5 ms·
The urgency in that correction slip is amusing (Imperative! Urgent! A ghost word!), considering how inconsequential of a mistake it is. What's the absolute wor
by superhuzza 6y ago
The urgency in that correction slip is amusing (Imperative! Urgent! A ghost word!), considering how inconsequential of a mistake it is.
What's the absolute worst case caused by a ghost word like dord - someone accidentally uses it in a paper?
- chansiky 6y agoWood floats and so do ducks. So logically if the dord of the duck equals the dord of the girl then the girl must be a witch. `checks dords of both duck and girl`. "She's a witch!" -- excerpt from "A More Scientific Guide to Witch Hunts".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 082349872349872 6y agothat it might become perfectly cromulent?
- Nasrudith 6y agoIt is like a biological mutation, usually nothing. It could result in a massive misinterpretation of prior documents due to a shift in meaning and not understanding the lack of shift in context. Not very predictable but often hillarious like say Moses being depicted as horned. It probably involves very long timelines even with cultural acceleration. Imagine "dord" caught on as a synonym for density in all its senses including stupidity. Now imagine one document of a riot caused after accidentally ordering a squad to shoot when calling out about a fire. A poorly chosen "word" causing death gets corrupted to a misplaced "dord" and it gets taken as caused by one idiot who shouldn't have been chosen to lead (also accurate but not intended). A mention of a D or d in the chemical context taken as a stealth insult or joke like 1D10T Error.
- meowface 6y agoApparently they agreed with you, because it was fixed 8 years after that note described how urgent it was.
- reaperducer 6y agoThe urgency in that correction slip is amusing (Imperative! Urgent! A ghost word!), considering how inconsequential of a mistake it is. For some people everything is urgent. Everything. It's part of the reason that web pages because so unusable. Every single lower middle manager thinks their change is the most important thing in the world.
- tom_ 6y agoPerhaps wider events in the period 1940-7 pushed this urgent, imperative issue further down the priority list than might otherwise have been the case.
- microtherion 6y agoThere is a related story where a real, but misunderstood four letter word made its way into a well known poem: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001814.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001814.h...
- alxmdev 6y agoPut yourself in the editor's shoes, caring for the dictionary is your life's work. Aside from misspellings, grammatical or factual errors, and typography issues, this is the other kind of bug that can rear its ugly head. Not to mention that you can't issue patches to copies that already shipped :-)
- mminer237 6y agoProbably someone feeling pretty strilpy.
- sfgweilr4f 6y agoWell its a fake word. Kind of important. Probably as important to remedy as a misspelt word. Not so good for a dictionary.