[Ads-l] YouTubery: "I guess you never heard of a _wheelbarrel_."

[Laurence Horn]

> On Apr 19, 2019, at 10:36 AM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 10:31:59AM -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>> On Apr 19, 2019, at 4:15 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I guess that I'm not the only person to have interpreted "wheelbarrow" as
>>> "wheelbarrel." But I didn't continue to think that after I learned to read.
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> -Wilson
>> 
>> As I’ve mentioned on the list, my wife (from Connecticut) regularly refers to ours as a “wheelbarrel”, although she has learned to read and does so quite often.  The web indicates she’s not alone.
>> 
> 
> I was asked about this when I was doing the Word of the Day site at Random House, so many years ago:
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20011214023332/http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19960725
> 

'The only thing you can do to avoid such problems is education: make sure that people, whether they're your friends with "wheelbarrel" or the marketing department of a fancy cosmetics company with “smooth[e]”, know what the truth is. They'll thank you for it.’

…or not

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