mcdspot

Hyperdispensationalism

I take it you already know,
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead - it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.

More on this theme here.

Attention: not to be a snob or English major or anything, but here are ten words that make you sound stupid when you mispronounce them. Also see these.

I have a few to add to this list that I hear regularly:

axe: An axe is something you chop wood with. You do not “axe” someone a question.
kindly: This sounds great in a Faulkner novel, but what you mean to say is “kind of”.
laxidasical: The actual word is lackadaisical. I know it is tempting to throw the “lax” in there as if a form of “relaxed”. But no.
supposably: This is a popular one. It’s supposedly.

Again, I’m learning this stuff too. I only recently learned that instead of “for all intensive purposes” it’s actually pronounced “For all intents and purposes”. Who knew?

This is a great article some dos and donts for winning an argument. The hardest one for me is staying calm. Many of these tips are actually logical fallacies recognized over the past three thousand years by philosophers and writers.

Good question.