| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Saturday 23 March 2002: |
| How many words would you misspell in this sentence? (Courtesy of the CoV's Hermit.) Outside a cemetery, an embarrassed oculist and a harassed cobbler sat picnicking on desiccated coconut whilst gazing with unparalleled ecstasy at the exquisite sacrilegious symmetry of a passing lady's ankle. [00:55] |
| IICV |
| Hah! I saw that! It used to be whist, as opposed to the whilst it is now. You cheater. |
| RavenBlack |
| Blame Hermit. Or blame me for copy-and-pasting his words and forgetting to correct the typo I knew was there. Obviously it's not a spelling mistake though - anyone who can spell sacrilegious can spell whilst. |
| RavenBlack |
| Incidentally, the answer, for me, was one - I would have got desiccated wrong. Or, in my world, I would have got it right and the dictionary would have got it wrong. Dessicated is a far more correct-looking spelling. |
| IICV |
| It's picnicking for me... The word needs two 'k's, damit! And Whist is a word... The sentence was originally correct from a purely "is this spelled right" point of view. It would actually have been grammatically correct if there was an edible coconut version of Whist. Unfortunately, Whist is a card game (similar to Bridge) so a comestible version is unlikely. But still, whilst was the intent, so I'm right anyway. |
| Tom |
| Perhaps with a little punctuation "whist" would become correct, although not as a card game. Put commas before and after the "whist" that has become "whilst", and our repairers of (respectively) eye balls and shoes could simply become mute for the duration of the word to make everything alright, so long as they didn't object to their actions being dictated by Milton and Spenser and similar disreputable characters. Actually, you probably don't need the commas at all if you are being overly poetic, which would make the sentence correct in its original appearance. Unless, of course, it's a *peach* cobbler (I always hoped this was some sort of drink until I found out that sometimes it is) we're talking about, in which case the coconut would come in handy. The cobbler is therefore harassed (hair arsed?) by the oculist, who is rather embarassed (Mmmmm.... bare arsed?) to be consuming his friend. The rest of the sentence is obviously a coded reference to wild gay sex. I think we all know what a "lady's ankle" really is. Oh, I expect I would have got lost in the cemetAry, so really shouldn't comment further. |
| Kevan |
| Difficult to misspell words in a sentence you're reading; I think I'd get all but desiccated. But only because it's followed by "coconut"; for some strange reason "desiccated corpse" is obviously correct, but "desiccated coconut" looks wrong. Maybe I get through more jars of the former than the latter. |
| Tom |
| Ah. That's interesting. Kevan's comment was actually posted before my own, I think, and yet I appear first. This is just a guess based on the fact that Kevan's comment appeared to me immediately upon posting my own, without a page reload, combined with a load of the main RavenBlog page sans comments, but with number of comments posted in another browser window before I realised I already had a comment going. Seems likely that Kevan actually posted before me, but I get listed first because I opened the comments posting page earlier. How do you do that then? Doesn't seem to be a cookie thing (though it may be, if you're doing some interesting stuff using some guy in New York as a go between and some peculiar IP addresses). Doesn't seem to be related to the stamp=xxx, which is what I thought until I discovered stamp=0, stamp=984265483574032174134, and friends. Stamp=1 brought me to the disturbing realisation that it is apparently impossible to set a *nix machine to the date of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Aargh! They were using Windows?! Um. Is there a medal of some sort for discovering such stamp=xxx things, beyond the call of duty and so forth? I could really use it to melt down. (Rather impressed actually, that you thought of such contingencies). |
| RavenBlack |
| Hm, I think Kevan is right about the desiccated - it does look better spelt that way for corpses, but not for coconuts. The stamps, Tom, are primarily to prevent double-posts from people clicking submit twice, or refresh, or suchlike. Oh yes, and I neglected to mention that while I would spell only one word incorrectly, I would have typed several others wrongly and had to go back and correct them. Conveniently, all the others look wrong, when spelt wrong. |
| Eperdu |
| One - also 'desiccated', in total honesty. I'd use two 's' and possibly deliberate over how many 'c' there are, probably leading to me going and looking up the correct spelling. I think probably because my accent is such that I'd say "DES-SIH-ca-ted" with a lot of empthasis on "DESS". Which would make me sound stupid, I already know. But technically, also 'oculist'. Since I don't know what that means *grin* and indeed, don't recall seeing it before. |
| Yset |
| I'd have come unstuck on 'oculist': if it is 'occultist' then 'occulist' looks right also. Or they both look wrong. Or whatever ... |
| Stavrogin |
| I'd get at least one wrong - "embarrassed", which in my world would be spelt right with only one "r". Instead I'd have no problems on the "desiccated" thing. Funny! |