Wednesday, 23 December 2015

Spelling English words, dictionary or thesaurus needed pronto

A day of words...

So this morning I am updating and writing new text for my website and come across many tiny red lines under some words telling me my spelling is wrong. I would swear my spellings not that bad, pretty good in fact. But still the little red dotted lines are on my page. I doubt myself and get my old friend the oxford English dictionary, the last thing I want is avoidable bad spelling. Checking each word one by one, none of them are spelt incorrectly.  Is a dictionary or translator needed? I realized I was writing in the queens English while the spellings desired by my program wanted American English versions. Phew, I am not going crazy, but this opens up a whole new world. To the word freaks out there who simply love words. Knowing that there were differences as a theory is totally different to the confusion created when you have a mix of systems, especially when there is not enough awareness of it. Suspecting that there are many people out there who are mixing up these spellings, its a ncie thing to bring to this blog. I am also fascinated to check how I spell many words in English and suspect some American versions have crept in.

Should we protect the beauty of the difference or go for communicating which might be considered the original purpose for writing in the first place. Just for clarity I have nothing against American English, I simply grew up in the UK and the Oxford English dictionary has been the book I most cherished over the years along with a thesaurus and my word translation dictionary for spanish and now dutch.

Later today i came across some blogs with truly cool words  and one who was quoting some of Shakespeare's finest creations, see below for a list. Can you word out their meanings? Tomorrow I will post the meanings.

Word list:

1. Lambkin   (shakespeare)
2. agastopia 
3. kakorrhaphiophobia
4. oxter
5. winklepicker
6. Machiavellianism 
7. Prestidigitation 
8. Plenipotentiary  
9. Quattuordecillion

10.  suggest a word to add to the list in the comments part.