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Words

Cupertino

I’d never heard it called this until today, but the Cupertino effect is:

…the tendency of a spellchecker to suggest inappropriate words to replace misspelled words and words not in its dictionary

This article has some great examples, my personal favourites of which have to be:

Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Sam Brownback occasionally were transformed into Rot Paul, Mike Hoecake, and Sam Blowback, names more appropriate for movie stars in various genres.

Categories
Words

Feck, arse, drink…

My favourite thing I’ve learnt from my Word Origin Calendar (second best non-Christmas present I got for Christmas) is that:

The word “girl” originally referred to a child of either sex, possibly coming from the Old-English word gierela, a garment that children wore. See also: Metonymy.