> to diffuse a bomb
If even the Boston Review's subeditors don't know the difference between "diffuse" and "defuse"... well, English is going to change a lot in the next couple of decades. It will get a lot more ambiguous.
If even the Boston Review's subeditors don't know the difference between "diffuse" and "defuse"... well, English is going to change a lot in the next couple of decades. It will get a lot more ambiguous.
I hope that's not what they meant, though!
I am far from perfect, and I'm not educated. Let me make that disclaimer first. With that out of the way, I've been online for some time and in the last 10 years, it is common to see a few common errors that I'd say we are in danger of introducing into the lexicon via dictionary-squatting:
- it's and its. If you can't substitute it's for "it is/was/has", then you need its, the possessive form of the word.
- there/their/they're
- your/you're
- are/our
- to/two/too - This is the most common, by far.
- definitely - not definately, just say def or something.
I could go on, but it's starting to feel petty or like my standards are too high for personal correspondence. "Elder shakes fist at terminal"
who/whom
that gets me.
To whom does this belong? Who climbed up that tree?
But as I get older, the impermanence of, well, everything sits at the front of my mind a lot more often than it used to. Add to that the fact that English has always been in a perpetual state of change, and I just kinda shrug my shoulders at the idea of it changing further.
I'm just about at this point. I'm too old to bother to yell "get off my lawn!" anymore.
But I thought a discussion about change in English over time might teach me something. Thanks, all!
I here that their everywear,
those people who don't know
there their from they're.
It were's me down,
they're choice of word;
there grammar shoud not be scene
but herd.
This is a long tail, but it's not like we've only just started down it.
I actually find misspelling and bad phraseology to judge how seriously I should take a person's opinion, though factored in amongst other things (if it's obvious that English is their second language, or if their field of expertise may be one that eschews language skills, for example).
People have been complaining and worrying about this since, literally, the beginning of recorded history. Our language is much "devolved" specifically in the ways many of them were worried about, and yet we are still having this conversation in it. You might not like how it tastes in your mouth but it'll still work fine for the needs we have of it, as all languages always have.
The way you say "spelling/meaning" implies you think they're the same thing but they just absolutely are not, as much as that pains pedants sometimes.
If you think otherwise you're mistaken about very basic and long-confirmed foundations of linguistics, like whether meaning derives from the spoken form or the writing system.