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Does the word "irregardless" send a shiver down your spine? Does poor grammar *literally* drive you up a wall? You'll want to watch this episode of The List Show, all about notables English language mistakes.
Erin (@erincmccarthy) dives into everyday errors and once-in-a-lifetime mistakes, from a copy of the Bible that proved costly for two printers to tricky homophones that pique your interest.
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12 Notable English Language Mistakes | Mental Floss
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0:00
Did you know that doored is a synonym for density? Probably not, because it isn't
0:05
Doored is a ghost word, a non-existent word that slipped into the dictionary. In the case
0:09
of doored, it stayed there for about 13 years. This particular flub occurred in the early
0:14
1930s, after an editor typed an entry that read D or D, meaning that density can be abbreviated
0:20
with an uppercase D or a lowercase D. During the editorial process, all dictionary entries
0:24
were supposed to have a space between each letter, so any pronunciation marks could be added later. The next editor simply thought a space was missing between O and R, and the
0:33
word Doord ended up being in the 1934 second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary
0:38
In 1939, a Merriam-Webster editor spotted Doord and scrawled a ghost word in red on
0:42
a note card asking for its removal. Somehow, it managed to stay in the dictionary for another
0:47
eight years. When a different editor submitted yet another note card pointing out the error
0:51
in 1947, Doord was finally deleted. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com, and welcome to the List Show
0:58
from my living room. From memorable misprints like Doord to phrases you might be mispronouncing, this episode is
1:04
all about English language mistakes. Let's get started. Doord's 13 years in print is nothing compared to the three centuries that Abacot spent haunting
1:19
reference materials. It all started in the late 16th century, when Abraham Fleming was editing Raphael Hollinshedd's
1:25
Chronicles of British History. At one point, Hollinshedd mentions King Henry's high cap of estate, called abococ, garnished
1:32
with two rich crowns. For some reason, Fleming changed abococ to abocot in his 1587 version of Hollinshedd's
1:38
Chronicles, and the ghost word landed in Henry Spellman's Glossarium in 1664
1:43
For the next 200 years, dictionaries listed abococ as a double-crowned cap of state worn
1:47
by English kings, just like Hollinshedd had described it. It wasn't until the 1880s that the erroneous origins of abacot were finally exposed
1:55
Oxford English Dictionary editor James Murray traced abacot back through a comedy of misspellings
1:59
that started with bicocot, an actual word for a peaked cap. From there it became bicocket, then bococket, and then someone accidentally printed a-bococket
2:09
as one word. Abocockit. Hollinshed dropped the T, and Fleming added his own inexplicable flair
2:16
To Murray, the absurdity of the situation wasn't just about abacot being a fake word
2:20
It was also laughable that centuries worth of scholars thought it was specifically used
2:23
to describe dual-crowned headgear fit only for kings. The real term by Coquit describes something less grandiose
2:29
It's the type of hat Robin Hood is often portrayed as wearing. Murray said, quote
2:34
The sense which the dictionaries give to Abacot is as ludicrously wide of the mark as the form itself
2:39
Hollinshed's chronicles were well known during the Renaissance era. Shakespeare used them as a source for some of his plays
2:45
One of them is Cymbeline, about an ancient British king and his daughter, Imogen
2:49
But the name Imogen was uncommon, potentially even bordering on non-existent at the time
2:54
And while it's definitely believable that the master wordsmith might have made it up
2:58
some scholars think he originally wrote Inogen. For one, the name Inogen was mentioned in another part of Hollinshedt's Chronicles
3:05
and we know Shakespeare was well acquainted with the text. Cymbeline wouldn even have been the first time the bard used the name In a 1600 quarto of Much Ado About Nothing Inogen is mentioned as Leonato wife In Cymbeline Imogen marries a character named Posthumous Leonatus Pretty compelling evidence
3:20
so far, right? In 1611, an astrologer named Simon Forman saw the earliest known performance
3:25
of Cymbeline and wrote about it in his diary. By his account, the princess was named Inogen
3:31
not Imogen. But when the whole play was first published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's
3:36
death, the editors listed the character as Imogen. Cut to 400 years later and Imogen
3:40
is still a common moniker in the UK. It even topped Nameberry.com's list of most popular
3:45
baby names for a brief time in 2014. Sadly, I can't say the same for Inogen
3:50
Of course, verbal mixups aren't specific to character names in Shakespearean plays
3:54
They slip into our language often, and it can sometimes seem like the wrong word or phrase
3:58
makes just as much sense as the right one does. This is called an eggcorn, a term that
4:03
linguist Jeffrey Pullum coined in response to a story of a woman who thought acorns were
4:07
called eggcorns. You can kind of see how eggcorns seem like a suitable description for a small
4:11
egg-shaped nut. Eggcorns are about as bountiful in the English language as acorns are in autumn. Take, for
4:17
example, free rein and free rein. The correct version is R-E-I-N, as in, you're a horse
4:23
and your rider is holding the reins so loosely that you can do whatever you want. In fact
4:27
horseback riders used it when talking about actual horses and reins. That said, R-E-I-G-N
4:32
seems logical too. If you're a monarch who reigns over a whole kingdom, you have at least
4:36
as much autonomy as your average independent equine. Right now, we know that free-r-e-i-n is technically the correct phrase and free-r-e-i-g-n is the
4:44
egg-corn, but it's possible that in another hundred years or so, people will have lost
4:48
track of which is which, and they'll be equally acceptable. But don't worry
4:52
We've already reached that point with plenty of other everyday expressions. And for all intensive purposes, civilization marches on
4:59
Just making sure you were paying attention. Say you finally make dinner reservations at a hip restaurant that your friends have been
5:04
raving about for months. When you get there, the air conditioning is broken, and you're
5:09
seated next to a raucous crowd, and your fried calamari is soggy and cold. Not only have
5:14
you experienced a damp squid, but also a damp squib, something highly anticipated that ends
5:19
up being a total letdown. A squib is a type of firework, so a damp squib is one that's
5:24
too wet to produce the delightful display you expected. But squib is an obsolete word
5:28
these days, and people often say damp squid by mistake. And though damp squid doesn't
5:32
make quite as much sense as the original expression, it does evoke a certain image of a sad, droopy
5:37
invertebrate floating around in cloudy waters. I know what you might be thinking. Aren't squids already damp? Isn't damp squid redundant
5:45
And the answer is yes. This could explain why it hasn't earned a spot in the dictionary
5:50
But that's not to say that it won't. Dictionaries have their fair share of redundant terms
5:54
Let's talk about irregardless. Since time immemorial, or at least as long as Twitter
5:59
has existed, pedants have taken pleasure in pointing out that irregardless is a redundant
6:04
form of the word regardless. The suffix less already means without, so adding the prefix
6:09
ir, which basically means the same thing, creates a lexical abomination that essentially
6:13
means without, without, regard. Defining irregardless as not without regard would make a bit more
6:18
sense, but that's not how people use it. They just use it as a synonym for regardless
6:23
If irregardless is your own personal form of fingernails on a chalkboard I sorry to inform you that it in most major dictionaries And it been there for some time Merriam added the word to its unabridged edition way back in 1934 and its current
6:36
editors recently published a blog post justifying its longstanding inclusion. They wrote, quote
6:41
The fact that it is unnecessary, as there is already a word in English with the same meaning
6:45
regardless, is not terribly important. It is not a dictionary's job to assess whether a word is
6:50
necessary before defining it. The fact that the word is generally viewed as non-standard or as
6:55
illustrative of poor education is likewise not important. Dictionaries define the breadth
6:59
of the language, and not simply the elegant parts at the top. Merriam-Webster is, in some ways, laying out a descriptivist understanding of what a dictionary
7:06
is meant to do, to describe how language is actually used. Other sources would argue for
7:11
a prescriptivist understanding of language and usage, where an authority prescribes how
7:15
words ought to be used. Irregardless—it physically hurt me to say that—I think you're ready to learn that
7:22
un-thaw has an entry in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary 2. Its definition is a single word. Thaw
7:28
Since we're on the subject of words that seem like opposites but mean the same thing
7:33
let's toss a phrase into the mix. When you're completely unbothered by something, do you
7:37
say, I couldn't care less or I could care less? According to Merriam-Webster, the version
7:41
with not has been around since at least the mid-nineteenth century, whereas the version
7:45
without not gained ground in the 1950s, perhaps even later. I couldn't care less isn't
7:50
just older, it also seems to make more sense when you think about it. If you couldn't
7:54
care less about something, you don't care about it at all. If you could care less about
7:59
something, you're basically admitting that you care about it, at least a little. That
8:03
said, I could care less has become such a common colloquialism that Merriam-Webster
8:06
deems both phrases correct. Does that bother you, or could you care less? Annoying your
8:11
most fastidious friends is probably the only consequence that will come from dropping the
8:15
negative adverb from I couldn't care less. For two 17th century royal printers in Britain
8:19
though, omitting one measly knot cost them a lot more. In 1631, Robert Barker and Martin
8:24
Lucas printed a thousand copies of the King James Bible with the commandment, Thou shalt
8:29
commit adultery. When King Charles I found out a year later, he furiously ordered officials
8:33
to track down the Bibles and burn every last one. They were also fined 300 pounds, a penalty
8:38
that was later converted into a directive to buy and print Greek works as a sort of
8:42
service-based retribution. That one immoral directive wasn't the only error in the book
8:47
In the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy, the 24th verse is supposed to mention God's glory
8:51
and greatness. But court records say there was another mistake, rendering the passage, And ye said, behold
8:56
the Lord our God hath showed us his glory and his great ass
9:00
Though biblical scholars caution that the appearance snafu would likely have been understood as a reference to a donkey and not a buttocks, the mistake was so egregious that some scholars
9:08
have theorized that a fellow printer actually sabotaged the book to discredit Barker and
9:12
usurp his position. We might never know the truth. According to historian Gordon Campbell, the great-ass misprint isn't known to have survived
9:19
beyond a couple of potential pages that have been blotted out with ink. You can still see the omitted knot in around a dozen Bibles, though, which escape the book-burning
9:26
blaze and are housed in museums and private collections around the world
9:30
While Barker and Lucas probably would have kept their jobs had they just been a little more meticulous during the printing process, you can hardly blame them for making a couple mistakes
9:39
Even the most detail grammar enthusiasts sometimes get things wrong especially when when it comes to homophones or words that sound the same but have different spellings and or definitions If you referring to the highest point of a mountain or of anything else that
9:52
P-E-A-K. If you're talking about a quick glance, that's P-E-E-K. Here's a helpful
9:57
way to remember that. Eyes have two E's, and so does peak. If you're writing sneak
10:02
peak, don't let sneaks E-A sneak into the second word. And if this distinction piqued
10:07
your interest, remember that's P-I-Q-U-E-D. That peak comes from a French word literally
10:12
meaning to prick. Flak is another tough one. Forgetting or giving criticism, that's F-L-A-K
10:20
Since quack, snack, blackjack, and a ton of other words end in A-C-K, people tend to spell flak
10:26
that way too. But it's actually a truncated version of this German word that I'm not even
10:30
going to try to pronounce, which is a type of gun used to target aircraft. That said, F-L-A-C-K
10:35
in this context has become so common that Merriam-Webster lists it as a less common spelling
10:40
so you're free to use it if you want. You just might catch some flack for it. If you catch flack for calling your strong suit a fort instead of a forte, however, go ahead and
10:49
tell your critics they're wrong. F-O-R-T-E in this context is derived from F-O-R-T, the French word
10:54
for strong, which we then, for some reason, decided to spell as if we were using the feminine form of
10:59
the French word. The masculine F-O-R-T would be pronounced more like four, but the feminine F-O-R-T-E
11:05
would be more like fort, which is why it's considered a correct pronunciation in English
11:10
alongside forte, a pronunciation, by the way, which has its own detractors in this context
11:15
As Merriam-Webster's online usage guide advises, quote, take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose
11:23
Unfortunately, so many people believe fort should be forte that you might be better off
11:27
choosing a different word altogether. And by the way, f-o-r-t-e, when used to describe a piece of
11:32
music, comes from the Italian word for loud, and you should definitely pronounce that forte
11:38
Possibly the most heated pronunciation debate in the English language concerns a pesky little
11:42
file format called a GIF, or Jif. Since it stands for Graphics Interchange Format, it
11:48
seems like you'd pronounce the G just like in graphics, so GIF. But ever since Steve
11:52
Wilhite invented it in 1987, he's maintained that it's supposed to be Jif. In 2013, he
11:58
told the New York Times, quote, The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations
12:03
They are wrong. It is a soft G, pronounced jif. End of story. But if this video has taught
12:08
you anything, it's probably that there never really is an end of story when it comes to
12:13
language. In 2015, Université de Montréal linguistics professor Michael Dow mined the
12:18
English Lexicon Project for all the words containing GI. Of those 105 words, nearly
12:23
twice as many were pronounced with a soft G. Think gin and magic, then a hard G, as in
12:28
gift. The GI words said with hard Gs, however, were used more than twice as often as the soft
12:33
G ones. So beyond Wilhite's own wishes, there's not really a linguistic precedent to tell us
12:39
whether jif or gif should be used. And even if there were, people wouldn't necessarily follow
12:43
it. So you can Joe with your Judd on this one. Our next episode is all about projects that were
12:48
never finished. If you know a cool movie, building, or other project that was never completed
12:53
drop it in the comments for a chance to be featured in that episode. Remember to subscribe
12:57
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