Words that become Wronger, the Longer You Look at Them

[terribleturnip]

Ferlonda gave me a handy segue to my next topic, which is normal everyday words that suddenly look...funny. Maybe you just look at it suddenly and it doesn't seem quite right. Or maybe you've looked at it so much, it begins to look ridiculous. (As opposed to words that NEVER look right, like shriek or segue...)

That's what happened to me when working on my menu to: Chicken. Go ahead, type it a hundred or so times in different sentences. Pick up several cookbooks devoted to it and suddenly it starts wavering in and out existence as a real word and begins to look...absurd.

Cookie is another one. I suspect it's the whole "c" and "k" thing.

Friend. Which of course is just one letter removed from Fiend. Which is a word that NEVER looks right. But the "Frie" part starts wandering away from the "nd" part and then my head starts pronouncing it wrong and suddenly, I'm running spell check on a word that I KNOW how to spell.

Quarter. But we're back to that "k" sound again...

Which I might believe is the issue until I look at Sales, which always looks like a foreign word to me. And I then suspect that it has nothing to do with the word itself, but misfiring neuron.

Neuron...

Focus! Focus!

Comments

Lavender

[im-geva.livejournal.com]

biscuit, too

Re: Lavender

[quislet.livejournal.com]

Gotta love those French root words. Biscuit is easy. It means "to scui, twice."

And let us not forget...

[skivee.livejournal.com]

...Pymilliaphagus Podapolapaphagus

And if I spelled it wrong, too bad. My spellcheck broke when I tried to check the word.

Re: And let us not forget...

[skivee.livejournal.com]

When I web-searched I got the following helpful question:
Did you mean: Psyllaephagus Podapolapaphagus?
No, I did not.

[lowlandscot.livejournal.com]

"Calendar" looks wrong no matter how I spell it. So does "cemetery" even though it's easy to remember because it's all Es.

And once I stood -- laughing so loud commuters were turning to stare at me -- before the sign for the "Female Toilet" in King's Cross Station, convinced that both words were spelled wrong. That might have had something to do with the overnight flight from DC to London and the fact I'd been awake for something like 36 hours straight, though.

[quislet.livejournal.com]

It looks much better if you put the name "Jenny" in front...

[faithellen]

"Lawyer."

We have a "Klara's Kitchun" that I refuse to go to, because of the misspelling. When I tell people, they ALWAYS say, "Because Clara is spelled with a C?" And then I have to not kill them.

[ferlonda.livejournal.com]

LOLOLOLOL!!!

*hack, cough, choke, snerk, hack...* Sorry- mother of all colds got me over the weekend and I'm still recovering. Whew. Better now.

[quislet.livejournal.com]

I like Friend. It's like merging Fry with the German conjunction Und. Like, what're you going to do after immersing this person you're fond of in high-temperature oil?

Nothing says friendship like denaturing proteins in oil.