"Forcing" for "divorcing?"

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Mon Nov 26 13:37:54 UTC 2007


Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
> >From: Kate Daly <kdaly973 at VERIZON.NET>
> >
> >>"I have separated and will be forcing from my abusive husband."
> >
> >WordPerfect and Word both offer forcing as a correction for the typo fivorcing. Since the d
> >and f are next to each other on a standard keyboard, it's probably an auto-corrected typo.
> >Given the topic of her post, I think she can be excused for not checking her work more carefully.
>
> One of the many, many reasons I preferred WordPerfect to MSWord is that every time I typed
> the word "folksong," WP would tell me I probably meant to say "filching."

For many more examples of this ilk, see:

http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/spellchecker/


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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