Dreyer's English

by Benjamin Dreyer

  LIQUEUR

  Another word with three consecutive vowels! If you’re looking to blame someone for this sort of thing, blame the French.

  Also, there’s no c before the q, as is occasionally attempted.

  MARSHMALLOW

  Two a’s, no e’s.

  MEDIEVAL

  Even the Brits don’t use “mediaeval” much anymore, much less mediæval.*12

  MEMENTO

  Not “momento.” Think of memory, because you buy and/or hold on to a memento so as to remember something.

  MILLENNIUM, MILLENNIA, MILLENNIAL

  Two l’s, two n’s. In each. It’s always fun online to catch someone attempting to insult millennials yet unable to spell “millennials.”

  MINUSCULE

  Not “miniscule,” however much that seems to make sense.

  MISCHIEVOUS

  The spelling—and pronunciation—“mischievious” go back centuries, but they’re persistently considered nonstandard. They’re also unbearably twee. Woodland elves might opt for “mischievious”; mortals should not.

  MISSPELL, MISSPELLED, MISSPELLING

  To misspell “misspell” is, to borrow a phrase from the playwright Tennessee Williams,*13 slapstick tragedy.

  MULTIFARIOUS

  With an f, that is, not a v.

  NAÏVE, NAÏVETÉ

  Though the dictionary might (begrudgingly) let you get away with dropping the accent marks, there’s no fun in spelling “naïve” or “naïveté” without them, and “naivety,” though ratified by the dictionary, is just plain sad-looking.

  NEWSSTAND

  Two s’s, please. Two s’s.

  NON SEQUITUR

  Not “non sequiter.” And no hyphen.

  OCCURRED, OCCURRENCE, OCCURRING

  Pretty much everyone can spell “occur.” Pretty much no one can spell “occurred,” “occurrence,” or “occurring.”

  ODORIFEROUS, ODOROUS

  They’re both words. So is “odiferous,” for that matter, but one rarely runs across it. They all mean the same thing: stinking.*14

  OPHTHALMIC, OPHTHALMOLOGIST, OPHTHALMOLOGY

  Eye-crossingly easy to misspell.

  OVERRATE

  Also overreach, override, overrule, etc.

  PARALLEL, PARALLELED, PARALLELISM

  As a young person, I desperately wanted “parallel” to be spelled “paralell” or at least “parallell”; somehow it never was.

  PARAPHERNALIA

  That r just past the midpoint has a tendency to fall out.

  PASTIME

  Just the one t. (If it helps, consider that the two words being portmanteaued are “pass” and “time,” not “past” and “time.”)

  PEJORATIVE

  Perhaps confusing the contemptuous “pejorative” with the lying “perjury,” some people attempt “perjorative.”

  PENDANT

  It’s not that “pendent,” as occasionally turns up when “pendant” is meant, isn’t a word; it’s that it’s usually not the word you want. “Pendant” is a noun; “pendent” is an adjective meaning hanging or dangling—that is, what a pendant does. Pendulously.

  PERSEVERE, PERSEVERANCE, PERSEVERANT

  I note a tendency to slip an extra r in, just before the v.

  PHARAOH

  Reading, a few years back, a facsimile first edition of Agatha Christie’s 1937 novel Death on the Nile, I was amused to note an instance of the misspelling “pharoah,” which till then I’d figured was a recent problem.*15 Apparently not.

  The 2015 Triple Crown triumph of the horse whose name is officially (mis)spelled American Pharoah (and whose sire’s name, even more grislily, is, for reasons I won’t go into, Pioneerof the Nile) called much popular attention to the error, so perhaps ongoingly the word will show up properly spelled more often.

  PIMIENTO

  The popular spelling “pimento” cannot be called incorrect, though copy editors will persist in changing it. Interestingly, Web 11 has a separate entry for “pimento cheese.” It contains pimientos.

  POINSETTIA

  Neither “poinsetta” nor “poinsietta.”

  PREROGATIVE

  It is not spelled “perogative,” though it’s often misspelled—and mispronounced—thus.

  PROTUBERANCE, PROTUBERANT

  Not “protruberance” or “protruberant.” Yes, you’re thinking of “protrude.” We all are. That’s why the misspelling keeps showing up.

  PUBLICLY

  The vastly less popular “publically” is generally if not universally held to be nonstandard, which is a nice way of saying that by any decent standards it’s incorrect.

  RACCOON

  The variant “racoon”—rarely seen now but once quite popular—cannot be taken as incorrect, but it can surely be taken as weird-looking.

  RASPBERRY

  With a p.

  REMUNERATIVE

  Not “renumerative.” I tend to avoid “remunerative” altogether, not only because I can’t remember how to spell it but because I can’t pronounce it without choking on it, and so I’d rather go with “lucrative.”

  RENOWN, RENOWNED

  Not “reknown” or “reknowned.”

  REPERTOIRE, REPERTORY

  Three r’s each.

  RESTAURATEUR

  It’s not “restauranteur,” and the floor is not open to debate.

  ROCOCO

  Neither “roccoco” nor “rococco.” Nor, not that you would, “roccocco.”

  ROOMMATE

  See “dumbbell” and “filmmaker,” above. And just keep seeing them till you get these right.

  SACRILEGIOUS

  One wants to spell it “sacreligious.” One can’t.

  SEIZE, SEIZED

  Easily and not infrequently misspelled, by people who get hung up on that damned “i before e” thing, as “sieze” and “siezed.”

  SEPARATE, SEPARATION

  Not “seperate” and “seperation.”

  SHEPHERD

  Some people may be named Shepard, but sheep watchers are shepherds and certain dogs are German shepherds and potato-crusted meat dishes are shepherd’s pies.

  SIEGE

  Even if you dodge the bullet of a misspelled “seize,” you may still (counterintuitively) trip and misspell “siege” as “seige.” Don’t.

  SKULDUGGERY

  The variant “skullduggery” has, at least in the United States, lately become the more popular. That the word derives from a Scots term for fornication and not from grave robbery leads me to favor the nonmisleading single-l spelling.

  STOMACHACHE

  It’s peculiar-looking as one word, I suppose, but it sits cheek by jowl with “earache” and “headache,” and no one seems to find them peculiar-looking at all.

  STRAITJACKET

  “Strait” as in constricted, not “straight” as in not curvy.*16 Also: straitlaced.

  STRATAGEM

  It starts off like “strategy”; it just doesn’t finish like “strategy.”

  SUPERSEDE

  Not “supercede.” I have never in my life spelled “supersede” correctly on the first go.

  SURPRISE, SURPRISED, SURPRISING

  In any of them, don’t forget the first r, which is omitted with surprising frequency.

  SYPHILIS

  One l.

  TAILLIGHT

  Two l’s.

  TENDINITIS

  Not “tendonitis,” though that’s likely an unstoppable respelling of the word (and I note that the local spellcheck has refused to call it out with the Red Dots of Shame).

  THRESHOLD

  It’s not “threshhold.” I bet you’re thinking of “withhold.”

  TOUT DE SUITE

  It’s not “toute suite,” and correctly or incorrectly spelled, it’s as irksome as n’e
st-ce pas, as noted in Chapter 5: Foreign Affairs. You know what’s a good word? “Now.”

  UNDERRATE, UNDERRATED, UNDERRATING

  (And any other “under” + r–commencing compounds you can think of.)

  UNPRECEDENTED

  For pete’s sake, how hard was that?

  UNWIELDY

  Not “unwieldly,” as I occasionally run across it.

  VILLAIN, VILLAINOUS, VILLAINY

  That’s ai, not ia.

  VINAIGRETTE

  Not “viniagrette.” Also not, for that matter, “vinegarette.”

  WEIRD

  I run across “wierd” more often than I ever expect to.

  WHOA

  It’s been rendered online as “woah” so often that one might be persuaded that that’s an acceptable alternate spelling. It is not.

  WITHHOLD

  See “threshold.”

  Y’ALL

  Never “ya’ll.”

  Somewhat to my Yankee surprise, there’s scant consensus (and much feuding) among my southern confederates as to whether “y’all” may properly be applied to just one person (and I leave discussion of the death-defying “all y’all” for another day) but near unanimity that non-southerners ought not to use it at all, y’all.

  *1  Meaning no disrespect to anyone who regularly applies pen or pencil to paper, I haven’t in years handwritten anything lengthier than a greeting on a birthday card, and I’ve come to think of writing as something one does on a computer keyboard. Thus I tend to use the words “write” and “type” interchangeably.

  *2  Please note the first word in this chapter to give the lie to the “i before e, except after c” jingle, which we were all taught in grade school and which is, alongside the spelling mnemonic “The principal is your pal,” some major grade school bullshit, if you ask me. (“Or when sounding like a, as in ‘neighbor’ or ‘weigh,’ ” the ditty continues, but you’d stopped listening by then, hadn’t you.) There are any number of perfectly common words in the English language featuring the ei combination with no c (or a sound) in sight, from “foreign” to “heist” to “seizure” to “weird.” To say nothing of “albeit” and “deify.”

  *3  It’s considered bad copyeditorial form to verbify trademarks, but if you must (and, yes, I know you think you must), I suggest that you lowercase them in so doing. Sorry/not sorry, Xerox Corporation.

  *4  Evidence also indicates that our British cousins are not as fond of the spelling “judgement” as some of them believe or would have you believe. And here is where I send you off (you’ll find out why when you get there) to explore the Google Books Ngram Viewer, though I warn you that it’s a direly addictive toy.

  *5  My problem with mnemonic devices is that I can’t remember them.

  *6  Well, yes, “bookkeeping.” No, “sweet-toothed” doesn’t count.

  *7  Or, if you prefer, the first k.

  *8  I’m not sure why English needs a dedicated word for a 150th anniversary, but if it has a word for the thing before the thing before the final thing† and a word for jumping or being shoved out a window,‡ why not.

  † “Antepenultimate.”

  ‡ “Defenestration.”

  *9  A, on the other hand, and perhaps capriciously, I always refer to capital-N Nazis, whether they’re of Hitler’s party or simply homegrown aspirants. B, if we’re to be friends, you and I, please don’t ever call me or anyone else a “grammar Nazi,” a term that manages to be both direly insulting and offensively trivializing.

  *10  Modern copyeditorial style favors closing up—that is, merging hyphenlessly—prefixes and the words to which they attach (e.g., “antiwar,” “postgraduate,” “preoccupation,” “reelect”), but if the result is difficult to read and/or uncommon, you should feel free to hold on to that hyphen. (The same goes for suffixes, as in the above-used “hyphenlessly.”) Thus I opt for “pre-meal” rather than “premeal.” (I find the universally accepted “premed” hard enough to make out on the first go, much less “premeal.”) You’ll note as well, when you cast your eye back up to the text proper, that I’m about to opt for “ladle-like,” as (though the likes of, say, “catlike” or “cakelike” is dandy) “ladlelike” would, I think, try one’s eyes’ patience. (P.S. You can’t ever do “dolllike,” because look at it.)

  *11  A back-formation is a neologism—that is, a newly coined word—derived from an already existing word, generally by yanking off a bit at the beginning or the end. Among the many common back-formations in the English language: “aviate” (from “aviator”), “burgle” (from “burglar”), “laze” (from “lazy”), “tweeze” (from “tweezers”)…Well, there are a lot of them. For all the back-formations that slip effortlessly into popular use, though, many never cease to raise dander and/or hackles: “conversate” and “mentee,” for instance, both of which I find grotesque, and “enthuse,” which I find harmless but which some people have loved to hate since it was coined nearly two hundred years ago.

  *12  That fused-letter thing is called a ligature.

  *13  There’s nothing to be gained by referring to the playwright Tennessee Williams as “the famous playwright Tennessee Williams.” If a person is famous enough to be referred to as famous, there’s no need to refer to that person as famous, is there. Neither is there much to be gained by referring to “the late Tennessee Williams,” much less “the late, great Tennessee Williams,” which is some major cheese. I’m occasionally asked how long a dead person is appropriately late rather than just plain dead. I don’t know, and apparently neither does anyone else.

  *14  Though “moist” often tops lists of the most viscerally unpleasant words in the English language, I turn my nose up at “stinky” and “smelly.”

  *15  I occasionally receive aggrieved correspondence, with much “Whither publishing?” teeth gnashing, from readers who’ve stumbled upon a typo in one of our books. I don’t like typos any more than you do—likely I like them quite a bit less—but as long as there have been books, there have been typos. Nobody’s perfect.

  *16  The title of the 1964 Joan Crawford axe-murderess thriller—which you really ought to see, it’s the damnedest thing—is Strait-Jacket. (The generally preferred American spelling is “ax,” but I’d much rather be an axe-murderess than an ax-murderess. You?)

  I’VE NEVER MET A WRITER OR OTHER WORD PERSON who didn’t possess a pocketful of language peeves and crotchets—words or uses of words that drive a normally reasonable person into unreasonable fits of pique, if not paroxysms of rage—and I doubt I’d trust anyone anyway who denied having a few of these bugaboos stashed away somewhere.

  As they adore or abhor olives, opera, and the acting of Leonardo DiCaprio, people like what they like wordwise and abominate what they abominate. They’re not, I’ve discovered, apt to be dissuaded from their prejudices by the evidence of centuries of literate literary usage or recitations from the bracingly peeve-dismantling Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. And they’re certainly not likely to be moved by the suggestion that English is in a constant state of evolution and that if our great-grandmothers ever caught us using the noun “store” when what we should have said was “shop” or using “host” as a verb, they’d wash our mouths out with soap. Well, I concede with a shrug, if the English language itself is notoriously irregular and irrational, why shouldn’t its practitioners be too?

  The thing is, everyone’s peeves and crotchets*1 are different. People who couldn’t care less about “could care less” will, faced with the use of “impact” as a verb, geschrei the house down, and that mob that sees fifty shades of red, scarlet, and carmine over the relatively newfangled use of “begs the question” to mean “raises the question” may well pass by a “comprised of” without so much as batting an eye.

  As a copy editor, I tend to steer writers toward geschrei-proof language because, I f
eel, if you’re going to irritate readers, you might as well irritate them (a) on purpose and (b) over something more important than the ostensible difference between “eager” and “anxious.” Also I believe, because many of them have told me so, that writers are as a rule averse to being carped at by readers, justifiably or un-, over inconsequential matters and appreciate the safety net/security blanket offered them by somewhat conservative copyediting. (Though not so conservative, to be sure, as to impose daft nonrules like the aforementioned ones about not splitting infinitives or using “And” to begin sentences.)