Christmas Spellcheck
There's no denying that this time of year has a language all its own: when in June do you ever thing about figgy pudding, or wassailing, or mistletoe, or tinsel, or Wenceslaus, or even reindeer? All good stuff. These words evoke memories, intimately personal or broadly cultural. Add to the ancient and the Victorian the postmodern Chrismukkah and turducken. Some view it as the evolution of a living language, others as abominations of their mother tongue. I'm not overly concerned about that debate - but I am a stickler for spelling.
My immediate problem is with the word "cavalcade" - from the Latin caballus for horse (think "cavalry"). It's traditional definition is "a procession of riders or horse drawn carriages," but conceding to the age of the horseless carriage, it could also mean "a ceremonial procession or display." This, I presume, is the meaning the people behind Toronto's "Cavalcade of Lights" had in mind. No problem.
The problem revealed itself first in the pronunciation - I've heard more than one radio or television announcer pronounce the word as "calvacade." Forgivable, perhaps (maybe it's the "nuke-yu-lar" of the Christmas season). But last year I even found an mispelled example in the venerable Toronto Star (Dec. 17, 2005, pg. A25).
The Nine Inch Column's spellcheck caught it in this very missive, and when I checked "calvacade" in an online dictionary, it asked me, "Did you mean cavalcade?" Why, yes I did. And I hope the Star did too.
We can't afford to let our guard down on this one. Don't even get me started on Xmas.
My immediate problem is with the word "cavalcade" - from the Latin caballus for horse (think "cavalry"). It's traditional definition is "a procession of riders or horse drawn carriages," but conceding to the age of the horseless carriage, it could also mean "a ceremonial procession or display." This, I presume, is the meaning the people behind Toronto's "Cavalcade of Lights" had in mind. No problem.
The problem revealed itself first in the pronunciation - I've heard more than one radio or television announcer pronounce the word as "calvacade." Forgivable, perhaps (maybe it's the "nuke-yu-lar" of the Christmas season). But last year I even found an mispelled example in the venerable Toronto Star (Dec. 17, 2005, pg. A25).
The Nine Inch Column's spellcheck caught it in this very missive, and when I checked "calvacade" in an online dictionary, it asked me, "Did you mean cavalcade?" Why, yes I did. And I hope the Star did too.
We can't afford to let our guard down on this one. Don't even get me started on Xmas.
posted by Benjamin Thornton at 12:56 p.m.
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