Embarrass
Dean
Industrial Bill reminds me that it's spelled "embarrass" and not "embarass."
But being the grammatical liberal that I am, I hereby declare that if you can find more than ten published incidents of "embarass," then that spelling is automatically valid and should be entered into dictionaries forthwith. For usage is the only ultimate arbiter.
Then again, if I were to take such an assertion entirely seriously, I would be forced to admit that "alot" is a word. How embarassing!
I do insist, for instance, that children is spelled "children"— despite the fact that Google turns up 70,900 search results for "childern," 1,610 for "choldren," and 27 for "choldern." (In fact I not so infrequently hear the word children pronounced as CHOAL-dren.)
Likewise, I resist the common Internet misspelling of lose as "loose": "We knew we were going to loose the game." "Don't loose your head!"
And let's not even get into "2" for to, or "u" for you...
I guess what it comes down to for me is, I do allow a certain weight to long-established tradition; with a brand-new usage I usually allow a certain lag time or "buffering effect" before I will begin to consider taking it seriously; and I tend to discount usages which are employed almost solely by those whose brains are not in gear.
By these criteria, I consider ain't, or the split infinitive, to be eminently respectable English. I'm still resisting "southmore" for sophomore, "southball" for softball, and "midas well" for "might as well."
(Gee, I'm sounding like a conservative this morning! Also slightly contrarian: I'm actually far more heavily weighted in the direction of "usage first" than this post would suggest.)
There is a serious reason why this sort of stuff makes me a little panicky. Writing is what I do for a living. I have never, in my life, struggled with spelling. At all. Until recently.
And a big part of the problem is I am now reading -- as are all of us -- for the first time, a lot of material that is unedited. For the first time, I am reading LOTS of misspelled words. As a result, I'm starting to get confused on words that never confused me before -- such as embarrass.
The only reason I can spell this word and many others correctly is because I already knew the word before the advent of the Internet.
Remember -- one misspelling in my life of word, in a resume, in a cover letter, in an article submission, and my submission goes into the trash. So to a degree, this is an economic issue for me.
And not just me. The generation that grows up reading on the Internet will be desperately confused about spelling. So there are practical reasons for holding the line.
I think it's no coincidence that just in recent years— just since the Internet became popular— I've begun to run across "Internet-like" misspellings frequently— not just once in a while, but frequently— on product labels and on professionally printed, publicly posted signs.
And that's going to upset the apple cart.
I've worked with young writers who don't know the correct spellings -- and this is their profession! There's a difference between complement and compliment, and we gotta keep 'em separate if our meaning is to remain clear.
All I can do against the tides of spelling history here is stand athwart and say, "Stop!"
:)
But, don't compare yourselves to me. That's setting the bar way too low.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.