UPDATE (10/22/07): Sometimes lately I feel like I'm fighting a loosing battle. Everywhere I look, people are loosing things. Not so much in published pieces, although I do catch it there occasionally , but definitely its rampant in online text. I realize that words change when you add -ing at the end, but if anything it would be the consonant that would change from lose to lossing, but not even that rule applies here. C'mon people. I feel like I'm loosing you. The next time I hear someone use it like that I'm going to tell them to "Get Loosed". That'll show them.
UPDATE (9/11/06): The article has now been fixed. Should have taken a screen cap to post here. Oh well. At least someone, somewhere, realizes that loose does not mean the same as lose.
UPDATE (9/11/06): Long time readers will remember the post below where I bemoaned the use of the word "loose" in the place of "lose". Just this morning I am perusing the online version of the Salt Lake Tribune, only to find this headline: "Needy Utahns loose food stamps." Maybe I have loosed my mind.
********************************
And not just because a post that I had up disappeared and had to be salvaged from a permanent link that a friend's feed reader happened to hang on to.
It actually because I've seen the word "loose" be used to mean "lose" so many time lately that I'm starting to wonder if I'm the one using it incorrectly. I was just reading someone's profile that said "I love loosing myself in a good book." Last semester when I was grading papers I saw the word "loose" used uncountable times in place of "lose". And these are graduate students. Granted not all of them speak great English, but every team had some born and raised "Englicans." You would think that they would pick that up in proofreading (not that the quality of writing indicated any kind of proofreading).
Did I miss somewhere where this was an alternate spelling or something?
5 comments:
I did mean incorrectly. Englican was a new word that I invented to mean EFL (English First Language) as opposed to ESL.
Should I fix incorrectly? or leave it as an example of how hypocritical I am?
Just use [sic] when you make up your own words like Englican. I've been using it more and more, since I Wiki'd [sic] it a few weeks ago. Thirty two years old and I had no idea what [sic] meant.
What bugs me more than misspelled words is mispronounced. Since when did meer (or are they saying 'mere') become a replacement for mirror? I can understand getting lazy when you type, but lazy when you talk? Come on people!
OMG OMG OMG you just gave me an anxiety attack.
I have learned to compartmentalize the emotions I have when people make dumb mistakes like that without knowing it (emails and IM do not count but academic papers? they count). I actually thought you misspelled lose on accident and sortof subconsciously thought to myself "hm. i had him pegged as above-average intelligently. oh well." Thanks for writing about this.
People who love to lose themselves in a good book should be more literary than that. The reason I'm so word-anal is that I was an avid book reader as a kid.
Adam, I remember you thanking me once for correctly pronouncing "vice versa" and I didn't understand why. I never noticed people mispronouncing it before.
Making up new words is the best. Kudos for "englican."
Man. The pressure is really on now. Someone has me pegged as "above-average intelligently." Was it the underwear shopping story or the one about handicapped bathrooms that gave me away?
And as for graduate students writing...I realize that I am not in the English department or even Communications, but c'mon. And the whining I had to put up with for actually taking away points for bad grammar...I think it actually made a part of me die. When people talk about grade inflation they ain't lying. Giving out an average score of 85% made me the bad guy out of the three graders.
I blame Pauly Shore and his phrase "looser" in place of loser.
Post a Comment