Sunday 8 June 2008

Easy Peasy

The list of words difficult to read and hard to spell published in the Guardian (and they should know, after all) is surprisingly short and unchallenging. Where is the word most commonly misspelled in comments? 'Independent' must take the prize. That final 'a' instead of an 'e' is like a fist in the eye every time.

Here they are:

100 of the most difficult words

Orange, foreign, rhinoceros, properly, vomit, tambourine, tournament, tourist, heaven, engine, exquisite, opposite, advertisement, gnarled, rigid, risen, sinister, spinach, video, vinegar, tie, wheelie, quiet, science, crier, pliers, soldier, Monday, mongrel, monkey, courage, magic, manage, palace, four, journey, gnash, gnaw, gnome, ghastly, guard, miracle, miserable, pigeon, pity, prison, month, mother, nothing, once, smother, son, sponge, tongue, wonder, almost, both, comb, ghost, gross, most, only, post, programme, deny, reply, July, obey, caterpillar, chapel, damage, dragon, fabulous, family, famished, garage, glacier, habit, hazard, hexagonal, imagine, panic, radish, miaow, powder, cauliflower, plant, pyjamas, raft, rather, salami, task, vast, kiosk, kiwi, machine, encourage, somersault, swollen, souvenir.

6 comments:

Sackerson said...

... or is it "misspelt"? I have the same problem with burned/burnt.

Now compose a plausible short piece using all 100 words!

Anonymous said...

"loose/lose" and "there/their/they're" also figure very highly on the regular and annoying misspellometer along with "your/you're".

Sacks: I was always taught that burnt/burned and learnt/learned were equally acceptable. But that was a long time ago and things may have changed in the interim.

hatfield girl said...

So was I Nomad, or at least objections were never raised; but in latin the complemento oggetto takes the accusative, I am reliably informed by Mr HG, so perhaps the difference is when there is and is not an object; a residual discrimination derived from another grammar and fallen into disuse?

Lunch was a dry discussion meal. But when the news came on it was all about football from the first item, which livened things up as we speculated on Berlusconi's state of health after his recent, second, public fainting fit.

I have no opinion (outside work) on how others write, spell, punctuate, etc. but this is not true of my view on how I write and spell. You have me worried S.

Anonymous said...

Sackerson, I thought burned was a past participle and burnt was an adjective, but thinking about it has made me uncertain - ymmv, as they say.

As for the list, most of them would be " a fist in the eye" (nice phrase) for me if mis-spelled (!), but is there really a "u" in tamborine? I might have got that wrong, if wrong it is.

How could anyone get "ghost" wrong??

hatfield girl said...

Wasting time reading dictionaries again, I find that 'burned, burnt' are used indifferently although there is a tendency towards 'burned' in the US. When used as an adjective the big Italian dictionary says that 'burnt' is used invariably in English English.

'Misspelt' and 'misspelled' are variants, used both as a past participle, where misspelled occurs with obj., and adjectivally with indifference, although 'misspelled' is ever so slightly old-fashioned. Garzanti merely offers both forms without comment.

I haven't done my homework S because I was looking up words.

11.18's remark 'I thought burned was a past participle and burnt was an adjective, but thinking about it has made me uncertain' is insightful. We don't think while writing and the moment we do the assurance goes and we fall off.

Sackerson said...

While you're on your homework, have a gander at this:

http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=7701430

If the link doesn't come out in full, Google up "100 banned words LGA"