Misspellings That Drive Me Into A Rage

Last post of the year! I hope you’re not going anywhere tonight. I’d rather you not get sick and die.
 
All right, so the stupid thing I’ll be looking at this year is the errors I keep seeing that drive me nuts for no good reason. Obviously I don’t see any of you guys do them, but I do see them other places. Sometimes it’s teenagers making the mistake, but I’ve also seen people 40+ do these and I just. Don’t get it.
 
Que
Que, when it’s supposed to be cue (and no, they aren’t trying to say queue). I’ve seen people go “right on que” and it’s like really? You think that’s a Q? Why??? Now, I don’t see this terribly often, but the fact that it’s popped up more than once is just like what the hell. When have you ever seen “que” and it not be someone asking “What?” in Spanish?
 
Dissapoint
Ugh, this one grates against my nerves. Two S’s, one P. Really, I’m being a bit hypocritical here considering how often I spell words with the wrong number of letters, but come on. It’s dis-appoint not dis-sapoint. You know what an appointment is, right? Then you should know what a disappointment is! Because it’s spelling disappointment with two S’s.
 
Payed
I keep seeing this one and I don’t get it. Sure, pay is an irregular verb in that it’s spelled “paid”, and somehow payed really is a word—it’s a nautical term meaning to coat or cover with pitch. Frankly, I’m annoyed payed isn’t flagged as incorrect by spellcheckers. How many people are going to be using it for its actual definition? None! And I just keep seeing people saying they got payed on Friday. No you didn’t, damn it!
 
Loose
Now we’re veering into grammatically wrong instead of a misspelling, but I’m so sick of people writing loose when they mean lose. I want to go over to their houses and flick their ears every time they use it wrong. But we’re in a pandemic so I shouldn’t do that.
 
XXX$
This one might be just something that bothers me, but I can’t stand it when people put the dollar sign after the number instead of before. I don’t get why it drives me crazy. Technically, it’s supposed to be said “twenty dollars” so 20$ actually makes more sense. But I hate seeing it. Just looking at that dollar sign at the end of the number makes me want to gouge my eyes out. The chief perpetrator of this sin? My mother. I may have to block her from texting me until she gets it right.
 
There. You’ve seen my ridiculous pet peeves. What misspellings/misuses drive you crazy?

Reflections 2020

I don’t know about any of you, but looking back on this year only makes me want to scream in horror. Does anyone even remember the beginning of it, how naïve and hopeful we were? Maybe not. It was five centuries ago.
 
I don’t even remember what I was supposed to be doing this year…
 
Resolutions 2020
1. Get WIP-1 ready to be published.
As far as I can tell, it’s as good is as it’s going to get. I’m not sure if it’s good enough, though.
 
2. Finish editing WIP-2 to get it ready for beta reading.
Wow, I did this, I even got the beta reading underway. That’s actually kind of impressive. It almost makes up for me not doing the next goal.
 
3. Finish editing the other WIP that kind of got pushed aside after I decided to write WIP-2.
I did some work on it, but unfortunately, it kept getting pushed aside. It’s not going anywhere, though.
 
4. Write the two short side stories I have planned, and edit everything.
Did not do this, mostly because I was working on other goals. And yet another new project.
 
5. Maybe write the sequel to the other WIP. I don’t know, I’ll have to see if I have the time.
I did consider this, but I ended up starting a completely new project instead. Of course.
 
6. Work on my health and hopefully get better.
Kind of a mixed bag, really. This year was… well, you know.
 
7. Not back down when I know what’s right. Ever.
And I haven’t. Then again, I haven’t been leaving the house much what with the whole deadly plague that’s caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
 
Ugh, 2020. UGHHHHHHHHH. Go jump in a lake. No one will miss you.
 
Anything you want to share that was good about this year? You know, if that’s possible.

Christmas Re-Post #3

Peaches!

Usually she just tries to eat people food.

Christmas Re-Post #2

This one’s a two-parter since they’re related. You can also see how obviously I just copy-pasted everything.

Have a good holiday! Remember to stay away from people and keep your mask on! You know, like I’ve done every day of my life.

Christmas Re-Post #1

Looking back on my best* Christmas comics this year.

*Best being a relative term.

Outages

Every damn time there’s even the least amount of wind…

 No exaggeration here. I started working on this and bam, power goes out.

Language Of Confusion: To Be Or Not To Be

It’s the last etymology post of the year! Might as well do something that’s been a long time coming: be, one of the most common used verbs in English. I’m betting a lot of ESL learners are annoyed at it considering how irregular it is. Most of be’s forms don’t even look like the same word.
 
Be comes from the Old English beon, to be or become, from the Proto Germanic biju-. That’s from the Proto Indo European root bheue-, to be, exist, or grow, which is one of those things that’s part of a bunch of other words I won’t be getting into because we’ll be here all day and I’ve got things to do.
 
However, probably the only be word that’s from bheue- is been. The others are all different! Am was eom in Old English, and it was the first person version of be like it is today. It’s from the Proto Germanic ism(i)-, from the Proto Indo European esmi-, which is from the root es-, to be. Yes, they had two versions of to be. It’s also a part of a bunch of different words, the most obvious of which is is. Is is from the Old English is, big surprise, just is. That’s from the Germanic es-, from the Proto Indo European es-ti-, so a slightly different version of es-.
 
Now, for was. Man, is this one a trip. It showed up in Old English as wesan or waes, all of which are from the Proto Germanic wesanan. That one is from the Proto Indo European root wes-, which means to remain, abide, or well. So was isn’t even from a word that means to be. Were is from the same origin, having shown up as the Old English waeron, another tense of wesan/waes. There’s no real explanation as to why this word morphed into being the past tense of to be. It just did for some reason.
 
Words, man. Words.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary

From The Spamfiles

Last one of the year! Next week being a holiday week means I’m going to be posting something else (what, I haven’t decided) and I always do something different for the last week of the year. You should all know this by now. I’ve had the same six people commenting for YEARS.
 
Anyway, spam.

Do people really like getting these confessions of secret crushes that have gone on forever? Because to me it seems annoying and vaguely creepy.

That S is so fancy it looks like a G.

Yet another one who doesn’t know how to use spaces. Also named “Kephren” which seems less like a name and more like a cough.

Okay, so I know what “el” means, and I know what “amo” means, so I decide to look up “puto” and…

Now I know a new word in Spanish.

I’m not sure what’s better, the broken English or the fact that their name is Bitchasss. No, wait. It’s definitely the Bitchasss thing.
 

There really was a crash of an EgyptAir flight in 2016. But of the passengers, most were from Africa or the Middle East. There wasn’t anyone from Germany on board—in fact, the only person from mainland Europe was Portuguese. I guess the scammers thought they’d get a better response if they claimed to be European, although they should be careful not to use information that’s so easily Googled.

Real Butter

They’re just too good.

Language Of Confusion: Paint

Obviously not doing any holiday themed etymologies this year. I don’t even think there’s anything I haven’t looked at already. So today we’re looking at paint.
 
Paint showed up in the mid thirteenth century as peinten, meaning to represent something in paint, or to decorate something or someone with pictures. It wasn’t until the early fourteenth century that it meant coating the surface of something with a color. It comes from the Old French peintier, to paint, from peindre, which is also to paint (don’t ask me, I don’t know) and that’s from the classical Latin pingere, which could mean to paint or to make a picture. That one can actually be traced to the Proto Indo European peig-, which means… to cut or mark by incision. That might seem weird, but the theory is that it went from decorate with cut marks to just decorate to decorate with color. So painting has to do with cutting somehow.
 
Surprisingly enough, that isn’t the only decoration related word from peig-. Picture is actually also from there. It showed up in the early fifteenth century meaning the process of drawing or painting as well as a picture of something. It’s from the classical Latin pictura, picture, which is also from pingere.
 
The next of these somehow related art words is pigment. It showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning… a red dye. Yep, really. It wasn’t until the early seventeenth century that it meant a pigment in general. It’s from the classical Latin pigmentum, paint or coloring, and that’s from pingere, too. It’s so weird that they associated coloring with cutting!
 
The final word we’ll look at today doesn’t have to do with color, but does kind of have to do with pictures. Depict showed up in the early fifteenth century, meaning to portray or paint something. It’s from the classical Latin depictus, which actually means painted, from the verb depingere, yet another one of these words that just means to paint. The de- prefix means down here, and with pingere, means this word is “to paint down”. Sure. Why not.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

From The Spamfiles

It’s spam time!

I have a crazy cat that’s much closer than that. Her name is Peaches and she is very fluffy.

Wait, so Western Union sent me money through Western Union? I mean, I guess if they were going to send me money, it would be using themselves…

Well! How insulting. They didn’t even bother to fill in my name for their template. Come on, spammers. Your job isn’t that difficult.

There’s a pandemic going on. No one should be doing that. These spammers are so irresponsible.

I’m kind of puzzled over what their definition of “naturally” is here. I assume some form of technology is involved since it’s “eight times more powerful” or whatever. A knife would be natural, I think, but not pain free. Maybe a laser? But again, not natural. Man, I wish I had opened this one because I want to see what the hell it could be.

Okay, clearly you haven’t seen my neighbors because I can guarantee that I absolutely do not want to see them naked.

Yet Again

This kind of thing happens pretty regularly when I’m with my mom.

“…Maybe he was running from a coyote,” she said.
 
“Maybe he’s just dumb,” I replied.
 
It’s been about six months since he last did that. I guess he forgot his lesson.

Language Of Confusion: Answers

This week I’m looking at words related to answer. It’s also going to be a partial redo since I looked at solve almost ten years ago and, like most of my posts from that era, it’s not very good.
 
Answer itself comes from the Old English andswaru as a noun and andswarian as a verb, and I can see why no one wanted to keep that D in there, it’s awkward to say. The and- is from ant-, against, the origin of anti-, and the rest is from swerian, to swear. An answer is to swear against. People think the original sense of the word was “a sworn statement rebutting a charge”, and then sometime in the fourteenth century it started to morph into a response to anything. You’d swear against a charge, so you’re answering. If you look at swerian, it comes from the Proto Germanic swerjanan, which may or may not be from the Proto Indo European swer-, to speak. That would make sense as the origin of answer, but we should always be suspicious of etymology making sense.
 
Solve, which I once looked at long ago, showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning to disperse, dissipate or loosen, and not meaning to solve as we’d use it until the sixteenth century. The reason for that has to do with solution, which also showed up in the late fourteenth century and meant something being solved, but only because that was how it was used in French. It comes from the Old French solucion, which meant explanation or even payment, but also division or dissolve. It’s from the classical Latin solutionem, which means solution like a solid dissolved in a liquid, from the verb solvere, to loosen (as well as to solve). It can actually be traced to the Proto Indo European words swe-, which is something like our, and leu-, to cut apart.
 
Next we’ll look at retort. It showed up in the mid sixteenth century from the Old French retort and classical Latin retortus. That word is from the verb retorquere, which actually means to twist. That’s a mix of re-, back, and torquere, to twist, and I’m sure you’re thinking that looks an awful lot like torque, which is because that’s where torque comes from. That torquere can actually be traced back to the Proto Indo European terkw-, to twist, so I guess people had to talk about twisting a lot. And for some reason we dropped the Q and now we have retort.
 
Remedy showed up in the thirteenth century, coming from the Anglo French remedie, Old French remede, and classical Latin remedium, all of which are just remedy. The re- prefix means again here, and the rest is from mederi, to find a cure. How refreshingly straightforward.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Fordham University

December Goals

Well, it’s the last month of 2020. And to think, it only took fifty years to get here. Anyone else terrified to see what 2021 is like? Anyway, goals.
 
November Goals
1. Keep working on notes from my beta readers.
Hey, I actually did this. Really surprising considering how difficult it was to concentrate on anything that wasn’t overwhelming dread.
 
2. Thanksgiving. Though with the pandemic, this should be nice and subdued.
I love not having to do anything for Thanksgiving. Let’s make that a yearly thing.
 
3. Just get through the month.
Well, that seems to have happened. Good for me for aiming low.
 
As successful as it could be, I suppose. I did spend the first two weeks doing nothing but stress-reading the news. Now what should I do this month?
 
December Goals
1. Update etymology page. I’m still trying to get rid of those damn double spaces between the words.
 
2. More beta reads. My book definitely needs more opinions.
 
3. Figure out what project I want to work on next.
 
So, that’s what I want for the end of the year. What are you doing this month? Remember to wear a mask and stay away from people. The dreaded plague can cause a lot of damage and exacerbate a lot of conditions. Stay safe.