MetaChat - I can't believe it's spelled "luggage".

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29 July 2008

I can't believe it's spelled "luggage". That just looks wrong, all of a sudden.

post by: Specklet at: 12:37 | 13 comments

That happens to me with the word "juice," if I stare at it too long.

posted by initapplette 29 July | 13:27

It happens with just about any word if I stare at it, but "luggage" looked wrong instantly.

Ludge-A-gay.

posted by Specklet 29 July | 13:39

Ladled sometimes gets me.

My intern just wrote "definately" in an email to me, which is my pet peeve. I mean, our email system even has a spellcheck so I know there was a red underline and she just ignored it.

posted by rmless2 29 July | 13:40

Hee! Specklet you just made me think of The Luggage from the Terry Pratchett series...

posted by lonefrontranger 29 July | 14:02

Oh, I love The Luggage!

posted by Specklet 29 July | 14:55

I find the word awkward to look rather...um...awkward actually.

posted by LunaticFringe 29 July | 15:00

I always do a doubletake on the word "misled," (which my buh-buh-brain likes to rhyme with "rifled"). It seems to me to be a better past tense for the verb "to misle" than it is for "to mislead."

posted by Hugh Janus 29 July | 15:20

Awkward? Is that really how you spell it?

Jesus, what's wrong with my brain today?

posted by Specklet 29 July | 15:44

Stroke?

posted by ethylene 29 July | 15:46

Hey, that's a brilliant word.

luggage
1596, from lug (v.) "to drag;" so, lit. "what has to be lugged about" (or, in Johnson's definition, "any thing of more bulk than value"). In 20c., the usual word for "baggage belonging to passengers."

posted by TheophileEscargot 29 July | 16:22

Heh. Schleppage in Yiddish?

posted by goo 29 July | 16:49

The misled-rhymes-with-rifled thing was mentioned on one of my favorite This American Life shows, the one with the woman who thought unicorns were extinct and the man who thought Nielson used all families named Nielson for their TV ratings.

posted by simbiotic 29 July | 17:44

Words like that, I often mentally pronounce them in ridiculous-literal way that somehow diffuses their awkwardness. Lugg-gugg-age. Awe-kah-ward. Ree-dick-you-louse. Pro . . . (dramatic pause, as though you'd just tossed a ball in the air and now it's coming down and you're about to catch it) - Nunce!

Weird. I've never really thought about this before.

I guess language, and our relationship to it, is often a rather unsettling -- and simultaneously silly -- thing to explore.

posted by treepour 29 July | 22:38

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