Kirk Mahoney . com

I sometimes see or hear these verbs used interchangeably.

Problem:
The verbs “defuse” and “diffuse” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The verb “defuse” — spelled D-E-F-U-S-E — was coined in the early 1940s and means to remove the fuse from, where the “de” prefix in this verb indicates negation and the “fuse” suffix refers to a cord of readily combustible material and comes from the Italian word “fuso”, which literally means spindle.

Unless you are a terrorist or sadist, you want the police to defuse a bomb.

The verb “diffuse” — spelled D-I-F-F-U-S-E — dates back to the late 1300s and means to spread or disseminate, where the “dif” prefix means apart or away and the “fuse” suffix comes from a form of the Latin word “fundere”, which literally means to melt.

Once the police have defused a bomb, they often will diffuse a message to the public about their success.

I believe that the oral/auditory confusion comes from mispronunciations of these two verbs.

I believe that the written confusion comes from ignorance about the roots of these two verbs and from misspellings originating from that ignorance or the mispronunciations.

Solution:
Remember that the “de” in “defuse” indicates negation, and remember that the “dif” in “diffuse” means apart or away.

I saw this last week on an order form.

Problem:
This word is misspelled.

Explanation:
The order form had an area at the bottom where the customer was supposed to sign his or her name.

The order-form creator misspelled “Signatures” as “Signitures” — with an “i” in the middle — perhaps because of confusion from words such as “signify” — spelled S-I-G-N-I-F-Y — or perhaps because of mispronunciation of the letter “a” in the word “signatures”.

“Signify” dates back to the early 1200s and comes from the Latin word “significare”, which means to make a sign.

In contrast, “signature” dates back to around 1530 and comes from the Latin word “signare”, which means to mark.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “signature” — with the letter “a” in the middle — 185,000,000 matches
• “signatures” — with the letter “a” in the middle — 34,700,000 matches
• “signiture” — with the letter “i” in the middle — 384,000 matches
• “signitures” — with the letter “i” in the middle — 57,700 matches

Combining the singular and plural results, this tells me that Web authors have used the correct letter “a” over the incorrect letter “i” by a ratio of 497-to-1, which is excellent. However, over 400 thousand misspellings is a bit troubling.

Solution:
“Signatures”

I got an interesting email message last Sunday from one of your fellow readers of this blog.

I will refer to him simply as “Ian” because I don’t have permission to use his surname.

Ian had read “Perogative” and wanted to share his own perspective from the United Kingdom.

When I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) for my original blog post, I got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,750,000 matches
• “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,610,000 matches

This told me that Web authors had favored the incorrect word over the correct word by a ratio of 1.02-to-1, which is horrible!

When Ian tries to access Google.com in the UK, Google auto-redirects him to Google.co.uk, where he got these statistics:

• “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 244,000 matches
• “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 4,000,000 matches

I could not exactly reproduce Ian’s results, but I searched at Google.co.uk and got nearly the same ratio that he did.

The 16.4-to-1 dominance of the correct spelling at Google.co.uk puzzles Ian and his fiancée, given that they agree that the incorrect pronunciation and spelling of “prerogative” is very common in the UK.

I saw this in a technical document that I was editing

Problem:
This is a misspelling that comes from a mispronunciation.

Explanation:
I came across this misspelling the other day while helping a company to edit a technical document about an audio signal.

The original author of the document used the misspelling “studder” to refer to an audio stream that was frequently interrupted.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Americans have a penchant for pronouncing the letter “t” as if it were the letter “d”.

So it is not surprising that the word “stutter” — which has two “t”s in the middle — gets pronounced by many Americans as “studder” — as if it had two “d”s in the middle.

I am sure that this mispronunciation is what led to the misspelling in the document that I was editing.

This mispronunciation is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to say “studder” than it is to say “stutter”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “stutter” — 1,830,000 matches
• “studder” — 78,100 matches

This tells me that Web authors have spelled the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 23.4-to-1, which is good but not great.

Solution:
“stutter”

I often hear this pronunciation.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation and a misspelling.

Explanation:
Americans have a penchant for pronouncing the letter “t” as if it were the letter “d”.

So it is not surprising that the word “kindergarten” — which ends with T-E-N and literally means “children’s garden” in German — gets pronounced by many Americans as “kindergarden” — which ends with D-E-N.

This mispronunciation is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to say “den” than it is to say “ten”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “kindergarten” — 37,300,000 matches
• “kindergarden” — 1,180,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have spelled the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 31.6-to-1, which is very good but not great, especially given more than a million matches for the misspelling.

Solution:
“kindergarten”

I hear or see this occasionally.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation or misspelling of a valid noun.

Explanation:
The valid noun is “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E.

The definition of this noun as it is most commonly used is a privilege or right limited to persons of a particular category or to a specific person.

This noun dates back to a Latin adjective in the late 1300s that literally meant voting first.

The noun “prerogative” exemplifies the value of knowing the roots of words in the English language.

The “rogative” portion of the noun is related to the word “interrogative”, which as an adjective usually means conveying or pertaining to a question.

The “pre” portion of the noun means before.

Knowing these two roots makes it easy to understand how the noun “prerogative” refers to a privilege or right limited to a person or specific group of people — such as voting first!

So replacing “pre” with “pe” in “prerogative” produces the nonsense word “perogative”.

I believe that the mispronunciation of “prerogative” as “perogative” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis (and that this, in turns, leads to the misspelling of “prerogative”). It is simpler to say “perogative” — as if it were spelled P-U-H-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — than it is to say “prerogative”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,750,000 matches
• “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,610,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the incorrect word over the correct word by a ratio of 1.02-to-1, which is horrible!

Solution:
“Prerogative”

I saw this yesterday in an email message.

Problem:
An apostrophe is missing.

Explanations:
The email message was talking about social-work efforts, and (quote) “Childrens Protective Service” (unquote) — with “Childrens” spelled C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N — was the title of one of the sections in the message.

I believe that the absence of a required possessive apostrophe in “Childrens” can be attributable to:

• A typographical error;
• Ignorance about possessive apostrophes.

Given how often I see the apostrophe-free “Mens” and “Womens” in department stores, I doubt that “A typographical error” applies to this situation.

That leaves us with “Ignorance about possessive apostrophes”.

I believe that this ignorance is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis.

It is simpler to write possessive words without apostrophes than to write them with apostrophes.

Solution:
“Children’s Protective Service”

I saw this yesterday on an invoice.

Problems:
1. The verb is misspelled.
2. The number could have been expressed in a word.
3. The word following “of” is misspelled.

Explanation:
The invoice related to some landscape work that we had contracted for our home.

Granted, landscapers do not have to be good spellers, especially if they are good landscapers.

But bad spelling does not help one’s image with consumers.

The first problem was that the landscaper thought that the preterite of the verb “lay” should be spelled L-A-Y-E-D.

That is a good guess by a kindergartner, but it is a bit embarrassing to come from a forty-something-year-old adult.

Some might say that the second problem is not truly a problem, especially when it comes to invoices and accounting.

I would counter-argue that it is helpful to follow the general rule for a small number — that it should be written as a word, perhaps followed by the number in parentheses.

The third problem — the misspelling of the word after the preposition “of” — was severe enough that it confused my wife.

She told me that she kept wondering what was meant by S-A-W-D. After I pronounced this made-up word, it became clear what the landscaper was trying to say.

Solution:
“laid three (3) pallets of sod”

I occasionally see or hear this phrase.

Problem:
The word “shuddered” is incorrect here.

Explanation:
I see or hear the phrase as part of a full sentence such as (quote) “The shuddered windows protected the glass from the hurricane.” (unquote).

The intransitive verb “shudder” — with two “d”s and from which the word “shuddered” is derived — means to tremble or shake convulsively, as from cold, fear, or horror.

So the past participle “shuddered” cannot be used as an adjective to modify “windows” for two reasons:

1. The verb “shudder” is intransitive and therefore its past participle cannot be used as an adjective.
2. Even if “shuddered” could be used as an adjective, it would make no sense to use it to modify the noun “windows”.

The solution comes from realizing that Americans often mispronounce “t”s (as in “tango”) as “d”s (as in “David”).

So the word “shudder” — with two “d”s — is a typical mispronunciation, at least by Americans, of the word “shutter” — with two “t”s.

And given that the transitive verb “shutter” means to close with shutters, we have the solution.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “shuttered windows” — with two middle “t”s as in “tango” — 98,800 matches
• “shuddered windows” — with two middle “d”s as in “David” — 97,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the meaningful “shuttered windows” versus the meaningless “shuddered windows” by a ratio of 1.01-to-1, which is absolutely dreadful.

Solution:
“shuttered windows”

I heard someone say this the other day.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation that often is tied to a misspelling.

Explanation:
The correct noun is “diphthong” — spelled D-I-P-H-T-H-O-N-G — which dates back to the mid-1400s and means a monosyllabic, gliding speech sound that varies continuously but that is considered to be a single phoneme.

The word “diphthong” is formed from the prefix “di”, which means two, and the Greek word “phthongos”, which means voice or sound.

Examples of diphthongs include the vowel combination at the end of “toy” and the vowel combination in “boil”.

I believe that the mispronunciation of “diphthong” could come from misspelling it as D-I-P-T-H-O-N-G because it is extremely rare in English to have P-H followed by T-H.

Or the misspelling of “diphthong” could come from the mispronunciation of it, again because of the rarity in English of having P-H followed by T-H.

The correct pronunciation is obtained by recognizing that P-H in “diphthong” has an F sound.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “diphthong” — spelled D-I-P-H-T-H-O-N-G — 224,000 matches
• “dipthong” — spelled D-I-P-T-H-O-N-G — 25,700 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the correct spelling over the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 8.72-to-1, which is not very good.

Solution:
“Diphthong”