Words I Cannot Spell, #17
Jeapordize Jeopordize Jeopardize.
I rarely make use of Wordperfect’s little “is this the word you’re looking for?” box, but man, I need it for that one. Every time.
0 Responses to “Words I Cannot Spell, #17”
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kendokamel
To be honest, the only reason I can spell that word is because I got a Jeopardy! pen after I tried out for the game of the same name, one year. It was a good pen, and it lasted me about two years.
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akirlu
Would it help to know that it’s just like leopardize, only with a ‘j’? Or is that too silly? ‘Course, now I wonder what sort of beast a jeopard would be. In Swedish and possibly German, it’s a cheetah, only it’s spelled with a ‘g’. Which means, I suppose, that etymologists ought to consider the possibility that to jeopardize someone means putting them in front of a cheetah.
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Marie Brennan
I wholeheartedly support this etymology.
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akirlu
It has plausibility on its side, dunnit?
Oh, by the bye, just spotted your request for introductions. I did just recently add you to my FL, having hit a saturation point of seeing you make interesting or useful points in the comments to other people on my FL. I don’t think we have met in person (though conventions being what they are, anything is possible) and I know I have not yet had the pleasure of reading your fiction. On the other hand, as is so often the case, I think we are probably not more than one intermediate handshake apart.
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Marie Brennan
Welcome, and thanks for the introduction. 🙂
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akirlu
Except I seem to have managed not to say much about myself. Typical. I really hate writing autobiographical sketches. Anyway, I’m a long time SF fan, reader, and occasional writer, when I’m not distracted into chasing something shiny down a rabbit hole somewhere. Oh, look! A leaf!
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Marie Brennan
Oh, I don’t demand a biographical sketch. In Internet terms, how you came to find me is often more relevant anyway. 🙂
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chrisondra
I do strange little things to remember how to spell words like that. For jeopardize, I’d probably be like “it doesn’t repeat a vowel until the end” since you know the first and last vowels are e. Abdomen was one of my bane words until I learned it doesn’t repeat any vowels (I used to misspell it abdoman all the time.)
Conscious, the s and c in the middle are on opposite sides from each other as the C and s at the beginning and end.
Versatile, which has been one of my recent banes, only repeats the e.
Spelling can be such a pain.
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Marie Brennan
I’m more likely to do it by deliberately mispronouncing the word: “friend” was “fry-end” in my head for years in elementary school, and this one will be jee-oh-PARD-ize until I get it right.
It also helps that I have a strong background in Latin; I’m not likely to get “conscious” wrong so long as I remember it’s based on the root verb scire. But that only works on words for which I know the roots.
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chrisondra
::grins:: Jee-oh-pard-ize. That’s awesome. I’m sure I did that in grade school. My new method is strange and complicated, but it works for me, anyway! Hey, after talking about the word this much, you just might never spell it wrong again!
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