Jan. 13th, 2005

eruthros: Delenn from Babylon 5 with a startled expression and the text "omg!" (BtVS cheeseman nonsense)
I was talking about this with [livejournal.com profile] friede earlier, and we couldn't think of the word for this, if one exists.

See, there's this thing people do when typing where somewhere between brain and fingers you substitute a not-quite-homonym.

Like today, when I was trying to type "and soon: croissants!" and actually typed "and sound: croissants!" and had to go back and change it. And I typed "I half hard cider" instead of "I have hard cider." And most recently, instead of "what day is your exam?" I typed "what does your exam?" The interesting thing being that the words can be completely different in spelling and in finger position (that is, they're not typos in the pure sense) and they have a completely different meaning.

And it's most frequent with short (one-syllable) commonly-used words -- maybe because you're thinking carefully about spelling and things when using words like "floccinaucinihilipilificator," and besides, what sounds like floccinaucinihilipilificator? Now I want to do a bio-psych study to see what, exactly, is going on there, brain-wise.

If no word exists for this, I'm inventing one out of a Latinate base and getting in the OED.

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eruthros: Delenn from Babylon 5 with a startled expression and the text "omg!" (Default)
eruthros

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