BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words

Subject: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Mr Happy
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 05:42 AM

I've lately noticed a number of misspellings & mispronounciations of frequently used words.

noone:meaning nobody- could be pronounced 'noon'.
misled:meaning deceived- could be pronounced 'mizzled'.
moped: meaning small motorbike or moved gloomily.

anyone spotted any others?

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST,Dáithí
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 05:46 AM

How about your own "mispronounciation"? It's "mispronunciation"....
8¬)

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 06:05 AM

alright

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Mr Happy
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 06:07 AM

ayup-touche-well i wasn't sure! 8-)

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Noreen
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 06:52 AM

Definitely! (Aaaaargh)

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: gnu
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:04 AM

Volumptuous... and she was.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:10 AM

can you be more pacific about that?

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:40 AM

Nuclear, particularly, arctic, genealogy

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST,Sooz(at work)
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 08:10 AM

My current one is focussed (or is it focused?)Apparently both are correct. I've just finished collating school reports with an equal number of each spelling and I think they look dreadful!

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 08:46 AM

I hate it when sports commentators say "subtitute", "sikth" and "Alec" (Ferguson) instead of substitute, sixth and Alex - and they do it all the time! Why do commentators seem to find it so much of an effort to pronounce all the s's in a word?

Bagpuss

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 09:15 AM

Misspelt.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: nickp
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 09:31 AM

February/Febrary

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Peter T.
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 10:05 AM

Tough ones that virtually everyone is now getting wrong:

"principal" and "principle"

"effect" and "affect"

"its" and "it's"

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Sorcha
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 10:16 AM

Well, for one thing, two Mr. Happy's examples are either two words or hyphenated words; no one and mo-ped. Solves that confusion. Cinnamon, aluminum, envelope,inundate (indunate), chimney (chimbley),often (ofTen. But, the one that drives me batshit is 'irregardless'. Not a word.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: kendall
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 10:21 AM

irregardless also sends me over the top. Our own Senator Snowe once used that non word, and I chastised her severely.

Prostate
Orangutan

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 10:24 AM

For February the most common mistake here is Febuary, then there's umbarella, and the folks who get their books from the libary. But what really gets on my tits is people who answer a question with the one word, "absolutely". ABSOLUTELY WHAT?? It can be either affirmative or negative, it is an adverb, and usually qualifies a verb, on its own it has no validity.
RANT RANT....Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Noreen
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 10:24 AM

Peter T reminds me of a usage which I thought amusing when I first saw it, but now appears to be generally accepted :0(
on private hire taxi cabs: Advanced bookings only.

Surely it should be advance bookings = bookings in advance?

Also, on public fire doors: these doors are alarmed
when they look perfectly calm to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Giac
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 11:17 AM

TV sports persons annoy me daily with this one:

Ath-a-letic. As in, sports fans and athaletic supporters.

A local one which is kinda funny the first zillion times you hear it:

fidgiderry

Got it yet? Whatever you were thinking, likely that's not it. It's refrigerator. Seriously. It is a corruption of the brand name, Frigidaire. That first R apparently is impossible to see, but is made up for by pronouncing the E. Written spellings, too, are quite exotic, including "frigerotor".

Ain't langidge grate?

Mary

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Alba
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 11:19 AM

My Grandmother, bless her, (who frequently mixed up words) was telling us of a friend who had just had her Baby 6 weeks prematurely.
She informed me that the Woman was fine but the baby was in an incinerator until it got it got a bit stronger!....we were all laughing so much we couldn't tell her the word was incubator   *BG*
A:>)

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 11:59 AM

re: 'fidgiderry'...my cousin said 'batumfritter'..but HE was only 5, and learned better. Some adults do not care to learn.

I do grate (grit?) my teeth over randomly scattered apostrophes, with little regard whether they are used as plurals, possessives or contractions.

and I have totally given up on educating the masses on the difference between 'your' and 'you're' or 'there', 'their' and 'they're'

I also remember trying (with mixed results)to correct some young lads who said things like "He was standing in the filled (field), looking in the mere (mirror)"

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 12:05 PM

Carboard : cardboard

And the way weather men/women say 'uh' before their words...you listen when they're doing the forecast on TV. They do it on Blue Peter too.I know it's the same as saying 'er' but it bugs me.

Sal

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 12:14 PM

We've got parakeet flooring!

From www.isms.org.uk Hilaryous (sic) stuff...

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: M.Ted
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 12:18 PM

"Irregardless" is a real word, irregardless of whether it is a very good word. As per The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:

>Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal >style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United >States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper >yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- >prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different >from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for >decades and will probably continue to be so.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 12:43 PM

Doesn't bug me, exactly, but I'm aware of it when people say: eightth. As in eight-thuh. There is only one th in the word.

I know a woman who for "usual" (yoozhual) says "yoozyooall". As anyone else ever heard the word pronounced like that? (English is not a second language for her; she's a native born American.)

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 01:04 PM

oh,...there are still folks who will argue violently about 'tomato' and 'salmon'...

and, although a tree of the Pacific Northwest is called simply 'Madrone' in most botany texts, it is sometimes called "Madrona", and I know one friend who will not listen to me discuss the tree and its wood if I spell it 'wrong' *grin*

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 01:16 PM

The companion to doors that are alarmed is traffic that goes in for diversions.

Somhow people never seem to follow the instruction they put up in clothes shops, where it says "menswear" and "womenswear"

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Noreen
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 01:25 PM

Yep, that's the usual way to prounce it in England, Ebbie :0)

Barb wire for barbed wire.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Noreen
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 01:35 PM

Dave the Gnome's link above didn't work- try this one with the http:
http://www.mudcat.org/www.isms.org.uk

looks fun :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 01:45 PM

Buggered if I do McGrath! And of course Sorcha I would spell aluminum aluminium! The one that confounds me is practice/practise which depending on which side of the atlantic you fall are reversed - all very confusing.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Sorcha
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 02:07 PM

Excuse me, that should be 'bob wahr', not barbed wire.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 02:22 PM

One annoyance which springs from the USA is the compounding of perfectly good words into meaningles twaddle. For example :-
A burglar burgles your house. You as the victim (and your house) have been burgled. You have NOT been burglarised
what the burglar has done is NOT burglarisation.
In the world of biology your liver is an organ which removes toxins from your bloodstream. There are two verbs which describe the process - to detoxify or to detoxicate.The process is called detoxication NOT detoxification.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: DonMeixner
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 03:17 PM

Just about every word I type.   I spell just fine, I type just awful.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: TIA
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 03:23 PM

If you are nauseous, you make people ill.
If you are nauseated, you feel ill.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 03:30 PM

Dr Johnson was once in a carriage, and a fellow passenger protested, saying "Yoiu smell, Sir"; to which the good doctor replied correcting his English - "No, Sir - you smell. I stink."

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 03:43 PM

Often found cavalry spelled and mispronounced calvary in the south.

Echoing M Ted on irregardless- It entered the American Dialectical Dictionary in 1912. Both Merriam Webster's and the OED list it with notes. The OED says it probably is a blend of irrespective and regardless. Webster's says "Use regardless instead," but the OED says it is "in humorous usage."

Yep, bob wahr seems to be the standard western and southern pronunciation of barbed wire. I have a catalogue in which it is listed as bob wire and it appears as bob-wire in the Oxford Dictionary (1929, J. Frank Dobie).

Geoff the Duck, the OED has listed burglarize for many years. (in print 1871, American origin). Burgle is a fairly recent English word, first in print in 1872 in a novel by Collins. Hence I would say that burglarize has priority, wouldn't you?.

How come so many English use the incorrect suffix -ise (recognise, etc.) instead of the correct -ize (Oxford English Dictionary usage). Is it just rebellion against the upper classes and Oxbridge?? (Withdrawing to an impregnable- I hope- redoubt).
Is there a re-doubt? Haven't looked that one up yet but I hope not.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: kendall
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 04:05 PM

I heard a reporter say that he was with the CALVARY. Journalism is in sad shape when the reporters cant spell.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Noreen
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 04:43 PM

GUEST,Q: the accepted spelling in UK English is recognise, while in the US it is recognize (and similarly with other words with the same suffix).

Spelling with a z is becoming more common in the UK as US influences increse, but I much prefer the ise spelling.


Another one where the US spelling is taking over here is jewelry rather than jewellery- I saw the US spelling on a notice in my local college recently :0( no doubt thanks to Microsoft spellcheckers...

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 04:49 PM

I note one above that doesn't seem to bug many people, but the "as" in "as per" is redundant. "Per The American Heritage Dictionary" would have been sufficient.

Probably the most ubiquitous nonsense usage is the "times more" and "times less" construction. If you do something once more, you've done it twice. If you do it "two times more" you've done it "thrice," or three times. Two times two is four, but two times more than two is six.

Even worse is the "hundred times less" - which of course, in most cases should be "hundred times fewer" for any but total illiterates, but once less means it's all gone, so anything more than "one times" less (or "one times" smaller) apparently means the person is operating in some plane of reality where "multiply absent" means something to them. To me, it means the user is illiterate, or is in advertising, where lying is acceptable and expected.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Alba
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 04:54 PM

Ooops I got the meaning of this thread all wrong with my previous post:>o Sorry Folks!
A

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 05:25 PM

Noreen, the Oxford English Dictionary spellings are mostly -ize. This has been standard since the start of their program in 1857.
My question stands.

Quoting from the OED:
1. Words that have come down from Greek, or adopted from Greek, or formed on Greek elements. Examples- canonize, christianize, crystallize, etc. etc.
2. Words formed on Latin adjectives and substantives- civilize, colonize, brutalize, nationalize, etc. etc.
3. Words from later sources- jeopardize, womanize, cricketize, etc. etc.
4. Words formed from ethnic adjectives- Anglicize, Americanize, Latinize, etc.
5. Words formed on names of persons- Calvinize, Bowdlerize, macadamize, Merry-Andrewise, ec. etc.
6. Words from the names of substances and processes- oxidize, carbonize, hydrogenize, etc, etc.
Colonization, civilization and other nouns that fit the above categories.

So- changing a line from the comedy of Eliza Doolittle and her mentor, Why can't the English- learn to spell?

The suffix -ise.
"A frequent spelling of -IZE, suffix forming vbs, which see."
Used with abstract substantives of quality, state, function.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 06:06 PM

John, I agree. One hundred and ten percent.
This one has always bugged me.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Mr Red
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 06:14 PM

Some folks make a feast a-mispronouncing coteneaster
But when spoke any faster it comes out cotoneaster.

©Mr Red 1982

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST,Bill D (in a different browser with no cooki
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 06:23 PM

re: 'aluminium' and 'jewellery' etc...it seems as if when UK-US spellings are compared, it is 'almost' always the case that the UK uses longer versions... I suppose there is something in US culture that eschews what it considers unnecessary extra letters...not a conscious thing, but just a need to be 'compact'

as to 's' vs. 'z', that is largely a matter of pronunciation...I (we) say the hard "Z" mostly, and it sort of makes sense to spell it that way.

Now...a couple that REALLY bother me... "orientate" and "importate". Used mostly in the past tense.."orientating" and "importating" ...do people listen to themselves? And what do they think when someone simply says 'orienting' and 'importing'?

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 06:44 PM

Orientate and orientation have been with us since the 1830's at least.
Orientate seems to have first appeared in ecclestical writings- orientate the church, etc. Both orient and orientation are accepted by the OED.

Importatable goes back to the 14th century and Chaucer. Accepted in all its senses by the OED.

There are both grammatical reasons for preferences on aluminium and aluminum, as well as a decision by the American Chemical Standards Soc. to use aluminum. This has been discussed before, but I have forgotten the details.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:16 PM

Dreamed and dreamt.

Spelled and spelt.

Can anyone think of any other pairs like that, where there are two words meaning the same and with the same origin, but spelled/spelt differently and pronounced differently - and both in current use.

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Snuffy
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:30 PM

burned/burnt

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:37 PM

I bother to complain about mispronunciations only when they are made by people who are paid to speak, for example TV announcers, political pundits, talk-show hosts, and the like.

For example: pundit. I've been hearing it a lot lately as if it had another 'n': pundint.

Where did people get the idea that the plural of 'process' is pronounced 'process-ease'? You hear about legal process-ease, diplomatic process-ease, and so on.

And I've been hearing 'antibiotic' pronounced 'antibeeotic'. Nonsense. It should be pronounced with a long i as in biology, biography, etc.

Since the medical professions switched to the metric system, doctors and nurses have been pronouncing 'centimeter' in the French way, 'sawntimeter'. That's silly. Maybe the French invented it, but it's an English word now, so pronounce it consistently with cent, century, centennial, percentage, etc.

These are Americans I'm talking about, of course.

Regarding the 'smell/stink' controversy: Try saying, "A rose by any other name would stink as sweet."

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: kendall
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:37 PM

So, why do we care?

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:40 PM

George Dubyah is really worried about the "nucelar" capabilities of rogue states, isn't he?

He must be a little treasure trove of pismronunciations (something that the great U.K. comedian, Ronnie Barker, once built a skit around). . . (Has anyone noticed that "that" seems to be falling out of use, by the way?)

How Dubyahisms many can you add, 'catters?

Gray D

Subject: RE: BS: Commonly misspelled/mispronounced words
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:44 PM

Wait a minute . . .how come I'm a bl**dy GUEST all of a sudden, I've been here for ages?

Help!!!

Joe Offer, what have I done wrong?

Was it something I typed?

Gray D