Man of Harveys
Well-known member
Could of, should of, and mIcCKEY AAdAMMS
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Most often misspelled word on NSC?
- Thread starter Gwylan
- Start date
And "Withereddream" as "Withdean".....
Trufflehound
Re-enfranchised
The Large One
Who's Next?
Disagree...
****.
****.
Trufflehound
Re-enfranchised
Disagree...
****.
I'd love to see him sitting on the throne when the tide comes in...
Kalimantan Gull
Well-known member
Being the ignoramus that I am, I couldn't find anything wrong with 'shoe-in' and 'baited breath'. So thank you, I have now learnt that it is actually 'shoo-in', and 'bated breath'
The correct spelling is actually bated breath but it’s so common these days to see it written as baited breath that there’s every chance that it will soon become the usual form, to the disgust of conservative speakers and the confusion of dictionary writers. Examples in newspapers and magazines are legion; this one appeared in the Daily Mirror on 12 April 2003: “She hasn’t responded yet but Michael is waiting with baited breath”.
It’s easy to mock, but there’s a real problem here. Bated and baited sound the same and we no longer use bated (let alone the verb to bate), outside this one set phrase, which has become an idiom. Confusion is almost inevitable. Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the unstressed first vowel (a process called aphesis); it means “reduced, lessened, lowered in force”. So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing as a result of some strong emotion, such as terror or awe.
Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice, in which Shylock says to Antonio: “Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, / Say this ...”. Nearly three centuries later, Mark Twain employed it in Tom Sawyer: “Every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale”.
For those who know the older spelling or who stop to consider the matter, baited breath evokes an incongruous image; Geoffrey Taylor humorously (and consciously) captured it in verse in his poem Cruel Clever Cat:
Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
The Grockle
Formally Croydon Seagull
I allways fort the spelin wos prity god on hear.
Trufflehound
Re-enfranchised
Another similar one is "tow-the-line".
skipper734
Registered ruffian
Johnny Crumplin Football
New member
I find it deeply, deeply concerning that so many people get this wrong.
Right, time a for a beer
Trufflehound
Re-enfranchised
Nothing wrong with that either. Or Canute. Pretty much any spelling is acceptable now, because if we're honest, back in his day 1,000 years ago it would almost certainly always have been written "illegible squiggle".
I thought they'd gone back to Canute.. or is that the striker Freddy?
227 BHA
Well-known member
Micky Adams was often "Mickey" as in the "mouse"!
Yes, You're round I think...
I sincerely hope this is a joke.
- Thread starter
- #39
Yes, that's a good one. It's comparatively new too - I don't think that was a common mistake 10 years ago.
