When I was a teen you could not convince me that 'as well' and 'a lot' were not 'aswell and 'alot'. My language skills have always been good, but for some reason I just dug my heels in about those. Things haven't changed too much though... I'm determined to make 'luscient' (as in a cross between lucid and sentient) a recognised word. Having googled it a few times, it would appear I'm not the only one, though definitions vary.
Dictionaries can also have a political slant, btw. The Oxford English Dictionary lists y'all as a slang term found in the American south. It is not slang. It is a regionalism, and anyone pedantic enough to want to participate in lexicography should know this. Slang is a very particular kind of word that answers to a very particular kind of usage and y'all (and also yous and youz) does not fill the bill. And just to be fair, American dictionaries do the same thing to British terms with which we are familiar in America, but do not use. It's all done as a way of softly implying "not standard" as regards the word usage of others.
The strangest quirk I've found with Word recently is that if I write, 'the sawmill,' it tells me to consider revising the order of the words. It doesn't have any problem with, 'sawmill the,' so I guess that's what it wants me to write.
Aye, that be true, matie. 'Tis more in line with the vagaries of the human mind as regards words that do or do not exist.
Arrr, I'm sure I have some of them. Can't remember off the top of me noggin. Closest I can remember was my astonishment last year, when I discovered that soothe is not spelled sooth. I thought my critiquer was wrong until I looked it up and found sooth was an old fashioned word meaning truth.
@plothog interesting idea for a sequel though: Word's delusions. It's rife with loopiness that...Sorry, my train of thought completely got derailed. Why the heck does 'loopiness' create a the portent squiggle? Come on! @Woof I, too, refuse to concede. A lot will always be alot in my mind (though I wonder how greatly that would affect my wordcount? Hmm).
On more than one occasion in the past I have read unshed as the past participle of unsh. In my mind it translated to "squashed", but squashed in a way only eyelids could.
Today, I was sure that Minette Walters and her editor had been wordluded and were trying to get her made up word past the readers of her Edgar Allan Poe Award winner. I shouted gotcha when I came across the word 'premiss' in her novel. And then again and again within a few sentences. I knew she meant premise - that was what made sense in the sentence. It seems premiss is a valid alternative spelling and not what you call a guy who is waiting a sex change op.
Ludicrousy. Ludicrous is a word, ludicrously is a word. Why is the only variant I could make use of, dysfunctional? *sigh*
I'm always making up words, usually it's do to my pronunciation ( for two minutes I tried to spell it pronounciation ) screwing things up. Comes in handy when I'm word building. Gleedible was my favorite coin.
A while ago I was listening to a talk...was it a TED talk? I can't remember. I'll go search! But anyway, the woman was on the committee of people who decide which new words will be added to the dictionary (this is a terrible story, I can't even remember which dictionary, specifically.) She says she always laughs when prudes of academia and english frown upon new words and hybrid words like "Unfriend" and "Selfie." Her claim was that if you say it and people know exactly what you mean, communcation was achieved and therefore, it's a word. That attitude would probably never fly with a publisher, but in conversation or informal online chatting, who's to say otherwise?
Most definitely. I do not remember where I read it but a saying went along the lines of, "English is the language that is spoken". Upshot was: meanings in the dictionary are all well and good, but when people communicate successfully, that's the truer meaning of the word, as it's used. I struggle similarly with people who grouch out others who misspell things (not here in critique land, but in public forums). If you can understand what they are saying, despite the spelling, that's more important than telling them off about the spelling.
