{"id":2312,"date":"2004-10-03T10:14:49","date_gmt":"2004-10-03T17:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/10\/03\/2312.html"},"modified":"2004-10-03T10:14:49","modified_gmt":"2004-10-03T17:14:49","slug":"words-easily-confused-or-missp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/10\/03\/words-easily-confused-or-missp\/","title":{"rendered":"Words easily confused (or misspelled, or not) #14"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Time for another installment.  (To see previous editions, search my journal for the phrase \"words easily\" (no quotes)&#8212;that'll show the whole series.)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"word-as-word\">defiant<\/span> and <span class=\"word-as-word\">definite<\/span> are often misspelled as each other.<\/li>\n<li>I keep seeing <span class=\"word-as-word\">develope<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">develop<\/span> (perhaps related to <span class=\"word-as-word\">envelope<\/span>\/<span class=\"word-as-word\">envelop<\/span>?) (but MW3 lists <span class=\"word-as-word\">develope<\/span> as an acceptable alternate spelling, even though MW10 doesn't.)<\/li>\n<li>In old science fiction books, I used to regularly encounter <span class=\"word-as-word\">emphatic<\/span> where they meant <span class=\"word-as-word\">empathic<\/span>; I'm guessing this one was an overzealous copy editor's fault.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"word-as-word\">exalt<\/span> and <span class=\"word-as-word\">exult<\/span> are often confused with each other.<\/li>\n<li>Another common phonetic typo: <span class=\"word-as-word\">here<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">hear<\/span>.  I'm fascinated by phonetic typos, and by how easy they are to make; the typo must be generated somewhere between the intent (which usually has the right word in mind) and sending the \"type these letters\" command to the fingers.  I suppose this is no different from speech mistakes where the speaker honestly meant to say something different from what came out, but somehow the fact that it's a phonetic mistake appearing in a written medium makes it seem odd to me.<\/li>\n<li>Here's one that's not a mistake at all: <span class=\"word-as-word\">lense<\/span> is an acceptable alternate spelling for <span class=\"word-as-word\">lens<\/span>.  I started seeing this only in the past few years, and thought at first that it was a typo.<\/li>\n<li>Another common mistake: mixing up <span class=\"word-as-word\">populace<\/span> (a noun) and <span class=\"word-as-word\">populous<\/span> (an adjective), usually in phrases like * \"The entire populous rose up against the King.\"<\/li>\n<li>I see <span class=\"word-as-word\">wretch<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">retch<\/span> fairly often, presumably because retching makes one feel wretched.<\/li>\n<li>Jay L. mentioned this in passing in a comment a while back: <span class=\"word-as-word\">tact<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">tack<\/span> (often in phrases like * \"Try another tact.\")<\/li>\n<li>Another common one: <span class=\"word-as-word\">vice<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">vise<\/span>, as in \"He put the wood in a vice.\"  But MW10 says this is an acceptable, though chiefly British, variant spelling, so never mind.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Finally, an item that's been on a lot of people's minds lately: the pronunciation \"nucular.\"  I'm not happy with that pronunciation, but MW10 lists it as an acceptable alternate.  The usage note adds:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Though disapproved of by many, pronunciations ending in \\-ky&-l&r\\ have been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least one U.S. president and one vice president. While most common in the U.S., these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So you can certainly complain about the pronunciation, but you may have to resign yourself to it becoming more and more common over time.  For those inclined to note that that pronunciation doesn't correspond to how the word is spelled, think about how most people pronounce <span class=\"word-as-word\">February<\/span> in casual conversation.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time for another installment. (To see previous editions, search my journal for the phrase &#8220;words easily&#8221; (no quotes)\u2014that&#8217;ll show the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-words-easily-confused"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}