wierd words

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should be weird, of course!

but weird often seems weirder than wierd to me
when I was growing up it was magneta (supervillain?) for magenta
a friend read labyrinth as labyrnith
now I've written languor wrong as langour (though the right way looks right)
which words do a number on you?

― Paul, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

dyslexic anwsers please

― Paul, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i always used to read "misled" as, um, "my-zlled".

― katie, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

don't misle me!

― katie, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

When I was young I used to think that the long vehicle signs on lorries actually read long vedgetable, so I though that there were a lot of cucumbers being transported around the place.

― Dave, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I convinced myself when little that there was a word "ploblem" which was very like "problem" and meant the same thing but was different anyway. Eventually I had to let this belief go.

― Tom, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I thought extraordinary was pronounced extra-ordinary and was somehow a different word to the normal extraordinary (which I guess I vaguely thought missed out the first 'a' or something).

I used to think picturesque was pronounced picture-skew.

Sorry, this isn't really what you're asking, is it?

― N., Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Katie beware of spreading the misle meme: I had it hardcore when I was young, got over it in high school, then had a professor in college bring it all back with an offhand "you know, I always used to think of it as 'misle.'" (Now I actually giggle just reading it.) You're infecting ILE: everyone who reads this thread will forever think of you when the misle crops up. (Hooray for you, maybe?)

― nabisco%%, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also I thought of "haphazard" as something like "halfazard" until I was 18 and finally found myself in a position to say it out loud.

― nabisco%%, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"Mizzled" is how I pronounced it in my brain. The definition was like "misled" but more frustrating. Odd that we should all share this.

galoshes --> bagloshes
garage --> bagrage
molasses --> baglasses

Those are from when I was like 4 years old. Very recently I was reading along and came upon a word I didn't recognize. I halted and tried to decipher it but was unable. I was convinced for about 5 minutes that some negligent editor had left in this obvious typo/made up word: "or".

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

also, another friend once read aloud to a class the word doing (as in do-ing) as (the sound effect) "DOING!". got a lot of laffs, he said.

― Paul, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I used to pronounce presumably as 'prezhoomeraberly', much to the amusement of everyone who heard, bar myself. I'm better now.

― Nathan Barley, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I still often pronounce metabolism with no emphasis on a syllable, instead saying meta-bolism.

― Vinnie, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hmmm When I was younger thr weird word for me was photosynthesis. another for me was linoleum.

― Gale, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

much

― Paul, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

When very small, I referred to the hibiscus flower of Hawaii, where I lived at a tender age, as a 'hibiscuit' flower. I still prefer to think of them that way.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm still smarting from realising at the age of twenty something that "hyperbole" is not pronounced "Hyper Bowl"

― electric sound of jim, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Two years ago, while reading aloud in class, I managed to pronounce "awry" as aw-ree. And a few years before that, I used the word "constellation" when I meant "consolation" while talking to a girlfriend's parents.

― bnw, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

infrared

― Paul, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

hehe, i was myzlled too

― minna, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I know, "much"!!! it's so German.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Denn sind wir alle in mucher Not gewesen.

― Dan Perry, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I once pronounced The Mikado as "the mick-a-doo" in front of my family and they all started laughing at me. And I thought I was the sophisticated one!

And then there's segue. I thought the verb was written "segue" and pronounced "seg" and the noun was written/pronounced "segueway". Then one day I realized I'd never actually seen the word segueway. Although I did a google search just now and there are plenty of sites featuring the word segueway. So maybe this is a common mistake.

Words look strange to me all the time, but it's always fleeting so I can't really remember. They're usually short ones, though.

― Arthur, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

When I'm typing I make mistakes that I don't make when writing, like femail, numberic and withe. My fingers have learnt some patterns just a bit too well.

I also get there, they're & their and no & know mixed up when I'm typing. I think the cause is different, maybe because I can type without looking at the keyboard or screen the sound of the word becomes more important than the spelling. Actually, femail might be in this category too.

― toraneko, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Referred to "Grand Pricks" auto racing when old enough to have known better.

― briania, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pronunciation Dyslexia: in Richard Scarry books always read Mortimer Mouse as More Timer.

Spelling Dyslexia: liaison / liason ???

Typing Dyslexia: thnaks

Riverside Dyslexia: MiddlesBRough called Boro...

Behavioural Dyslexia: getting to Ealing at 10.30pm and THEN trying to buy an A to Z. Getting in a taxi and THEN going to a cash machine.

thskna

― stevie mitch, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ten months pass...

ok i just saw a flyer on a bollard which said

HYPNO-ASSIST (and some other stuff in little letters i didn't take in)

what the hell is "hypno-ass", i wondered, and what is it therefore that hypnoassists do?

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 19 May 2003 17:05 (twenty-three years ago)

An error invisible in writing and pretty close to inaudible in speech: thinking of "painstaking" as "pain-staking"

― OleM (OleM), Monday, 19 May 2003 19:22 (twenty-three years ago)

mack-cab-bray.

― teeny (teeny), Monday, 19 May 2003 23:03 (twenty-three years ago)

I learnt to read alone in my head (er what I mean is, mum never read to me, I read to myself) so my pronunciations etc were often bizarre. I recall pronouncing "italian" as "itall-IAN" in front of the whole school and being giggled at (well, you say "italy" so why not just say the same with the ian on the end hey?).

One I hear a lot from customers (internet helpdesk callers) was "authentification". Why the hell do they say this? A senior techy sales rep said "authentification" to me on the phone this morning and I almost cracked up laughing.

I always pause when spelling "neccesary". It never looks right (is it right now? Hell who knows).

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 02:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I used to pronounce "unique" as "inkwoo."

And I can still remember that my first encounter with this word was on the side of a Triscuit box.

― slutsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 03:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Necessary! two s one c.

I like missile - the second i seems so superfluous.
also guarantee. I always think of GWAR.

words I constantly mispronounce: Too many to list, really.
honor used to always get an audible 'h' from me, for instance. I tend to think it comes from being an only child who learned a great deal of language from magazines and novels read silently and alone.

For the longest time I always used to decode "Inc" in my head as some weird term that expanded to something phonetically to "in-science" and to this day I have to consciously keep myself from tripping up and sounding like a total weird bastard when making comments like "Oh yeah, wasn't that Panacea album out on Force In Science(which is actually a cooler name for a label if you ask me)?"

You can imagine the fun teachers had with me in school.

― Millar (Millar), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 03:11 (twenty-three years ago)

I like missile - the second i seems so superfluous.
To an American p'raps, but Australians say it "miss-isle", so its fine for us :)

And dammit I knew I spelt neccar...necessr... nesecyeyaryeee... fuckit I give up.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 05:20 (twenty-three years ago)

Until I was in my teens, I thought the written word "choir" (which was obviously pronounced something like "chore") and the spoken word which must have been spelled something like "quire" were synonyms, and that I'd somehow just never heard the former spoken nor seen the latter written.

― Tep (ktepi), Tuesday, 20 May 2003 06:05 (twenty-three years ago)

eight years pass...

Just had to type the word "twelfth" and it struck me as weird word, or even a wierd one.

― Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.), Monday, 22 August 2011 11:27 (fourteen years ago)

yes it should be "twelth"

and "months" should be "muntz"

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 22 August 2011 12:08 (fourteen years ago)

Yeah, let's get these letters togther, an f, l, h... let's see, a w... two t's... and let's only use one vowel

― Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.), Monday, 22 August 2011 12:11 (fourteen years ago)

"misled" is the one that tripped me up the most for years.

― Why'd You Wanna Tweet Me So Bad? (dog latin), Monday, 22 August 2011 15:39 (fourteen years ago)

three years pass...

Been moving work documents around, seeing the word "Invoice" over and over again. What a strange word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation

― erry red flag (f. hazel), Friday, 27 February 2015 19:59 (eleven years ago)

six months pass...

"instantiate"

new to me

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 27 August 2015 20:42 (ten years ago)

five years pass...

even though i now know what i’m seeing and have for like 40 years, i only see infrared as past tense of verb “to infrare.” or, what paul wrote in 2002.

― pence's eye juice (Hunt3r), Monday, 1 March 2021 15:23 (five years ago)

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