Pedants' corner: discreet and discrete are not interchangeable

[FuzzyPuffling]

Several times today on MN I have seen "discrete" being used instead of "discreet".

Different words, different meanings. Very irritating.

He probably doesn't struggle with complement either.

No, he does not!

But this is the boy who said to a classmate in the first week of secondary school during a group project, 'You can't write that, it's a double superlative!'. 🤣. I think he narrowly avoided a punch on the nose! The teacher squinted her eyes & was thinking 'Tell me your mother's an English teacher without telling me she's an English teacher'. 🫣😆

I worked in technology companies for many years and (informally) had the job of proofreading important documents. The people I worked with were mostly incredibly bright techies and most of them were crap spellers. They were superb at developing highly innovative technology but not good at writing. A few of them were though.

But not continuously.

damn… that was meant to be into response to the post this one quoted. Joke spoilt:
He uses discrete constantly but not continuously.

You can be as pedantic as you like 😊

Thanks for the pointers; whether I remember them or not depends on the state of the weather and the capacity of my brain's hard drive.

No America can’t be blamed. To get into graduate school in the USA you need a high score in English and Maths. I once saw vocabulary flash cards for preparing for the English exam and discrete was one of the words. I first heard of it then!