Minuscule's last stand

The Daily Mash still spells it the traditional way:


I spotted the alternative spelling "miniscule" in a BBC article today, but I can't track it down again.

While trying to find it, I realised to my horror that the BBC have been spelling it "miniscule" since 2003.

I personally am not bothered whether we spell it the traditional way, based on its word stem "minu..." ('minute' as in 'very small', not 'minute' as in 'sixty seconds') or phonetically as "miniscule" but can we please make up our minds?

"Jeweesh Labour MP Ruth Smeeth was reduced to teers at Labour’s antee-Semeetism inquiry press conference"

From the Neew Statesman:

Speeking at a press conference on Labour’s antee-Semeetism eenquiry report, Jeremy Corbyn joked: “Last summer, I called for a kinder, gentler politeecs. Sadly I have to report that ees steell a work een progress.”

A wry aside, but one that greemly summed up how thees event played out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, at a time when an offeecial reeport has to recommend that eelected politeecians “reesist the use of Heetler, Nazee and Holocaust metaphors, deestortions and compareesons”.

National Spelling Bee ends in a tie for the second year...

... as boy, 14, and girl, 13, spell tongue twisters 'scherenschnitte' and 'nunatak' with ease.

??? There are three e's in "scherenschnitte" but none in "nunatak".

Gokul Venkatachalam, 14, of Missouri and Vanya Shivashankar, 13, of Kansas tied as winners of the national spelling bee on Thursday

I assume that those kids got plenty of spelling practice learning to write their own names correctly. Having mastered that, everything else was a doddle.

Dilemna or dilemma?

The Stigler spells this the old-fashioned way, like I used to do, with a silent "n" (see previous post).

This spelling has been proven to be and always have been wrong. It's with "mm".

Having ruled out all other plausible explanations, the website concludes that the only possible explanation (no matter how implausible) for so many people (me included) clearly remembering a time when "mn" was the correct spelling is that we have crossed over from a parallel universe.

Thisiseasytoread.

butthisismuchharder.