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To want people to know the difference between discrete and discreet?

188 replies

Tworingsandamicrowave · 16/08/2016 10:53

Have noticed it a few times recently, when 'discrete' has been used in the wrong context and it makes me cross.

OP posts:
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NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:06

Feck, autocorrect corrected me!

Not "I saw a councillor for marital problems"

NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:08

gingham

Yes, shop signs with spelling mistakes. WTF. Even if the person who commissioned the sign can't spell, I'd have thought the key skill-set for a sign-writer would be:

1)Good spelling
2)Making signs
3)Putting them up

ShotgunNotDoingThePans · 16/08/2016 17:12

Delicate you can 'prefer' your version, but you're clearly not a true pedant if you don't enjoy vocalising the correct grammatical construction!

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 16/08/2016 17:12

People are always asking for 'advise' on another forum I visit. It irritates the bejasus out of me, but then I invariably feel bad since they're nearly all at their wits' end trying to cope with someone with dementia.

toadgirl · 16/08/2016 17:14

Have you seen those misspelled cakes?

To want people to know the difference between discrete and discreet?
Amelie10 · 16/08/2016 17:14

I've left a group where everyone posts 'receipts' (recipes) that are 'Devine' (divine).
Couldn't take the thick idiots spelling this as if it was correct.

toadgirl · 16/08/2016 17:16

The receipts/recipes thing is an interesting one. I recently discovered the following information after watching an older person in the US keep referring to "receipts" where I would have assumed she meant to say "recipes". It still jars though!

Receipt is an old form that means the same as recipe. Both derive from Latin recipere, to receive or take. Receipt was first used in medieval English as a formula or prescription for a medicinal preparation (Chaucer is the first known user, in the Canterbury Tales of about 1386). The sense of “a written statement saying that money or goods have been received” only arrived at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The apothecary's symbol for 'receipe', a capital letter R with a bar through the leg
Recipe is the imperative, “take!”, from the same Latin verb. It was traditionally the first word in a prescription, heading the list of ingredients. This was often abbreviated to a letter R with a bar through the leg, a form that still sometimes appears on modern prescription forms. Recipe has been used alongside receipt since the eighteenth century in the sense of cookery instructions, gradually replacing it over time. At the time the newspaper report was written, 1895, receipt was still common.
It’s by no means entirely defunct even today. It is often — but by no means always — a deliberate archaism. John Wilson noted, “It was used on British television, up to the late 1990s, on the programme Two Fat Ladies, featuring Clarissa Dickson Wright and the late Jennifer Paterson, who invariably spoke of receipts. She said this with (metaphorical) relish and I feel sure she did it for effect as a conscious statement of her background and style.”
But many other subscribers have told me that it has survived until recently in parts of the English-speaking world, especially the United States. Douglas G Wilson confirms this: “I heard it routinely in the 1960s, though only from older people. The Dictionary of American Regional English seems to suggest that it became more-or-less obsolete around 1960. William and Mary Morris wrote in their column Words, Wit, and Wisdom in 1970, ‘Throughout New England and in rural areas in many other parts of the country, you will still hear receipt more often than recipe.’ So at least the Morrises thought it was still very widely current in 1970.”

www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rec1.htm

NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:19

toadgirl

That's really interesting. I had no idea!

NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:22

I found out only a few months ago that I have been spelling the verb thank you wrong for about 40 years. No idea. Am clever, well-educated, got degrees, am quite old. Somehow it passed me by. I have been writing "thank you for your gift" on cards and had people thinking I am stoopid all this time

nolly3 · 16/08/2016 17:22

Disinterested
Uninterested

Aaarrrgggghhhhh

NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:23

Feck autocorrect!

I have been writing "thank you for your gift"

NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:23

again

thankyou

IwannaSnorlax · 16/08/2016 17:29

Yoda Confused - your posts have completely confused me?

NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:31

Iwanna

I am confused too. Grin

I will try again

When you write to thank someone for a gift, you say "Thank you for the gift" not (as I was writing) thankyou for the gift.

Thankyou is a noun.

CafeCremeMerci · 16/08/2016 17:32

Pedants Corner.

NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:33

THANK YOU

Fallstar · 16/08/2016 17:34

I think that with a lot of these, it's context.

If people are typing fast on a forum or sending a text, errors happen in a way they wouldn't in other situations.

The discrete/discreet thing has only ever really annoyed me when an editor I knew kept doing it. Now that's poor...

Arkhamasylum · 16/08/2016 17:34

I'm being dense, clearly, but could someone help me out?

Quite early on in this thread, LurkingHusband referred to 'spearchuckers'. No-one has mentioned this, which seems odd on a thread about the meaning of words.

Was this a mistake, Lurking, or have I completely missed some kind of in-joke where that word is even remotely acceptable?

augustusdecimus · 16/08/2016 17:35

Lweji

Actually I deliberately left the spaces because I didn't want bold! I was doing the internet "action" thing that mumsnet likes to make very difficult.

smirks

raises middle finger

Fallstar · 16/08/2016 17:37

I think it was a quip about spellcheckers. At least, I hope so - otherwise I've missed it, too.

BathshuaSpooner · 16/08/2016 17:37

I am also shocked at the use of "spearchuckers". The term is so offensive, unless I have also missed something too...

Arkhamasylum · 16/08/2016 17:38

Ah, ok, spellcheckers.

Still, though Shock

NotYoda · 16/08/2016 17:39

Arkam

I had not heard of that term. Did he mean spellcheckers?

I hope so

DuvetCaterpillar · 16/08/2016 17:42

Another ex-scientist lamenting the 'discrete / discreet' confusion, glad it's not just me.

That said, I fondly remember a fellow student once wrongly defining discrete data as 'results that you don't show to anyone else' Grin

Buzzardbird · 16/08/2016 17:44

The 'spearchuckers' thing bothered me too. If Lurking was using his phone and it auto-incorrected to that word, it would usually mean it's a word that he uses on his phone. Either way, it doesn't look good, does it?

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