Dilemna (sic)

On BBC 5Live right now Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode are discussing Richie Cunningham's new film. Both men - bright, in their forties - have been shocked to discover they've been misspelling dilemma their whole lives. Hitherto, they've had it as dilemna.

Perhaps five years ago I discovered the same thing. I used to spell it - and frankly still want to spell it - with an n. The extraordinary thing I discovered then, and these guys are discovering now, is that dilemma has never been spelt any other way: dilemna is not an archaism, and you will not find it in any ancient work.

And yet, and yet there are many people who think it is spelt with an n and say they were in fact taught to spell it with an n.

A small, odd thing.

 

The beauty of language, though, is that if enough people spell a word wrong, it then becomes right. Fight the power! Don't cave! Keep spelling it how you see fit!

I've spelled it dilemma as long as I can remember. Maybe an American/British thing? Or maybe it's just been spell check-corrected long enough I've been conditioned to spell it properly?

Irregardless, it's nice to see people conversating about the spelling of dilemma, tho.

 

My word like that is pearson - its a huge struggle not to include the 'a'. I miss spell other words but that is the one I feel I am miss spelling when I spell it correctly.

 

Oh - I've got a couple like that. "Anyways" is probably my favorite. I'm tempted to keep my own variants at times, but never do.

I wonder if your own dilemna is due to a subtle linguistic difference. In my example, people had SPOKEN it as "anyways" when I was young. Maybe one of the accents in the UK has an almost silent "n" in dilemma?

-Frank

edit:
I just looked it up. "Anyways" IS a non-standard version of "anyway". That means it's not so uncommon after all. Maybe now I can feel comfortable using it! *big grin*

 

That's not a real word Keep using it and it 'will be'

 

I think I used to spell it that way, but I learned a long time ago

 

Google's reach has increased these last few years: using Ngrams it becomes clear that dilemna has been used consistently for the last few hundred years by a tiny yet stalwart band of writers notable for their genius and foresight: Fielding, Boswell, Bentham and, at one point, a US Dept of State got involved..I've seen a Miracle on 34th and need no further validation

Anyways is nice, Frank. To my ears it is homely and decidedly American. I sometimes use it to lighten my (staid) prose. If I'm feeling unusually playful, I occasionally even go with anyhoo (partly in honour of Homer S.)

 

i'm 72 and have never heard of 'dilemma' being spelled with anything but the double 'm'...

 

I think it's one of those words where you think, "Naaaah, it can't possibly be spelled exactly like it sounds... There has to be a catch! A silent letter! Some out-dated strange way of writing it that we still cling onto in this crazy, unpredictable language! Well, it's not gonna make a fool outta me! DILEMNA!"

 

Yep, I think something of that is going on Mel.
The double mm variant - oh yes - looks a little too straightforward, and, I dare say, rather crude in comparison.

 

We could campaign to have it changed to "Dilema" to save everyone a headache in the future.

 

Weird. Does it have an "n" sound in some accent?

 

Not that I'm aware of. Also true, I guess, for the n in condemn, solemn etc (which in themsleves provide precedents for this felicitous combination.)

 

Those have n's in the Latin originals, and end in an n. "Dilemma" is indeed related to "lemma".

 

It's already listed in the Oxford English dictionary. See! It's working already! (And they've backdated it to 1912 for you, too.)

 

And even there it's referred to as an incorrect usage

 

Not in the Complete Oxford English Dictionary -- that shows it as colloquial, chiefly N. American.

 

shhhh