27 April, 2007

If It's Loose, Don't Lose It

Lots of things irritate me, on account of how I am easily irritated. Most of all, I am irritated by stupidity, especially stupidity caused by lack of attention to obvious detail.

No more is this demonstrated than in my total aversion to the misuse of words and one thing that really drives me insane is the inability to differentiate between "lose" and "loose". Why do so many people get these confused? It should be obvious from the pronunciation alone what they both mean, yet so many people insist that they are going to, for example, "loose their mind" ... what does that mean exactly, that they are going to send it on some sort of rampage?

Let's get this straight once and for all. When the word "loose" is pronounced, it has an "s" sound; when the word "lose" is pronounced, it has a "z" sound. If that simple difference is borne in mind, there should be no margin for error and no excuse for it. To make it even clearer, "loose" is the opposite of "tight" and "lose" is the opposite of "win". So, if you say "I know I am going to loose the game", what you are really saying is "I know I am not going to tight the game", which makes no sense whatsoever. It also makes you sound like a complete idiot.

Oh and while we're at it, the words "to" and "too" are pronounced differently, too (not to). So, you would "go to work, too" (light "u" sound followed by heavy "oo" sound), you would not "go too work, to", although you might "go to work to work".

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4 comments:

Around My Kitchen Table said...

Oh, Witty Woman, don't get me started! My current hate is using "your" when they mean "you're". Your not going to believe this but I totally loose it too when people say "less" when they mean "fewer". Still, the less times I go on about this, the better!. Brilliant blog, by the way. Your's (hah!) is one of the best I've read.

Anonymous said...

well said

Penny Pincher said...

Just followed you from around my kitchen table comments - like what i seen - so far - but household is rousing so must come back later for a longer look. But first - I feel sorry for the younger generation who rely entirely on PC's word checker - not realising that correct spelling is not the same as using the wrong word in the context. You've given me a reminder of a thought that I've been meaning to work on for ages ... so will be posting a nonsensical blog about this later on this week.

Penny Pincher said...

Just posted my offering on :
http://sidmouth-town.blogspot.com/2007/07/taking-piss-outta-spell-checkers.html
- haven't quite figured out how to perma link yet - sorry not very techie this morning.