be true.

One of the pre-generated base names is Climactic Research. Makes me think the Kinsey Institute made it on to the colony ship.

Either that, or it's the Eschatology Department.

I used to be able to look at a page fresh from the printer and find a typo on it before I (thought I) had time to read it. Reading internet spellings has somewhat eroded that ability...since I'm busy trying NOT to notice people's misspellings.

And: Newark, NJ is pronounced Nerk or maybe N(w)erk by its natives. Newark, OH is pronounced Nerkahigh. Newark, DE is pronounced New Ark (as in, not the one Noah built...there's even a New Ark (spelled that way) church there). Only outsiders say Newwerk.

And when Texans come to New York and try to find Houston Street, no one knows what they're talking about.

I quite like that.

If my search function is working, we've reached this point in the proceedings without "speech/speach."

"I am not at your beckon call," she wrote.

Oh! Oh! "They went out shooting peasants"!!!!! I think I saw that one...didn't remember until now.

(and, from above, maybe Alaska will succeed, but probably not if it secedes.)

I thought, "Neat!" and have been doing the same ever since. No inspirations, though.

What about Athens, Georgia?

Athens, Georgia is pronounced like Athens, Greece.
Cairo, Georgia is pronounced with a long "a" though.

I expect that the use of beaucoup in south Georgia comes from the presence of Ft. Benning. The US Military took beaucoup (often spelled boo-koo) from its experiences in French Indochina. I believe it's service-wide

Thank you! Nice to know its provenance.

Also, it's the New MAD-rid Fault, not pronounced like the Espanish Ecity.

But this takes us far outfield.

I learned about the subjunctive mood in the 6th grade, when it was introduced in German class (although I had encountered it earlier). Thoroughly confused, we asked our English teacher "what's a subjunctive" and she stopped regular lessons to teach us the English grammar she realized we were missing. Bless you, Miss Candler! It was also about this time that I realized that Marvel comics was (were?) dedicated to the preservation of the subjunctive. So many titles were "If this be ...[fill in the blank]".

And . . . are their dinosaurs there?

That doesn't describe my reaction, which is more of a mild revulsion or despair, coupled with an immediate feeling that the balance of the content is untrustworthy. "If the writer can't even spell..."

I tend to feel mildly seasick, and become mightily afraid that my own spelling will somehow suffer.

I save the worry about trustworthiness for restaurant menus, thusly: "If they can't spell it, I probably shouldn't eat it."

Whose dinosaurs?

Which is, coincidentally, where I live (until June). Perhaps it's a sign. Well, in a different sense. Now we just have to work out what it's a sign of...

If we are going to cover mispronounced place-names - and we probably shouldn't - I ought to point out that the Americans are not necessarily the worst offenders. How about Beaulieu on the south coast of England, for instance? [Bew-ley, I believe.] And I am still unsure as to how I am supposed to be pronouncing Pontefract. Is anyone in Yorkshire?

The Morose Men, you say? I think I've heard of them. Thought they had a violinist in the group tho' - I know I've been told that they like to fiddle around.

[Is this where I apologize? ;)]

On the other thread - I got destroyed by local place (and other names) when I moved to Boston from Toronto. Knowing how to pronounce things properly in French is a serious burden in Boston. Who'd think that 'Faneuil' rhymes with 'flannel'? (Or 'fan-yel' - take your pick.) I once had a frustrating conversation - on both sides, I'm sure - with a Greyhound service agent about trying to take the bus to Montreal via Montpelier.

And it took me a year to stop saying 'Boston Celtics' with a hard 'c' (in my defense, the cultural term comes up a lot more often in my casual discourse than the sports team).

Teresa said: Murgatroyd, if by "outsourced copyediting" you mean using freelancers rather than in-house employees, I've been one of those freelancers, I've hired more of them than I can count, and they can be extraordinarily good. If yours aren't good, get better ones. They're out there.

Actually I guess that was inaccurate. I meant "offshored copyediting" -- the firms our publisher employs have offices in Manila and India -- and the primary qualification is low rates, not editorial skill. This is the third set of production firms we have been through (we've complained our way out of two others, one of which was US-based). Knowing the language well enough to correct its use is essential for a job like this, and although the production firm claims that it continually updates its copyeditors' language skills, the results are woefully inadequate.

We've invited a local freelancer (who also has access to compositing services) to send a proposal, but since the local's rate is approximately 4 times higher per page than the offshored rate, I don't have much hope that we'll be allowed to secede.

One of the things we never did was accept offers from "copyediting firms" who proposed to have their (nameless) copyeditors work on our manuscripts. That never works. Quality control goes all to hell. As Martha Schwartz said, "If they're good enough to work on our books, they're good enough to take our copyediting test and work for us directly." Also: "We don't use anonymous copyeditors."

I wish we had the same sort of control, but our publisher uses freelance editorial offices (us). They used to have in-house copyediting, which was marvelous -- a good copyeditor can surgically improve text without ever revealing his or her presence -- but academic publishing is up against the Internet and PLoS, and they're choking on the idea that their days are numbered.

Some senator said "flounder" yesterday when he meant "founder."

"Taught muscles" obviously benefit from some sort of hi-tech direct reflex implantation. "Bated Breath" is a brand of pheremonal lozenge.

Sadly, Avram appears to me to have mis-misspelled "bated."

2 More 'Sopranos' Run Afoul of the Law
May 2, 3:26 PM (ET)
By TOM HAYS
NEW YORK (AP)

I've always understood they're both wrong it's vocal folds?

Someone upthread said that "Font of all knowledge" was not correct, and that only "fount" will do. I'm flabbergasted. I though "font" was a legitimate (if archaic) abbreviation for "fountain", and, given the choice, I always preferred the way it sounded on the idiom.

"If money talks, the whole world gone listen."

It might have been a song lyric or a quote by someone (there was a picture on the back of someone I did not recognize).

I meant "offshored copyediting" -- the firms our publisher employs have offices in Manila and India -- and the primary qualification is low rates, not editorial skill. This is the third set of production firms we have been through (we've complained our way out of two others, one of which was US-based).

Knowing the language well enough to correct its use is essential for a job like this, and although the production firm claims that it continually updates its copyeditors' language skills,

-- the results are woefully inadequate.

What's even more expensive is excessively cheap copyediting, which can easily cost you six to eight times its ostensible price. Really, there's no other stage of production where so many hatchling problems can be squashed by a small but tightly-packed wad of money landing on top of them.

We've invited a local freelancer (who also has access to compositing services) to send a proposal, but since the local's rate is approximately 4 times higher per page than the offshore rate, I don't have much hope that we'll be allowed to secede.

(Okay, okay: so are the rest of you. All right? I know you're there.)

One of the things we never did was accept offers from "copyediting firms" who proposed to have their (nameless) copyeditors work on our manuscripts. That never works. Quality control goes all to hell. As Martha Schwartz said, "If they're good enough to work on our books, they're good enough to take our copyediting test and work for us directly." Also: "We don't use anonymous copyeditors."

I wish we had the same sort of control, but our publisher uses freelance editorial offices (us). They used to have in-house copyediting, which was marvelous -- a good copyeditor can surgically improve text without ever revealing his or her presence -- but academic publishing is up against the Internet and PLoS, and they're choking on the idea that their days are numbered.

You're right about the instinctive part -- I don't ever remember having actual grammar lessons in school (I had New Math also), so I've absorbed most of what I know from reading (and checking up on aforementioned copyeditors). I find grammar lessons boring; there are few things more tedious than searching for a rule to back up my sense that something in the language is off. But here is what I meant by conditional tense:

If a case-control study were completed successfully in these areas that would also provide some evidence that question 2 could be answered affirmatively. (original)

If a case-control study was completed successfully in these areas, then there will be some evidence that question 2 can be answered affirmatively. (copyedited)

The author was speculating on the import of the results of a nonexistent case-control study. That sounds conditional to me.

However, the reason I picked up on it is the copyedited sentence just clunks in the ear, at least to me, and it could be argued that the meaning is altered by the changes, which is a cardinal sin for copyediting in a journal.

I've read that Illinois (pron ill-en-noy) was originally how the French wrote down phonetically what the local natives called that discrete area, presumably pronounced ee-en-wah.

Is it true that locals there call Greenwich Village "green witch" instead of "grennitch", or is this a mere calumny?

Still trying to work out what a "laugh ride" is ... <she hinted discreetly>

Still trying to work out what a "laugh ride" is ...

That's the thing about copyediting: if done well, it supports and compensates for problems and complications in all the other phases of production. If done badly, it's hideously expensive to fix, and raises the price of all kinds of other operations.

About a month ago I sent our managing editor a 22-page document listing copyediting and compositing errors for two issues. It caused some embarrassment, but I'm not sure about any lasting change. However, if we keep sending things back for corrections, we may drive up their prices.

Recently one editor-in-chief of a journal in this publisher's stable had to publish a letter of apology because a typographer had reformatted some quoted text used in an editorial so it looked as though the EIC had plagiarized it (properly formatted on proof pages, !poof! gone in the print version). I don't know who pointed it out, but it certainly caused a collective gasp among the editorial offices in our group.

As one of the issue publishers said, How long before they realize this is costing them money and they bring it all back in house again?

Thank you for the leads -- I will certainly see what I can do to follow up.

A while back, we all got a scandalized kick out of an advert for Greenwich Savings Bank, in which the lady announcer pronounced it "green witch."

Oh, we have a long tradition of mispronouncing old names. Just off the top of my head I can think of Chalmondeley, Featherstoneshaugh, and Magdelane (College, Oxford), pronounced Chumly, Fanshaw, and Maudlin, respectively.

(That reminds me of Alfred Bester picking English place-names for surnames in The Stars, My Destination for their exoticism to American ears.)

As to Pontefract, I've always pronounced it Pontefrakt with a schwa instead of an e. But I'm a southerner, so don't take my word for it.

See "Owyhee" for Hawaii.

I never had formal grammar lessons at school and now I love them. But then, I do teach Latin and love Latin grammar, so I am probably not a representative member of the modern world. Or indeed the human race. But what you are talking about with your conditionals is the difference between 'unreal' (or 'contrary-to-fact') conditionals - which require the subjunctive in the protasis, as you noted - and 'real' (or 'factual') conditionals, which use the indicative. So everyone is right, and this is a rare case where failing to use the subjunctive totally changes the meaning of the sentence.

But see: isn't it fun to play with this obscure vocabulary in support of your instinctive grasp of grammar? Part of the reason I love Latin is that it often points out to me why English grammar does certain odd things.

I think Nicole is right about font vs. fount - they are both archaisms or technical terms, and both mean the same thing (from the Latin: fons). The question, I suppose, is which is better established in the common idiom. But it can be dangerous to decide grammar by googling.

And I presume Marilee's politician was claiming that some plan or other would flounder on some obstacle. Which is possible, I suppose, but probably wrong in context.

Oh, and my problem with "Pontefract" is that I have heard it pronounced "Pumfrey". I don't know if this is a restricted usage or not, and I can't now remember the context. But it is not totally implausible as an English pronunciation.

Also, Des Moines.

Commiserations on the paper-grading, Fragano. Mine doesn't start for a few days yet, thankfully.

That's an altercation I'd avoid.

I saw "take stalk of" for "take stock of" in an academic review in a VERY prestigious academic journal in Classics, which has a very high bit-rate and probably cannot afford proofreaders. The academic author is held responsible for all mistakes.

I'm not from around there, but I can show off a little tidbit that I learned about it. "Riding", as in the English locale name/administrative division, is itself an eggcorn that derives from the Norse word for "third".

Citing the OED etymology for riding:

Late OE. type *þriðing or *þriding (recorded only in Latin contexts or forms), ad. ON. þriðjung-r third part, f. þriði third: see -ING. The initial consonant was subsequently absorbed by the preceding t or th of east, west, north.

Thus, "West Thriding" became "West Riding".

a1066 Laws Edin. Conf. 31 (Lieberman), Erant etiam potestates super wapentagiis quas trehingas uocabant, scilicet super terciam partem prouincie.
1086 Domesday Bk. (1783) 375 Treding dicit quod non habet ibi nisi ix acras et dimid.
1215 Magna Carta §25 Omnes comitatus, hundredi, wapentakii, et trethingii, sint ad antiquas firmas.

That's one dreadful phrase that won't find its way into the wild. (This thread is more like a zoo, or maybe a quarantine pen.)

Then there's the news story that circulated several years ago (i.e. almost certainly apocryphal) about the Neo-Nazi who went before the court to change his name in honor of his hero.

Yes, that's right.

Hi Hitler.

I (and my teammates) are still mildly aggravated about the trivia game wherein the fellow reading the questions referred to a reclusive book character rather than an elusive one

With regard to comprise/compose and many, many others, the issue isn't whether the evolving of the language willy-nilly is a threat or a menace, and whether it's tragic that many fine distinctions are supposedly being lost (and in the case of comprise/compose it's hard to argue that any useful distinction is being lost, inasmuch as either word can be replaced with some variant of "make up"); the issue is that the distinctions often have not historically existed in the manner that pedants claim.

The difficult thing to accept is that a/r/e/ our language has no solid objective base of rules. It exists in an uneasy tug between common use and authority. When you cite "correct" meanings of words under dispute, you are citing (either explicitly or implicitly) an authority (or consensus of authorites). As Robert L pointed out above, what is under dispute changes, and yesterday's mistakes may be today's accepted use, or may still be under attack. If you want to accept authority on these matters, great; but it's also useful to keep in mind the history of use of a word, and the history of the dispute. Many of these things were simply decided more or less arbitratily by pedants at a detectable point in history, and handed down through generations of teachers and pedantic writers who rarely questioned the things they were told as children, even when they made no sense (such as the notion that it is incorrect to split infinitives, or that the phrase-adverbial use of "hopefully" is incorrect).

Nekrokedeia; or, The art of embalming, wherein is shewn the right of burial, the funeral ceremonies, and the several ways of preserving dead bodies in most nations of the world. (Thomas Greenhill, 1705)

joann wrote:

I save the worry about trustworthiness for restaurant menus, thusly: "If they can't spell it, I probably shouldn't eat it."

I think you're missing out. One of my favorite restaurants (called, as it happens, "JoAnn's") has a menu riddled with errors; and when it comes to barbecue, apostrophe abuse is your hallmark of quality.

Unfortunately, that's all there is. As it said, "recorded only in Latin contexts or forms".

If there is an actual OE use of "thriding", it isn't in the online OED.

Can't remember the article, but one writer remembers her pledge as "one Asian, in the vestibule."

The husband is of the group that measures words without reading them first. With street signs, especially. When he can make out the first letter, he then guesses what street we're approaching by the length of the word. Drives me as crazy as I do him with driving by landmark instead of proper directions.
He does the same with hearing, though. The syllables are right, the number of words is right, but it comes out, "Hey, is this a Zubic Micronium?"

> Elf Sternberg of all people said recently on rasfw, "It is a tenant among evangelical Christians that 'atheism is impossible'".

That *is* unlike him. May be it wasn't a typo and he meant that it was a meme which had moved into their heads and wouldn't leave.

> Too true, and not just for spelling. It's also a real argument against the "Fix these sentences" sort of grammar worksheets: Studies have shown that after a class reads and "corrects" 25-50 sentences with errors, more students -- although not always the same ones -- will start having trouble with the errors they've been working on -- thank you visual reinforcement!

In my last year of school I encountered the mnemonic RAVEN - Remember Affect Verb, Effect Noun. Now that's a nice little mnemonic, but up unitl that time I'd just automatically got affect/effect right. Now I need to dredge up that damned acronym every time I use either word.

Candle was talking about how Latin handles conditionals. Some of you may recall that I've been studying Greek, and I'm here to tell you that Greek does some really funky things with them. I won't burden the comment thread with the details.

My thought was simply "What the French Connection UK does that MEAN?"

My mind was then soothed by a more traditional transposition: "Original Rastas (Rastafarianism was a new religion) surfaced with the thoughts of Marcus Gravey."

While transcribing a Locus interview, I came across a lovely rant against applying Latin rules to English grammar (espec. the split infinitive), but alas it ranged too far from topic to use. If the interviewee (he knows who he is) cares to get it out in public, "Making Light" is a good place for it. And I no longer proofread Locus, so can't be blamed for the "comprised of" that shows up in the current issue's YA section, but will apologize anyway!

You all worship at Vince Cerf who has a clear financial interest in the outcome of this debate but you immediately castigate all of us who disagree and impune our motives.

Apart from not knowing this Cerf person at whom I'm supposed to be worshipping, I am struck by the verb to impune. From context, seems to be a critical or at least a negative action, so I don't think it can be related to impunity. Perhaps it means to mock using a pune, or play on wordes.

I've been in hospitals like that.

Except that it's not right.

'Affect' is a noun. It's a psychiatric term meaning, roughly, observable mood.
'Effect' is a verb, meaning 'cause to happen'. One speaks of 'effecting a change' in something. So confusing the two here is particularly bad: "I effected the abolition of the semicolon" (=I wiped out semicolons) is very different from "I affected the abolition of the semicolon" (=I had some effect on it; maybe I slowed it down).

A lot of the mishearings are vivid. "A viscous attack in the media" - ie mud sticks and is hard to scrape off.

Also: "fine tooth-comb" - what? For combing teeth?
"Fine-tooth comb" please.

British placenames are great for confusing the unwary foreigner who, until arriving, thought he/she could read and speak. They fall into three categories:

BASIC: England
Leicester
Derby
Holborn
Middlesborough
Pontefract

INTERMEDIATE: Oxford and Cambridge
Gonville & Caius
Magdalen
Magdalene (which is which?)
Worcester
Wadham

ADVANCED: Scotland
Dalyell (pronounced Dalziel)
Menzies (not pronounced Menzies)
Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan
Beinn a'Chlaidheimh
Meall Ghaordaidh

- A website selling "mid-evil style" jewelry.
- Music being played "on queue."

I would be more worried about a symphony in an apartment.

My thought was simply "What the French Connection UK does that MEAN?"

When faced with writing of that sort, my usual reaction was to write a referral to the Undergraduate Writing Center. The miscreant's subsequent exams and papers invariably were in clear English. I once had a student who seemed to have been trained by Lacan or Derrida; an entire exam was full of stuff like you quoted, only decorated with postmodernist artcrit babble. Three or four weeks' worth of UWC fixed them right up. I have no idea how the Center did it, but it sure worked.

--Mary Aileen

The totally embarassing Mike McCurry over in his eponymous sidelight says:

You all worship at Vince Cerf who has a clear financial interest in the outcome of this debate but you immediately castigate all of us who disagree and impune our motives.

Apart from not knowing this Cerf person at whom I'm supposed to be worshipping, I am struck by the verb to impune. From context, seems to be a critical or at least a negative action, so I don't think it can be related to impunity. Perhaps it means to mock using a pune, or play on wordes.

I'd guess he meant impugn. Or perhaps you knew that and were being amusing.

Ajay:

Also: "fine tooth-comb" - what? For combing teeth?
"Fine-tooth comb" please.

I've always heard it as fine-toothed comb, which makes it much clearer where the tooth bites.

I think you're missing out. One of my favorite restaurants (called, as it happens, "JoAnn's") has a menu riddled with errors; and when it comes to barbecue, apostrophe abuse is your hallmark of quality.
Scraps :
If typoed food could not be et, New York Chinese restaurants would go bankrupt.

I was actually thinking more of the aspirant "maison de la casa haus"-type places that never consulted any sort of written authority when producing their menus full of recipes from the foreign. Apostrophes are, IMO, a totally lost cause--F'ghu's sake, I found "it's" as a possessive in the NYT the other day!

To add to your troubles with this, there is also a noun 'affect' ("He exhibited the flat affect typical of patients with this injury") and a verb 'effect' ("Our purpose is to effect positive change in the race relations in our community").

While transcribing a Locus interview, I came across a lovely rant against applying Latin rules to English grammar (espec. the split infinitive), but alas it ranged too far from topic to use.

I tend to let it go at "The English language Latin that same thing not is." I got this from Teresa, but I'm not certain it's original with her.

Rob Kerr - still, a dash is de rigeur, surely? "Symphony in a-Flat"? But it's also odd to write it that way. Ordinarily you either spell the whole thing out (A Flat Minor) or use the symbol ♭ (A♭ == A-Flat Major; a♭ == A-Flat Minor).

a♭ is a pretty weird key anyway, if you ask me.

(Btw, for those who care, ♭ is &#9837;)

A random sampling of the discs close to hand says otherwise. None uses the flat symbol, and none is hyphenated. In fact, I'm more used to seeing hyphenation between the letter of the scale and the word "minor", when written using German notation (e.g. Bach's "h-Moll Messe", Bach's B minor Mass)

The tradition of using lowercase to mean minor has certainly died out recently, but is still observable in some older music writers' musings.

Apostrophes are misplaced so often I've started wondering if they even get mentioned in school any more. 'Real Estate Investor Seek's Apprentice' is one sign I've seen. (Not to be confused with the sign advertising 'cashflowing property'!)

Back to English pronunciation -- An Englishman once laughed at me when I asked him where Tottenham Street was. "Oooh, Totnam!" he said. Much too late, I realized I should have said, "Oh, yeah -- well, how would you pronounce La Jolla, you're so smart?"

I feel sure that it must be "iced tea" as it is tea which has been poured over ice and, thus, iced. And "ice tea" sounds rather like "ice wine" which really isn't it at all.

But then, it's "ice cream."

She was so arrogant she wouldn't even get it right with an exemplar right in front of her! I've found that on the BBC this is true of every language except French, which even the BBC attempts to pronounce correctly.

To say nothing of all the people who believe that quotation marks are used for emphasis: 'For sale: "new" washer' (temporarily using British quoting conventions).

Hyphens get their share of abuse, too, with people inserting them at whim these days. (As best I can tell, the current misuse began with computer types not understanding the difference between the act, "to back up a disk", and the result, "a tape back-up". The current rule seems to be, "when in doubt, insert a hyphen".)

But punctuation abuse probably deserves its own thread.

Although the definition is in the OED supplement, the pronunciation doesn't get mentioned. (And how embarrassing--I almost had to dig out the magnifying glass. Must be officially old.) Further checking reveals that Partridge also ignores pronunciation.

Both Merriam-Webster Online (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/Black+Maria) and Free Dictionary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Black+Maria) give a long "i".

And I've seen the term before and (I guess) always assumed it used a correct pronunciation of 'Maria'. The one with an EYE in the middle is spelled Mariah as far as I'm concerned.

And I scoff at Webster! (I don't know from Free Dictionary.) I'll see what American Heritage says when I get home (probably the same thing it says now, but I can't check it yet).

Greg London, "thirty yacht six" is a thing of beauty and wonder.

Faren, Xopher: I've already published my rants about split infinitives, terminal prepositions, etc., in "On Copyediting." Xopher, the phrase you were trying to remember was "The language Latin that same thing as English not is," and I believe it's mine.

On Scraps' point about distinctions sometimes having never existed and therefore relying on (often unnamed) authorities: well yes, but the "language is evolving" argument depends just as much on the authority of the ordinary language users. Some may prefer that, and I guess they (we?) will win in the end, but that's no reason not to try to affect the outcome. I don't like to ground my argument in historical usages, or you get into trouble; I'd prefer to ground it in whether or not a useful distinction is being made (as with flout/flaunt) or not (as with font/fount). Ambiguity (for modern readers) is bad, historically justified or otherwise. Of course, if nobody understands the distinction made, then perhaps it does have to be abandoned. But I still think it's a shame. And values for "nobody" in that sentence may vary.

Magdalen
Magdalene (which is which?)

Magdalene is at Cambridge and Magdalen Oxford, although they are pronounced the same way (as "Maudlin"). And the old pronunciation of "Holborn" is being phased out, as far as I can tell, seeing as everyone looks at me strangely when I use it in London. But I will continue to laugh, entirely unfairly, at people who mispronounce Edinburgh or Tottenham, and also La Jolla. But how about the famous Towcester races?

English teachers, formally enthusiastic about their subject

Reminds me of Charles Windsor, the artist formally known as Prince.

"Iced tea" is correct: tea which has been "iced", or (in this case) been combined with ice (either by adding the ice or pouring the tea over the ice). A near-equivalent would be "spiced wine", wine which has had spices added to it.

(Why, then, is it "ice water"? I'd guess that has a different derivation: "ice water" would originally be the water coming off melting ice, and, by extension, any water of the same temperature, usually achieved by adding ice to water. Or perhaps it should be "iced water", and lost the "d" rather longer ago than "ice tea". Had I an OED handy, I'd check.)

But then, it's "ice cream."

The way one phrase comes into being doesn't necessarily tell you anything about how a seemingly-equivalent phrase came into being. "Iced tea" is still liquid; "ice cream" is solid (in the same way that clay is solid), and you don't have separate "ice" and "cream" parts, as you do with "iced tea". Hence, it is cream that is ice, rather than cream that has been iced.

Oh, my head...

Not that this counts as any sort of authority, but there is a song (apparently from a Lerner and Lowe musical Paint Your Wagon) called "They Call the Wind Maria", in which Maria is pronounced with the RYE middle, to rhyme with "Fire".

So the "dual" pronounciation goes back at least that far.

I have no idea if this (directly) relates, but I recall from several years back an article about peoples' names in a parenting magazine that talked about gender shifts, and that very often, a name would initially have a different pronounciation when it shifted genders -- even if the spelling didn't change -- and that once a name shifted from being used for males to also applying to females, very often its use for males would decline or cease altogether. It gave several examples, none of which (of course) I specifically remember.

But maybe this is related ...

... Or, maybe not.

Like Evelyn? I believe that's pronounced EEV-lin for men, and EV-e-lin for women.

Paint Your Wagon was a sucky show anyway.

OK, OK. Shet mah mouf.

(When I said "certainly" then, I meant "according to the first relevant citation I could find on Google", but that would have taken too long.)

I'm not a big fan of character name pronunciation guides in general, and it doesn't matter a jot to me how anyone pronounces "Hermione". But letting the evil Mrs Laker share her name with the heroine of West Side Story would send out all the wrong signals.

In her excellent "Eats, Shoots, & Leaves", Lynne Truss found that "fine tooth-comb" was correct in 19th century literature.
Apparently there was in fact something called a "tooth-comb".

*jaw drops* Oh, but you're kidding, of course. No one could be that silly really. The Karate Kid went through the Stargate? That girl in The Blair Witch Project deserved what she got, after all she was SO MEAN in high school...

Has your husband had any brain injuries? This is a classic type of aphasia.

Adam S, I was 12 when I hit the "know more words than I can pronounce" hurdle.

ObBloomCounty:

Pear Pimples for Hairy Fishnuts!

And, I would add, while quite good at correcting grammatical errors, these centres often have a problem with student essays which are strictly grammatical but don't say anything. Actually, that's a problem with a lot of professors, too.

(from a high school history paper)

I suppose that would be a name bestowed on someone who liked to rip up telephone directories.

(Ducking)

"But Captian is in human."

I'm fairly certain the writer was not refering to a body swap, nor to Kirk's latest girlfriend.

BTW, how is La Jolla pronounced?

But on second thoughts PZ probably did mean "wet" (possibly in the sense of drunk) and wasn't trying to cuss.

Xopher -- I once heard an Englishman say something that sounded like "MAY-co", which, it turns out, was his pronunciation of "macho".

Teresa -- You gave me a copy of "On Copyediting" many years ago at some convention or other -- I still have it and treasure it, not least because you said it was okay to end a sentence with a preposition.

Fragano Ledgister -- I abase myself in the face of your superior pronunciation skills. And I also realized since I last posted that it might be Tottenham Road, not Tottenham Street. Which shows (if you haven't guessed already) that I know next to nothing about London geography. So I'll just tiptoe away quietly, and post again when I'm not so tired.

It wouldn't quite cut the muster, asyermightsay.

A friend recently returned from Iraq, where (he told us jokingly in a hurriedly-typed email) his unit has become known as "The Terror of the Dessert". It was about ten minutes before someone pointed out that obviously they were not men to be trifled with.

You can't pass up lines like that.

Moving on.... Local pronunciation is a fascinating thing. My husband lost his Mainish accent long ago, but his Mom still sounds just like Flo the diner lady in "Non Sequitur".

So I accidentally taught a travel agent to misspell Tucson. Back before the Internet (1982 or so) I booked round-trip tickets from Harrisburg to Tucson. The travel agent duly typed up the itinerary but put down TUC as the airport code.

I pointed out that Tucson's airport code is TUS, not TUC, and when the tickets were issued the new itinerary had TUS as the airport code, and yet another promo for Tucson's SF convention.

Now that we have the Internet, I looked up TUC: Benjamin Matienzo Airport in Tucuman, Argentina.

Did he think you were pudding him down?

Sad to say, Worldwide Travel once caught a real travel agent making a similar error.

Karen

Berwick upon Tweed, on the border between England and Scotland, is pronounced "Berrik".

Lerwick, the main town on the island of Shetland, is pronounced "Lerwick".

I believe it's a piece of convergent linguistic evolution.

- o0o -

dreadful phrase:

Tenderhooks. Gets me every time I see it.

Fragano Ledgister -- Arggggg!

'Another' is just a shorthand way of writing 'an other'. If there's a word in the middle, the sandhi-n is not there, so 'a ____ other'. But long ago someone decided that the phrase was actually 'a nother' and now we have things like 'a whole nother'—and probably some people who think that's different from 'a whole other'!

No slam on you, Lisa. It's a long tradition at this point. As well chide you for saying 'apron'!

When I was working in San Jose CA (also in the 80s) we lived in terror that somebody doing travel arrangements would suffer a brain seizure and type the obvious SJO instead of SJC. Who needs to go to Costa Rica?

--Mary Aileen

Well, I have been known to book people to Costa Rica in my travel agent days, but only if that's where they needed to go.

Toward the end of my travel agency training, I spent a day at an agency, supposedly observing. The person I was supposed to meet with showed up two hours later, met with me for 15 minutes and left again. He said, "I don't care if you're the class valedictorian [which I was]. You can't be a travel agent fresh out of school, book a trip to La Paz, Bolivia and not screw it up."

Of course I went back to school, booked an itinerary to La Paz, Bolivia (as opposed to La Paz, Mexico), made it autoprice, and went home, satisfied. So there!

When I was going to grad school in Rochester, NY (ROC) there were the invitable stories of international students arriving in Rochester, MN (RST) looking for the University of Rochester and facing a potentially expensive taxi ride.

Thankfully ROC is more intuitive than RST for Rochester.

The grave is fine on your demise
But don't expect to decomprise.

Some I see a lot in which a bit of typography reverses the meaning:
My application was excepted
I was apart of the group

I recently learned that there was a racist group called the Klux Klutz Klan. And I thought those books were innocent fun.

In my part of Appalachia, born-and-bred residents use "I don't care" the way the rest of the English-speaking world uses "I don't mind." One is no more intrinsically logical than the other, but it creates misunderstanding. I heard of a company that moved headquarters from far away; they turned away job applicants for a year before realizing that "I don't care at all to do that" conveys willingness.

Perhaps this is related; it goes in the "kids these days" file anyway: the dreadful absence of syntax in some people's email. Received from a student:
[Name] here would you check my website out I got it working I think it all I can do I have no more time I hope it what you want I tried I thought it was pretty hard but I got something up one link works takes you rite a site and so does the [initials of professional organization, in lower case, natch] one once again thanks for all you have done for me over the semester.
This is a guy who writes perfectly well on a word processor. But writing in email is like a stream-of-consciousness yell into a dark tunnel . . . maybe some message will come out at the other end.

Re: mid-evil, I frequently see that same one all run together as midevil, or midivel, or medevil. It's pernicious on online fantasy games.

I've seen "serous problem" in a context not referring to serums of any sort. Typo, I'm sure, but funny.

Exit, pursued by a...

I know very well that language is always changing, and most of this doesn't matter to most people . . . so, thanks for sharing this gift/curse of noticing what's actually on the page, because so few people I know personally care.

I also know very well that I'm the only one left in this thread.

Re: language change, are we at the point in history when "every day" disappears completely, and "everyday" is both an adjective and a noun phrase? This is one of those things that Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little wrote about above; it creates ambiguity where there used to be a clear distinction.

The gift/curse is not just that this drives me nuts, it's that most people can't even see a difference.

I recall seeing stuff in the press recently about a study (my search-fu is weak, can't find documentation) that indicated that a certain amount of misspellings and other errors is a status marker in email, and appears in communication from the more powerful to the less.

I've taken to leaving a typo or two (but not introducing any) in my emails, and it seems to help in getting people to do what I want them to.

"I complete agree with understanding how TCP works and why before implementing your own UDP or even IP based protocol (I'm liking SCTP more & more), but using TCP does not solve the problem, it exuberates it!"

As with many of the other malapropisms, it's oddly correct in its own way.

"Boil a cup of rice and through in some saffron."

Here's a sheerly awful one I just picked up on the Evil Editor: A character in one of the bad example query letters "was privy to the kingdom’s greatest secrets and sword to protect them."

Larry Brennan: that's fascinating, and if you do stumble across a link to the study, I'd like to see it. Because I would have guessed the other way around, but I can see a point for it, I suppose, in context of the tradition of being short with one's "lessers" and not bothering to explain oneself.

I would have guessed the other way around because I grew up talking in ten-thousand-dollar words, and learned to adapt to more casual speech styles later, mostly in connection with entering the "lower-middle-class freak" category from the "upper-middle-class academic kid" one.

Since one of the local Catholic parish schools closed its doors, we no longer seem to get "Scared" as in "Scared Heart." Unfortunately, "solider" seems to have replaced it.

-- Seeing his sister naked was a peek experience.

-- Mrs. Flintlock is a teatotaller. (i.e. someone who totally drinks tea)

"Bubble Bees fly and they are not aerodynamically
equipped to do it."

"As with many of the other malapropisms, it's oddly correct in its own way.

Ditto the experience I had with a doctor some years back who said, "Don't scratch it, you'll only excoriate the problem!"

"You know why they don't have those X-ray machines in shoe stores any more? Because they were bad for you -- the X-rays would shine up on your gentile organs."

Speaking of which, I believe that this is the definitive explanation of the Flight of the Bumblebee.

Although that explains nothing about the flight (float?) of the bubble bee.

It wasn't until I read another editor ranting about it (a personal bete noire of his) in a forum just a few years ago that I had the awful truth. Well, I say "awful", but "think" still sounds wrong to me.

I think I'll just never use either variant of the phrase ever again.

--Mary Aileen

I've been seeing a lot of use of 'moral' for 'morale' lately.

KNIT ONE, PEARL TWO

(I'll admit, I assumed that was correct for years.)

"He clamoured to his feet" -- you just can't stand up quietly in heavy armor.

"He had the patients of an angle" -- a scoliosis specialist.

"Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder" -- final curtain calls can be hard.

There's a Tori Amos song containing the line "alive below the waste." She's very intentional with her double meanings, though.

Larry, there are some classic studies in sociolinguistics -- William Labov in the 70s, I think -- that show upper-class speakers using non-standard forms, while the upwardly-striving middle class strictly enforces "proper" speech. And over-enforces it, using "hypercorrect" forms like "whom" or "I" when it should be "who" or "me." Rich preppy slackers wear their unearned status lightly, while insecure climbers try too hard to gain approval.

So, I think something like that might go on in email. But that's not what's happening when students treat email like it's IM, even when writing to employers or professors. They just think that this medium has no formatting standards. And they have never written a physically existing letter, except for an assignment in third grade.

Nalo, "teetotally" is used here in Kentucky (a bit east of AY-thens and Ver-SALES), as in "I teetotally don't care at all to do that," meaning "I am totally willing to do that." It's not used often; it's used a little self-consciously as slightly archaic; but it still exists, while in the rest of the world "teetotaller" is the only surviving instance.

Along with "quiet/quite," I notice a very common confusion of "sale/sell." These are also homophones in much of the South. Students write things like "the story was having a sell." They do this even though J.C. Penney is constantly advertising its perpetual SALE! not only on paper, which the young folks seldom read, but on TV.

Quiet, quite; diet Sprite. I'm going to start printing flash cards. If you can spell and say one, you can with the other too. Sale, sell; male Mel. I'm starting to understand the evil temptation to teach prescriptive grammar, even though I know it doesn't work.

While writing about the "quite mouse" and the "50% off sell," they also won't get off my lawn no matter how much I yell. Kids these days.

Boy, I love this thread. Hey -- who turned out the lights? Hello? Hello? Is anyone still here?

If I knew any English teachers, I'd suggest they collect these lists and make projects out of finding the correct phrases or terms. But I don't.

I told him scold is cold and scald is caliente.

bearfooted Carmelites

they were nuns who didn't wear shoes :-)

Plus, most of us in the security community tend to view 0-day remotely exploitable bugs with a certain amount of gravity (i.e. not "knit-picking")].

I hadn't realized that most of the people in the security community could knit - never mind needing to spend time unraveling their disasters.

I do know an English teacher, so I passed on the suggestion. He said:

"These are fun! I may have to use them in class..."

I can't blame Eva's brain for offering the word biopsy there (my brain should work so well at age 100!). Eva is a retired nurse.

As for "sediments", maybe he was thinking of doing some mud slinging?

"Okay, vegetables, march! Hey, where you going, broccoli?"

Many years ago, before government was formed, people had to live on their own reconnaissance.

Monstrous.

This fails to excuse Lisa's presumably 20th century author, but it's interesting nonetheless.

"The problem was that was the voting ballads where unreliable and contained falsies."

"Change first started coming about during the First World War when women were given jobs as nurses, bus drivers, and railway partners. This made many women’s confidence grow and change their usual habits."

hand's on training
safe confinds
randomality
fender binders

I won't criticise outright misspellings like "princables," because that's another topic. I like "fender binders" (more Southern homophones).

In one of my posts above, I wrote "story" when I meant "store." For all have sinned and fallen short.

We all make mistakes,I agree, but some mistakes are entertaining.

It's from Middle Earth, perhaps?

"Jallend, vampire, self-proclaimed artist, and humanities judge and jury..."

"Once I jump that hurtle..."

"You are not hanging that THING in MY artshow!!!!

"The plane will land momentarily."

If that looks right to you, note that 'momentarily' is 'FOR a moment', not "IN a moment'.

I see your point though. There is this word 'bareass', which is probably what people think 'butt naked' is euphemizing.

This is a process of linguistic change called "folk etymology."

Mike Whittaker: It does land momentarily. Then it bounces up, lands momentarily again, and finally lands for a long time (prior to taxiing to the gate). Haven't you ever ridden in a plane? [g]

"KU Med. Center Defends Its Brain-Dead Tests"

I did not look to see if it was that way in the KC Star today or yesterday, but it could also hae been generated from the KMBC news writers (TV).

Yikes!

“My old washing machine, he’s given up the goat”

Simply lovely, as is the explanation the speaker gives for using that particular word.

I mentioned over there that when I was a child, I thought my mother was using a Yiddish expression when she said "Yezhuhshmaddiya." But once I found out how it's spelled, I concluded that it was not likely Yiddish. 'Jesus Maria'.

Well, that's debatable. I think Language Log has ML beat by three years, give or take.

But I think this thread has beat everyone else for sheer size.

embroidered in battle
the girl's new outfit was electrical
he slashed cream across her new dress

"It's like an Alcatraz around my neck."

--Boston mayor Menino on the shortage of city parking spaces

Gag.

"Oh! Oh! I'm gonna...succumb!"

Xopher: Thank goodness I wasn't drinking anything.

He laughed at the joke. "Good 'un," he said.

Do one to others as you would have them do one to you.

She says, in explanation, "Just call me Mrs. Malatrot."

Tho' I thought it was pronounced more like cow tao (towe?), i.e. rhymes with how now brown cow. Interesting mental image, that.

Lede is a noun that means a people or race.

"Burying the lead," means burying the lead paragraph!

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest!

Susan @#359: "wholistic" is actually semi-correct, in that it's at least using the English cognate for the root.

Xopher: I can't reach your 9CL comic: it's too old for the free archives.

I note that the first line of 267 is italicized.

Like me, here, quoting you?

I've always liked "foisted by his own petard"

"Leaning on windmills" for "tilting at windmills" (I wish I had saved the cite). Apparently Don Quixote isn't as well known as it was.

I'm still fond of the second-level reanalysis "a dog y dog world".

The Heathen! Doesn't he know he should refer to them as Christmas huts?

:-)