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> This puts the US government into a loose / loose position. You might even call it... a tight spot
by daemonologist 6mo ago
> This puts the US government into a loose / loose position.
You might even call it... a tight spot
- iugtmkbdfil834 6mo agoOk. This is was either brilliant or I did not wake up yet.
- garbawarb 6mo agoSide note, how did the word "lose" become "loose"? I've seen this so many times on HN.
- clark_dent 6mo agoIt didn't, but the advent of spellcheck and autocorrect has made everyone completely give up on proper grammar or word selection as long as no squiggly line appears.
- latexr 6mo agoMaybe that’s part of it, but I’ve also noticed autocorrect on my devices often correcting incorrectly. As in, I type the word correctly and it decides “oh, surely you meant this other similarly spelled word” and changes it. Sometimes I don’t notice until after sending the message.
- abustamam 6mo agoI use MS SwiftKey on my android phone and it will often autocorrect my correctly spelled, correctly used, words, to words that probably don't exist in any language (recently it corrected "blow" to "blpw"). I have French installed on my keyboard as well so sometimes it will randomly correct English words to French words (inconsistently, but at least they're words), but blpw is not a word in either of those languages. Unfortunately, I think me typing blpw three times has officially added it to my dictionary :)
- lloeki 6mo agoDon't worry it's no better on iOS, where I too have a English+French QWERTY setup, and where it too frequently decides to "helpfully" correct using an English dictionary several words into a unambiguously French sentence; or the other way around depending on wind direction and age of the captain. Even more damning is that there seems to be three independent layers to the feature ("three suggestions" area above keyboard, autocorrect-as-you-type, correction popup as you touch a word) and neither agree with each other about which language it should be using.
- skirmish 6mo agoNow LLMs have seen "blpw" several times and will start using it in their responses to their users. Next: Oxford dictionary word of the year 2026: "blpw".
- mitthrowaway2 6mo ago[dead]
- Zambyte 6mo agoThat defiantly has something to do with it
- ratg13 6mo agoCould also be non-native speakers .. Even as a former grammar nazi, now that English isn't my daily driver language I find myself making basic mistakes .. (two, too, to / its, it's / etc.)
- abustamam 6mo agoHaving grown up around immigrants and other folks who learned English as a second language, I always attributed "loose" for being a signal that perhaps English isn't the writer's first language. I think what you say is partly true too, but it's not a new phenomenon. Some examples - awful used to mean "awe-inspiring" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/awful https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/awful - you used to be the plural/formal second person pronoun with thou being the informal form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You - prior to the printing press English didn't have any standardized spelling at all https://www.dictionary.com/articles/printing-press-frozen-spelling https://www.dictionary.com/articles/printing-press-frozen-sp... Language evolves. The English we learned in grammar school is likely not going to be the same English our kids or grandkids learn. At the end of the day, written communication has a single purpose — to communicate. If I can understand what the author is trying to say, then the author achieved their goal. That being said, I wish my mom did use spell check or autocorrect because her messages often require a degree in linguistics to decipher, but because of typos, not spelling. Maybe she'll influence the next evolution in typed communication :) Edit - formatting
- ses1984 6mo agoI’m guessing most cases of loose/lose switch happen when English isn’t someone’s first language.
- theowaway213456 6mo agoIn my experience, this mistake happens all the time for native English speakers born in the US.
- garbawarb 6mo agoIndeed, but other languages have been around forever whereas I've seen this particular misspelling a ton in the last year and rarely before that.
- ses1984 6mo agoI haven’t noticed the same trend.
- garbawarb 6mo agoSearch the word "loose" in recent HN comments, it's become quite common. > all he'll breaks loose (a doubly amusing one): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835177 > So Ukraine should not necessary win, it should mainly bleed Russia and not loose. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47827489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47827489 > They are de-risking by spending more, which is a loose-loose for the customers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47826823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47826823 Plus this thread, and that's just in the last 24 hours!
- ses1984 6mo agoYou may be completely right, but these examples are pretty meaningless without context, like what is the rate of lose/loose confusion per x words over time.
- mpyne 6mo ago
- saidnooneever 6mo agopeople are from many places
- gambiting 6mo agoIn all of those places loose means something that isn't tight and lose something that you've displaced. I think it would be correct to say people display varying command of the English language, which to me has never been a problem - as long as I can understand what you mean, it's all fine.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Aerroon 6mo agoBecause your pronounce them backwards. "Loose" is a short word that ends sharply, but "lose" is a long word that slowly peters out. They should be the other way around imo.
- evanjrowley 6mo agoNow that you frame it that way, I'm surprised "lose" didn't evolve to be pronounced like "Lowe's"
- theowaway213456 6mo agoIf we're allowed to make modifications here then it should really be lose => looze and loose => luce
- irishcoffee 6mo agoI think that would make "loosely" not work out. Lucely/lucly catch the hard C there. I'm good with loozing/loozer, looks kind of funny though.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- JackFr 6mo agoI always assume not everyone is an English speaker and let it go.
- maebert 6mo agoHa. Non-native speaker here although you wouldn’t be able to tell what talking to me, until you hear me confuse when to use this vs that, and lose vs loose. Some things my brain just refuses to remember.
- abustamam 6mo agoNative English speaker here and my linguist wife constantly has to remind me that I use many propositions incorrectly, because my parents were non-native speakers and in their native language (Behasa Melayu), those propositions were the same words. For some reason I can't think of those propositions at the moment, but it's definitely prevalent when I'm speaking French and use the wrong proposition, only because I'd have used the wrong proposition in English.
- unbalancedevh 6mo agoUnderstandable. Most wives don't like it when their husbands proposition others.
- verisimi 6mo agoIt's fine, nothing to see. Just focus on the intended meaning not the underlying delivery. Mere words don't really impact communication. Right?
- garbawarb 6mo agou r crct
- duckmysick 6mo agoIt doesn't make sense to have "lose" pronounced as it is. We have rose, pose, dose, nose all pronounced with ō. And then you have lose pronounced as loo͞z. It feels natural to put two O's in there when you write it.
- freehorse 6mo agoEnglish is not a rules-based language, esp wrt pronunciation. Words can be pronounced as anything.
- saganus 6mo agoWhen I discovered the pronunciation of Houston, TX and Houston, NY... my mind was blown
- abustamam 6mo agoThis is true, but if the goal is to be understood, it's in the speaker's best interest to pronounce words in a way they'll best be understood. So I think even if the language itself lacks formal rules, we as a society of communicators should align on some loose set of rules.
- freehorse 6mo agoI am at a loss; should we change the way “lose” is pronounced or the way it is written? I feel like if we just add an “o”, connections with other derivative words may be lost or those need to change too. Also, the “s” in “loose” (the actual word) should be pronounced as “z” sound, as it lies between 2 vowels. Should we also change that? Should we change the way it is pronounced or the way it is written? Maybe if we change this to “loosse” we can free space for “lose” to add an “o”?
- abustamam 6mo agoAs much as I'd like it to be the case, there's too much to unlearn, and I think this would be Pandoras box. Too many weird words and spellings to change. This language comedian does a bunch of humorous sketches about how many languages make no sense! But in particular, this video tackles false "rhymes" like allow and shallow. https://youtube.com/shorts/6ZE5zMnBwVc?si=gBiwe9QjT-Co-MVu https://youtube.com/shorts/6ZE5zMnBwVc?si=gBiwe9QjT-Co-MVu
- hosel 6mo agoI try to let it go, but this is my pet peeve.
- veidr 6mo agoExactly the same way that the `cancelled` of my youth became `canceled`. By being misspelled so often that the misspelling won. In this case, it's not clear who wins yet — "lose" may loose, or mount a comeback, resulting in "loose" being the one to lose.
- BeetleB 6mo agoI've said it a couple times in the past: That's so cringe!
- ternaryoperator 6mo agoAnd let’s not get started on it’s vs. its-—a distinction that now seems irretrievably nerfed
- renegade-otter 6mo agoThis is not the first time Pete Hegseth charged into a bar, started swinging his fists and screaming "don't you know who my father is", only to find his junk in a vise with no graceful way get it out.
- abustamam 6mo agoFor some reason I thought you were doing a setup for a joke... "The President of the US, the Secretary of Defense, Iranian Prime Minister walk into a bar..."
- mghackerlady 6mo agoHegseth gets drunk, Mojtaba preaches the benefits of abstaining from alcohol, and Trump trips because he didn't see the bar