One huge spelling mistake that’s been driving me crazy lately—and I’m seeing it everywhere, literally everywhere, even this article in the Bulletin today—is spelling the word “lose” as “loose.” How can people continually misspell such a simple word? Worse, why didn’t the editor of the newspaper catch this?
lose: verb. Inflected forms: lost, losing. Meanings: to bring to destruction — used chiefly in passive construction; to miss from one’s possession or from a customary or supposed place; to suffer deprivation of; part with especially in an unforeseen or accidental manner; etc.
loose: adjective. Inflected forms: looser, loosest. Meanings: not rigidly fastened or securely attached; having worked partly free from attachments; having relative freedom of movement; not tight-fitting; etc. As a verb: Inflected Form: loosed, loosing. Meanings: to let loose; to make loose; to cast loose; etc.
Comments
4 responses to “Spelling "Lose"”
oh yeah. that stuff drives me insance. I see it in newspapers too… "Pedaling" instead of "Peddling", "Alter" instead of "altar". I think people who write have, for the most part, forgotten their English classes and have come to rely, waaaaay too much, on spellchecking software.
I do medical transcription, and i do spellcheck, but i also LOOK AT the words being offered as replacements and usually end up fixing it myself.
It isn’t really a spelling mistake. It’s a word mistake. Synonyms, they’re like, so hard, man.
that would be "insane". See, that was a typo. heheh.
Postscript: The Bulletin article actually ran on November 16, 2004, as my wife pointed out– but I didn’t actually *see* the article until today, when my wife sent it to me.
Either way, they still misspelled "lose". 🙂
Having moved from the land of Net/print to the land of television (!) I can be a BIT less picky on spelling, but not much (ours is more an issue of pronunciation). But as we put more stuff on the Web – a slow process, so far, but give us time, please – we’ll have to be right on both. (Actually, with CGs – the graphics onscreen – we have to be right as well.) Wish me luck in typo-swatting;-)