Misspellings

“Dipthong”

Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

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”

“Hyperchondria”

Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I hear or see this occasionally.

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

Explanation:
The valid noun is “hypochondria” — spelled H-Y-P-O-C-H-O-N-D-R-I-A.

This noun means excessive concern about one’s health, especially focusing on symptoms that could be due to cardiac or gastric problems.

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

The “chondria” portion of the noun refers to ensiform cartilage — that is, to sword-shaped or xiphoid cartilage, which relates to the lowermost segment of the three segments that comprise the sternum.

The “hypo” portion of the noun means under or below.

Knowing these two roots makes it easy to understand how the noun “hypochondria” refers in particular to cardiac or gastric problems.

So replacing “hypo” with “hyper” produces a nonsense word. Whatever is over or above the xiphoid cartilage is outside the body and therefore could not refer to gastric or cardiac problems.

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:

  • “hypochondria” — spelled H-Y-P-O-C-H-R-O-N-D-R-I-A — 456,000 matches
  • “hyperchondria” — spelled H-Y-P-E-R-C-H-R-O-N-D-R-I-A — 1,760 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the correct word over the incorrect word by a ratio of 259-to-1, which is excellent.

Solution:
“Hypochondria”

“member priviledges”

Common English Blunders, Misspellings, Nouns

I saw this yesterday on a website.

Problem:
One of the words is misspelled.

Explanation:
I had just registered my name and address at a website where I wanted to make a purchase.

The website permits purchases by returning members, by new members, and by those who choose not to create a member account.

I chose to create a member account so that I could track my order.

An account-creation confirmation page appeared, apparently to allay my concerns about creating yet another identity (“member account”) at yet another website.

The Web page referred to “member priviledges”, with the second word spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-D-G-E-S.

The misspelling was obvious to me, if not to the page’s author. The second word should have been spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E-S (with no “d” in the middle).

This misspelling is a common English blunder, but I wondered just how common it was.

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:

  • “privilege” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E — 31,400,000 matches
  • “privileged” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E-D — 16,900,000 matches
  • “privileges” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E-S — 21,100,000 matches
  • “priviledge” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-D-G-E — 694,000 matches
  • “priviledged” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-D-G-E-D — 354,000 matches
  • “priviledges” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-D-G-E-S — 362,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spellings versus the incorrect spellings by a ratio of 49.2-to-1, which is good but not excellent, especially in light of the more than 1.4 million total misspellings.

I suspect that these misspellings come from mental interference by the word “ledge” — spelled L-E-D-G-E.

Solution:
“member privileges”