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One-word forgetitude

  
  

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Spatula Clarke
18:59 / 16.09.02
Surely everyone's got one: a word they never manage to spell correctly. For the life of me, I always manage to stuff up 'necessarily'. My brain just doesn't want to remember it. Thank Gates for the spell checker on Word.

Anybody else suffer from one-word forgetitude?
 
 
Jack Fear
19:12 / 16.09.02
Seperate.

I mean separate.

No, wait, goddammit--
*checks dictionary*
Yeah, I do mean separate.
 
 
that
19:25 / 16.09.02
Never Eat Cake Eat Salmon Sandwiches And Remain Young.

My English teacher taught me that, and it works... you just do the 'ily' bit for yourself...
 
 
that
19:44 / 16.09.02
Mediaeval or medieval. I don't often have cause to use it, but it always gives me pause when I do. There are others, but they are hiding from me at present, just waiting to do their little teasing bum-wiggling dance at me when next I need them. Grr.
 
 
gridley
19:44 / 16.09.02
For years had a problem with "tongue", insisting on spelling it "tounge", which sounds like a tool for working wood.

"Recommendation" and "accommodations" always made me struggle to remembed where double Cs and double Ms were. And both came up often as an editor of travel books.

And as far as just typing, I don't know what's up with me and the word "agian."
 
 
Tezcatlipoca
19:57 / 16.09.02
For some reason I always spell 'guarantee' as 'guaruntee'. I know it's not right, but since my brain seems totally incapable of suggesting the correct answer, the word and I just end up staring at each other with mutual loathing.
 
 
grant
20:41 / 16.09.02
I once thought of making up a language built on my repeat typos. "Teh" would be a major component, as would any word ending in "th" (withe, of course, the added "e" at the end).

I've got a couple bugbears of my own, but they're slipping out of my mind right now.
 
 
remorse
23:00 / 16.09.02
receipt
 
 
Margin Walker
23:14 / 16.09.02
I graduated from colledge, but you wouldn't know that by the stupid way I spelt it.
 
 
Seth
23:15 / 16.09.02
I vote that "mediaeval" be instated as a proper word. It can refer to the archaic attitudes displayed by most newsmedia.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
00:32 / 17.09.02
Harassed,
embarrassed,
canvas,
and anything relating to focus in the past tense (or present participle).
It has taken me years to sort those out and I just know I've got one of them, at least, wrong again.

btw, it has got to be mediaeval. How could a modern American usage like medieval possibly be redolent of sufficient mediaeval-ism for the job? Shades of Plantagenet kings will visit you in your sleep if you get it wrong, I promise you. And while we're at it, it's haemophilia and anaesthesia too, for the same reason: glorious redundancy.
 
 
the Fool
01:06 / 17.09.02
recieved

which should be

received... but it just feels wrong...

weird or wierd I'm still not sure.

bloody I & E!!!!
 
 
Mazarine
01:30 / 17.09.02
address and apartment. I keep dropping the d from the former and adding a p to the latter.
 
 
angharad
02:23 / 17.09.02
Tommorrow

My spelling is otherwise absolutely impeccable, (well, AFAIK), but that one word ... I always have to think about it and hear my mum's voice telling me "only one 'm'". I thought I was the only one with a one-word blind spot.

Oh .. accommodation .. my old typing teacher told me to remember this one by thinking "Two Children (two c's) Two Mothers (two m's) and only One Daddy (one d)"
 
 
bacon
02:58 / 17.09.02
[B]Realized[/B] and any other word that alternates "s" for "z". Anybody know what I'm saying. I sure as hell don't. But I crack a dictionary at least three times a night.
 
 
bacon
03:00 / 17.09.02
Why didn't that work?
 
 
Mazarine
03:11 / 17.09.02
You're trying to use ubb code, you need to use HTML. Pointy brackets.
 
 
jUne, a sunshiny month
06:28 / 17.09.02
for me ? 99% of your f¤&#\§g vocabullary... erh, vocabulary.
well, anyway.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
07:36 / 17.09.02
ZoCher - also Encyclopaedia. Though I believe the 'ae' may be a dipthong (and should there be another 'h' in there? Like diphtheria...) and as such inexpressible with modern founts...
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
08:14 / 17.09.02
Well, inexpressible in many home computer fonts, and manual typewriters. I'm pretty sure most Truetype fonts offer it. My theory is that 'cos it wasn't on typewriters, it sort of died out; either that, or it kinda got subsumed into the rising rebirth of accidentals in typefaces.

I have far too many fucked-up words to list. And I have to protect at least *some* of my mystique.
 
 
that
08:31 / 17.09.02
I before E except after 'C' with notable exceptions such as caffeine and weird.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
09:23 / 17.09.02
And of course, "science", where the i and the e have totally failed to notice the C that's RIGHT FUCKING NEXT TO THEM!

Stupid fucking vowels.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
12:47 / 17.09.02
Diarrhoea.

I have encountered many valiant attempts to spell this in nursing records through the years. Wise little nurses spell it "loose stools" which conjures up deficient chairs of dubious morality in my mind. Patient opened bowels this a.m. and excreted an Ikea flatpack which made sexual overtures to staff...
 
 
grant
13:35 / 17.09.02
Zocher and I share the same - we need to be more focussed. Focused?
Oh, and traveler/traveller drives me nuts, too.
 
 
Saveloy
14:22 / 17.09.02
I ditto 'neccessarrilly' and 'seperate'. I also have trouble with response / responce. The correct version just doesn't look right. As far as I'm concerned - and I am concerned - that S makes it 'respONZe', pronuncement-wise.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
14:40 / 17.09.02
I have dunned it into my brain by now that practice is a noun and practise is a verb. But where does that leave me with: defence /license /offense /pretence?
Should I /could I subsitute c for s and vice versa in any of the above?

Some of my confusion may result from americanese in novels, like whothehell@where's s/z problem. I usually solve that one by telling myself it's s in the UK (which usually looks much classier anyway) and z in the US but I'm sure it's more complicated than that. Emphasize looks always looks better than emphasise though.
 
 
rizla mission
15:13 / 17.09.02
There are many words I've never able to spell correctly despite many years of staring at them.

But I'm damned if I'm typing them in before Barbelith gets a built in spell-checker..
 
 
suds
15:20 / 17.09.02
cholister, i can't pronounce words like "medieval" at all.
and one time, at this super cool party i pronounced "entrepreneur" as "on-tromp-a-tur" and everyone laughed and i was v embarrassed.
i am very bad at spelling. every second word i spell is wrong. i thought you spelled "actually" as "atchally" for almost my whole life till last year.

sometimes i'm sitting their and i can't figure out how to spell the most obvious word like "out" or "by" and it's really fucked up. and i think, is that really a word anyway? and get all freaked out.
 
 
The Natural Way
15:22 / 17.09.02
Yes! Absolutely!

It's the small fucking words.. "THE" looks completely ridiculous, it can't mean anything........
 
 
Baz Auckland
18:32 / 17.09.02
"hallucination", "hallucinogen" etc. always get me.
 
 
Ambicath
18:49 / 17.09.02
Should be: strengthen
I write: strenghten (because of e.g. tighten)

Should be: executive
I write: excecutive (because of exception, excellent, etc.)

And extension / extention

Oh, and occaSion and not occaTion - but why then occupaTion?
One 'up' and the whole world goes crazy.

thingumabobs in general
 
 
moriarty
01:51 / 18.09.02
"THE" looks completely ridiculous, it can't mean anything........

I was going to say "the" awhile ago, but was afraid. Now I know I'm not alone. Some days I feel like that guy in the one Twilight Zone, where the English language gets all scrambled and he has to stary over, with "dinosaur" meaning "car."
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
03:41 / 18.09.02
Subediting does that; puts weird things in your head about words. After a long day of looking at words far too hard (I hadn't realised exactly how lax I tended to be in general reading until I started subbing) something just goes "ping" in your head, and you'll be looking at a word like "photograph" and wondering exactly what that arcane term refers to.

One of these days, I'll just forget how to walk. I'm sure of it.
 
 
rakehell
22:53 / 18.09.02
With the whole occaSion and not occaTion

Someone -cannot remember who - once proposed that English as a language was completely screwed - though he probably didn't use that term - because you could spell fish > ghoti

gh - like trough
o - like women
ti - like station
 
 
Tryphena Absent
23:04 / 18.09.02
definitely. Definetly. Ummm....
 
  

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