Please don’t hate me.
We Democrats pride ourselves on being the education party. We laugh at the signs at Tea Party demonstrations, and rightly so. After all, Democrats rarely make such mistakes, and they are entirely absent here at Daily Kos! Right?
So, this collection of misspelled and misused words is for entertainment purposes only!
I won’t bother with the old chestnuts your/you’re and their/they’re/there because they’ve been done to death, and it has apparently done no good.
Certain words are misspelled as a matter of course. Almost nobody gets them right.
When I first saw ad nauseam, I thought it was a misspelling. The same goes for minuscule. But those are the correct spellings. I were gobsmacked when I found out.
Let’s look at a few of these words:
baited vs. bated: You’ll often see the phrase “baited breath.” But breath that is bated is breath that is held or restrained. If your breath is baited, you’ve been eating minnows again.
breach vs. breech: I don’t know whether these words are commonly mixed up, but I included them because, in looking up their definitions, I just now discovered why a baby that isn’t born head first is known as a breech birth: breech is an archaic word for butt! I, for one, am glad to know that. A breach, by the way, is a break or a gap in something. ”Once more into the breach!” Be careful not to go into the breech, because you’ll be heading straight for the enemy’s cannon. Or his butt.
broach vs. brooch: I hate to bring this up. To broach is to raise a difficult subject. A brooch is a nice piece of jewelry. Why they’re pronounced the same is one of those vexing questions in the history of our silly language.
choose vs. chose: Chose being the past tense of choose. Knowledge of the existence of the word choose seems to be in decline.
cite/sight/site: To cite is to refer to or to mention as an example. A sight is something you see. A site is a location where you might see a sight.
compliment vs. complement: A compliment is a nice thing somebody says about you. Sometimes the compliment is complimentary, or free. A complement is something that goes well with something else. Sometimes it’s also a number of people or things. So a complement of your co-workers may give you a complement of compliments.
Let’s discuss criterion/criteria and phenomenon/phenomena together. Criterion and phenomenon are singular, while criteria and phenomena are plural. A lot of people seem unaware of the singular forms. It’s just a matter of experience. The longer you live and the more you read, the more of these tidbits you’ll come across.
Definitely, not definately: When did people start misspelling this word? Suddenly this misspelling is like the latest craze!
deserts vs. desserts: Big dry expanses aside (one pronunciation of desert), deserts (pronounced just like desserts) are things you deserve. So, it’s just deserts, not just desserts, no matter how much you think you deserve pie.
disinterested vs. uninterested: Disinterested means impartial; uninterested means not giving a rat’s breech. (I have to note that use of disinterested when you mean uninterested is common enough that uninterested is now a second definition of disinterested. That pains me, but as a “descriptivist,” I should be OK with it, I guess.)
dribble vs. drivel: People often write the sentence, “Don’t talk such dribble!” Drivel (nonsense) is the word they want. Now, the spouting of drivel might involve some dribbling. Perfectly possible.
faze vs. phase: The use of phase when you mean faze can almost be excused. After all, faze does’t look like a proper word, does it? It reminds me of tonite. But when Captain Kirk shoots me with his phaser set on “stun,” it doesn’t faze me in the least. That’s the truth!
forego vs. forgo: Well, I’m learning things as I go along here. For me, forego means to precede, as in a foregone conclusion. But the dictionary I’m looking at says it can be a variant spelling of forgo. I don’t like it. Forgo, by the way, means to go without something.
Gandhi: Far be it from me to tell people how to spell their own names, but now and then one runs into people whose parents named them Ghandi. I imagine that’s because the ”dh” combination is not found in English unless it’s an Indian word, like jodhpur, (which my ex, thinking it was spelled ”jodphur,” pronounced “jodfer.”)
I vs. me: Sorry. I know this is supposed to be mostly about spelling, but I’ve got a pet peeve. Riddle me this: why does a person who says “My friends gave me a party” insist on saying “Our friends gave my wife and I a party?”
loath vs. loathe: Loath is an adjective meaning “reluctant.” Loathe is a verb meaning “to hate.” Loath strikes me as a rather old-fashioned word, but people are using it a lot these days. Or, rather, they’re using loathe by mistake. “On our second date, my girlfriend cooked dinner. I was loath to tell her how much I loathe beets. I didn’t tell her, and now we are happily married.”
mislead vs. misled: This word pair is really the reason I wrote this diary in the first place. I often see people write, “I was mislead.” But the past tense of mislead is misled.
peak/peek/pique: “Oh, I’d love to climb a mountain, and to reach the highest peak...” Then I could get a peek at the scenery. The beautiful scenery piques my interest. If anything peaks your interest, it might cause me to experience a fit of pique!
pooh-pooh: I recently saw this spelled, in an otherwise impeccably written book, as poo-poo. Imagine my disappointment! To pooh-pooh is to dismiss as foolish. I will say nothing on the subject of poo-poo.
pore vs. pour: Aside from being a perfectly good word for a tiny hole in your skin, pore is also a verb meaning to read or study something carefully. People often claim to be pouring over old manuscripts and such, but they’re really poring. The only thing I pour over is milk on my corn flakes. I suppose I could pore through my corn flakes looking for one that looks like Elvis.
principal vs. principle: You should use these two words correctly as a matter of principle. After all, that was one of the principal reasons for spending all that time in school. (I have to admit that, as I have aged, I’ve found myself hesitating to commit to a spelling of these words without stopping to think.)
rabbit vs. rabid: This is really just for goofy fun. I have seen people refer to themselves as rabbit fans of this or that celebrity. These people were obviously Republicans; no Democrat would ever make such a silly mistake!
shoo-in, not shoe-in! I know that shoe-in looks logical because you picture somebody with a foot in the door, but the proper spelling is shoo-in.
stationary vs. stationery: To avoid messy letters, the stationery you write on should be kept stationary.
Finally (at long last, you’re probably saying), I have a plea. I would like everyone who uses the English language to eliminate the word whom and use who for everything. I have no authority for this request, but who always sounds perfectly OK to me. My reason for advocating this change is the problems people (not Democrats, mind you) have with whoever and whomever. Consider these two sentences:
I will give ice cream to whomever I choose!
I will give ice cream to whoever wants some!
People tend to use whomever in both of the above cases, because they, logically, assume that the preposition “to” means that the next word should be in the objective case. But, nooooo! Silly old English grammar says that whoever or whomever is part of a clause in the sentence, and that clause has its own rules. In the clause in the first sentence, whomever is the object of the verb choose. In the second clause, whoever is the subject who wants the ice cream.
See how confusing? Better to just declare all forms of whom archaic, right? I just want to make life a little easier!
Thanks for bearing with me (as opposed to baring). If I have made any mistakes in this diary, feel free to point and laugh! Hint: check the punctuation. I’m never sure of my punctuation.