No excuse for spelling dilemna "wrong" and other consequences of 21st century living

[evesdream]

No excuse for spelling dilemna "wrong" and other consequences of 21st century living

Very recently I was horrified to learn by way of spell-check that I have been spelling the word "dilemma" wrong ... for years! I didn't believe it at first - I cocked my head "Hah. Spell-check, wrong again. Stupid machine. Silly robot." It was one squiggly red underscore too far. Denial.

I stretched, I yawned, I stripped and went to bathe; enjoyed a languorous steamy shower - but the niggling feeling remained and drew me to the black hole Google.

And there my heart froze as I scanned the emerging hit teasers on display. Shaking my head, my mouth agog, I thought "no....no....but it can't be.."

Somehow, I wasn't the only one.

In any case, I was flabbergasted by the fact that the spelling DILEMNA, which I know and love, appeared in no dictionary that I could find, and ...

Dictionaries often note alternative spellings and sometimes even nonstandard spellings, but "dilemna" doesn't even show up that way.

...the fuck...

The errant spelling dilemna is often seen in common usage. It appears to have been taught in many areas of the United States and all over the world, including ...

My daughter, who lives in the Cayman Islands and works in the media, asked me the other day whether dilemma is ever spelt dilemna...

But lo, fellow silent-N spelling friends, there's a place for us. Like 104,829 people before me, Google led me to http://dilemna.info

It's where we all end up.

Are you one of the possibly millions of people worldwide that were taught to spell Dilemna with an 'N' and have been shocked to discover that you are absolutely 'wrong' because the word has apparently always been spelled with a double 'MM' as 'Dilemma'....?

It was like being in the Twilight Zone. The shocking truth is that even though you might distinctly remember being taught to spell Dilemma with an N, Dilemna has NEVER EVER been spelled with an N - not in any dictionaries going back hundreds of years.

The theories presented on this page are compelling and range from a possible misspelling in a schoolbook many years ago to the parallel "dilemma - dilemna" universe theory.

Alternate universe enthusiast Marden Paul of Toronto put forward a theory several years ago that Dilemna people had all somehow crossed over into this parallel 'Dilemma' spelling universe and that's why they feel physically staggered to discover that not only are they wrong but there's also no trace of an N spelling anywhere in any dictionary in the history of this new universe!

I am still kind of shaken.
Hold me.
How have you been spelling it until today?

 

[lovetoread]

There are no n's in that word!

 

[evesdream]

There are no n's in that word!

Ugh, it still hurts! You cut me to the quick.

 

[Lorilei]

I have never seen it spelled with an N. That's just weird!

 

[Mischka]

There is an entire website, with public comments, devoted to the spelling of this word. I had no idea it engendered such passion.

 

[evesdream]

I have never seen it spelled with an N. That's just weird!

My world is falling down around me.

 

[Conager]

The two that pissed me off until in frustration I just gave up and learned how to spell them were "restaurant" and "exercise." My versions were so far off that even spell-check with its damned red squiggly lines could not even SUGGEST anything close.

Asshole invention spell-check. Ignorance of my ignorance WAS bliss.

Fuckin' spellcheck even suggests both spell-check and spell check. I don't know what fucking one to pick!

 

[evesdream]

Another hapless sojourner

My brain is just about ready to explode. I am 42 years old and had absolutely no idea that dilemna was spelt dilemma. I only came across this as was writing an email and it came up as a spelling error. For the record....I just tested the american lady in my office...she says 'dilemma', and the old lady in my office who is Australian and 60+...she also says 'dilemma'. WTF is going on - I was awesome at spelling in school - I'm from NZ originally so maybe we learnt things differently?

Anyway, thank you for making me feel like I'm not crazy. Now I just think I'm from an alternate universe .

 

[pointless]

The two that pissed me off until in frustration I just gave up and learned how to spell them were "restaurant" and "exercise." My versions were so far off that even spell-check with its damned red squiggly lines could not even SUGGEST anything close.

Asshole invention spell-check. Ignorance of my ignorance WAS bliss.

Fuckin' spellcheck even suggests both spell-check and spell check. I don't know what fucking one to pick!

i almost always fuck up restaurant by simply spelling it restaruant instead. just makes sense to my brain that way.

 

[evesdream]

There is an entire website, with public comments, devoted to the spelling of this word. I had no idea it engendered such passion.

Damnit and Dammit have a similar rage effect, but the "truth" about them isn't nearly as staggering for some reason.

The two that pissed me off until in frustration I just gave up and learned how to spell them were "restaurant" and "exercise." My versions were so far off that even spell-check with its damned red squiggly lines could not even SUGGEST anything close.

Asshole invention spell-check. Ignorance of my ignorance WAS bliss.

Fuckin' spellcheck even suggests both spell-check and spell check. I don't know what fucking one to pick!

I hear ya and I'm surprised they haven't just given up and added Excersize to the OED, like they have for LOL and OMG.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I have lived a long and satisfying life, but have never once seen it spelled with an "n".

But then, I also have a mental block about spelling the word "parallel", so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

Fucking freaks.

^^^ never made it past "classroom championship" in the elementary school spelling bee competition.
:nods:

 

[Que]

You know when you stare at a word too long it starts to look "wrong?" Now BOTH spellings look wrong to me and I cannot remember how I spell it. I wish I had spelled it out before I read the piece.

I cannot remember being befuddled by spell-check when using one of my favorite cliches: "I am on the horns of a dilemma," so I am assuming I spelled it "correctly."

I swear though, that I remember being taught to pronounce it incorrectly to spell it right. "Dil-EM-nah"

The opposite of the way I pronounce February incorrectly as "Feb-yoo-WARY" in common parlance but pronounce it correctly "Feh BREW ary" in my head to spell it right.

 

[evesdream]

I have lived a long and satisfying life, but have never once seen it spelled with an "n".

But then, I also have a mental block about spelling the word "parallel", so take it with a grain of salt.

Fucking freaks.

Come to twist the knife, have ye?

You know when you stare at a word too long it starts to look "wrong?" Now BOTH spellings look wrong to me and I cannot remember how I spell it. I wish I had spelled it out before I read the piece.

I cannot remember being befuddled by spell-check when using one of my favorite cliches: "I am on the horns of a dilemma," so I am assuming I spelled it "correctly."

I swear though, that I remember being taught to pronounce it incorrectly to spell it right. "Dil-EM-nah"

The opposite of the way I pronounce February incorrectly as "Feb-yoo-WARY" in common parlance but pronounce it correctly "Feh BREW ary" in my head to spell it right.

I distinctly remember being told to sound it out phonetically, with an N, in order to spell it correctly.

 

[oggbashan]

Gilbert and Sullivan made sure we Brits knew it was 'dilemma':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH4pm516czE

 

[Conager]

Damnit and Dammit have a similar rage effect, but the "truth" about them isn't nearly as staggering for some reason.




I hear ya and I'm surprised they haven't just given up and added Excersize to the OED, like they have for LOL and OMG.

I was so FAR off I thought it was just me on that. Especially since spellcheck grrrrr (fuck it, I am going to mispell spellcheck from now on in retaliation. I am going to fucking add it to spellcheck that spellcheck is spelled spellcheck)

as I was saying especially since spellcheck did not seem to ever link my mispelling (exactly like yours) to exercise.

The word is ex-sir-size. Unless I am making the s into a z with my drawl you can hear the Z. You can hear the s sound after the "ex."

Goddamnit, I just misspelled 'mispell??' I am leaving it.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Goddamnit, I just misspelled 'mispell??' I am leaving it.

*laughing* I do that too.

 

[Laurel]

There are no n's in that word!

Seriously. It makes no sense it all. It's "dee-lemm-ah", not "dee-lem-nah-ah".

 

[RobDownSouth]

Seriously. It makes no sense it all. It's "dee-lemm-ah", not "dee-lem-nah-ah".

For context here, do you say Poe-Tay-Toe or Poe-Tah-Toe?

 

[Que]

I distinctly remember being told to sound it out phonetically, with an N, in order to spell it correctly.

I don't remember being told to do it but I remember doing it. I was a freak of nature with spelling. My mom was too, she was in the state finals. The district brought in a tutor to go over word lists with the three of us in 6th grade most likely to win. I went out on my first word in the first round but that is another, unrelated sad story.

I don't think I ever got a word wrong in an actual spelling quiz until I started taking some on-line brain teaser ones for fun. Dilemma had to be on at least one of them.

 

[Conager]

For context here, do you say Poe-Tay-Toe or Poe-Tah-Toe?

I see that you studied the Quayle method of finer spellphing.

 

[Laurel]

Actually, the other day I was thinking about how predictive spellcheck has eliminated typos and replaced them with misused/inappropriate words. The other day I meant to type "some people get strange as they age". My smartphone somehow decided I wanted to say ""some chicks get strange as they she". And I didn't correct it because I assumed the autofill was correct - I blindly trusted the technology. The person I texted replied with "?" and then something else, and then "as they she what?" to which I replied "?" because my mistype had scrolled out of view at this point. It took a good four minutes of back and forth before I realized the error.

Since then, I notice this sort of thing all the time. The other day on a true-crime show I was watching, the detectives fingered the husband as the writer of a note confessing to a crime by the fact that in Facebook posts he replaced "will" with "well", as did the writer of the ransom note.

Predictive spellcheck saves us from "I cud pik up tha milke afer werk", but it's no replacement for actual literacy. *pushes horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of my nose with a schoolmarmy frown*

 

[neci]

dilemna looks right, but so does dilemma. aye, eve.

 

[Garnate]

Not to be a bitch, okay maybe a little, but I would've pointed and giggled if I'd ever seen someone spell it with an "n". I don't think I've ever seen that before.