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

[Tworingsandamicrowave]

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

#sorryLweji

I use it to decide which men to date actually . If they say they are discrete I know they are uneducated and not worth dating. If they say discreet then they are in with a chance - unless they mean discreet because they are hiding an affair from a wife of course.....

I go one step further and use it as part of my friendship vetting process.

It's just a short intelligence test.

Lweji

Can you look up if there is
hashtagwherethehellisthehashtagonaMackeyboard ?

Head nor tail.
< whistles >

Tail or tale?

just don't get aural and oral mixed up

Aural-to do with the ear.
Oral-to do with the mouth.

Yanbu, but while we are still seeing chest of draws or worse chester draws, I suspect it's a lost cause.

Aural isn't pronounced the same as oral, to avoid confusion - aural is usually pronounced as "our-al".

Licence/license, practice/practise are easily resolved if you think of advice/advise, which are pronounced differently. So replace the word in the sentence with advice or advise and you'll be able to work out whether you need the c version (noun) or the s version (the verb).
Of course all that goes out the window when you get to US English.

It's just the principal, isn't it?

Of course all that goes out the window when you get to US English.

The colonies tend to be a pane, and not only in English.

Aural and oral are pronounced the same where I live. I've never heard aural pronounced our-al.

I guess though logically aural would be awe-ral (like audio), whereas oral of oh-ral.

Have we got this far and no one has mentioned bought and brought?
This one annoys me so much. It is astonishing the amount of time you hear bought for brought.

Alot. This makes me cry.

#missingthepointoftheauraloraljoke

Aural isn't pronounced the same as oral, to avoid confusion - aural is usually pronounced as "our-al".

This is incorrect. The two words have the same pronunciation.

My German teacher used to pronounce aural ow-ral, but I think that's because the au is pronounced that way in German, like in Frau

Aural isn't pronounced the same as oral, to avoid confusion - aural is usually pronounced as "our-al".

This is incorrect.

Not in the hospital I worked in, it isn't. It is how it was pronounced.

I'm afraid in our local accent aural and oral sound the same which is why I made the joke
though in medicine its common to pronounce some things to emphasise the distinctions especially when teaching students or dictating letters
eg instead of abduction, saying Ay- Bi- duction so as not to confuse it with Ay-Dee-duction (adduction), since they sound extremely similar but have opposing meanings.

Aural presumably has the same root as auditory, which is definitely pronounced with an oh and not an ow. I suspect the ow pronunciation for aural came about from people trying to distinguish it from oral.

Yes, NotDavidTennant, I assumed that's why they did it.

Although I've never understood why "cervical" is pronounced "ser-VY-kal" instead of "SER-vi-kal" - that makes no sense to me! May be a regional thing as well, but it does grate!

I thought the different pronunciations of cervical depended on whether you were talking about spines or fannys.