MetaChat - You know how sometimes you can read a word

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22 February 2007

You know how sometimes you can read a word and know on some level it's right but on another think it's completely wrong?→[More:] I'm reading up on metals, gold-plate vs. gold fill, etc. And the word "gold" just looks weird...like it's spelt wrong. But I know it's right. Right?

post by: phoenixc at: 20:36 | 10 comments

How else would it be spelled? What do you see it as?

The one that kills me is exclusion. I think it should be exclution.

posted by rainbaby 22 February | 20:47

It's not that it should be spelt any other way than the way it is...I think I just had a temporary brain fart and was really confused for a few seconds.

posted by phoenixc 22 February | 20:50

Piece does that to me, alla time. Peice, piece, peace, peas. T'hell wid it.

posted by paulsc 22 February | 21:03

You know what else is a weird word?

Gulf.

Gold. Gulf. Gold. Gulf.

posted by cortex 22 February | 21:13

I know exactly what you are talking about phoenixc. For me, the word is flag. I look at that arrangement of letters and on some deeper level they have no meaning whatsoever, just a jumble of random marks. Even the sound of flag has no meaning. How can those random sounds possibly represent a piece of symbolic cloth?

It's like holding up a jar, and assigning to it: dfskjib4hewr.

posted by mischief 22 February | 21:17

It happens to me a lot, but usually after I've had to use a word repeatedly.
Like, today I was looking for a new spindle for my doorknob (they're the antique glass kind, and the spindle's too short, so the knob falls off a lot.)
Type the word "door" into various search boxes a few dozen times and it starts to look pretty strange.

posted by kellydamnit 22 February | 21:23

I only recently learned how to spell "exercise".

posted by Specklet 22 February | 21:49

Cortex, when I see gulf, I sometimes think golf.

posted by phoenixc 22 February | 22:33

In any kind of editing, I find this will happen to almost any word, if you stare at it long enough.

You realize how fundamentally arbitrary language is.

posted by Miko 23 February | 01:14

What Miko said, but I've had this discussion multiple times in my life with people, and the word "juice" always comes to my mind immediately.

posted by initapplette 23 February | 10:55

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