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Some Words Hate Me

I try to be good about using the English language correctly.  I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it's not my first language, so I had to learn some of it by the book.  Because I had to put in some effort to learn the spelling & grammar, I notice mistakes a tiny bit more readily.  I'm also slightly anal about things, so that's probably the other half of the justification.  Regardless of the reason, though, I try to make a concerted effort to avoid mistakes when speaking or writing.

Unfortunately, this means I'm fighting a never-ending battle (against myself) to not screw up.  And in that process, I've noticed that certain words & phrases seem to come up again and again.  They've become nemeses of mine.  Every time I spell one of these words incorrectly, even if momentarily, a tiny piece of me groans.  If I actually publish something (e.g., send an email, post a blog entry) with that kind of a mistake, that same piece of me dies.

The first one that comes to mind is the word "group."  Unfortunately, it often shows up as "gropu" when I'm typing.  I actually have to type that word pretty often, because it's one of the keywords in a computer language that I use often (SQL, if you're curious).  So, about once a day, I will mistype that word and then get annoyed at myself.  Luckily for me, I never have to actually publish anything with that typo.  In fact, if I try to do so, my computer will make it very, very obvious (the application usually blows up), so I don't leave it that way for long.

That's annoying, but I can live with that.  The one that's really bad is my arch-nemesis, "whet."  I'm probably biased against the word to begin with; I remember being eliminated from a sixth grade spelling bee on "whetstone."  I didn't know at the time what the word meant, but it seemed like a simple enough word.  I wasn't horribly worried about it, but next thing I knew, I was eliminated.  It was a sneaky first blow to strike, and a rivalry was born.

The battle with the word continued for years, but sadly, I didn't know it.  That means I lost every single one.  In fact, I only just realized recently that I've been misspelling that word incorrectly, in emails, papers, and chats.  Did you know that the English idiom is "whet your appetite" instead of "wet your appetite?"  (fittingly enough, I initially typed "weht" when typing up this post).  Yeah, neither did I, until a few days ago.  If I get a little irked by typing something incorrectly for a few seconds, imagine my reaction when I discovered this fact.

I spent a little bit of time thinking about this, and I think I have only one course of action: use the word (correctly) as much as I possibly can.  If I can get my winning percentage up against that word, this will help soothe my wounded pride.  Maybe after enough time, I can even have a winning record against the word.  I suspect this is going to take years, though.  So please, people, give me an excuse to use the word.  My pride thanks you in advance.

Comments

  1. I love the following website: http://www.verb2verbe.com/. Hopefully, you can find joy in it, too. If you type an English verb into the appropriate field, it'll conjugate it for you. The site includes many irregular verbs and verbs that conjugate weirdly, like "sing." Also befitting is GrammarGirl.com. Grammar Girl has great podcasts and help with all kinds of nit-picky little things. I love how she backs up her opinions with four different grammar guides, so you feel as if the opinion she gives you is valid.

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