supercede, idiosyncracy

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jun 14, 2005, at 6:31 AM, James Smith wrote:

> I was actually taught "supercede" back in the day, and
> had to be reeducated to the "correct" spelling.  I
> have spoken and read "idiosyncrasy", but I believe
> this is the first time in my life I have written the
> word, and save for having the spelling brought to my
> attention there is at least a 50% probability I would
> have used a non-standard spelling.

this provides the beginning of an answer to John Baker's: " It seems
to me that anyone who is going to use a $2 word like supersede or
idiosyncrasy should take the trouble to learn how to spell it."

the thing is, in my experience the people using "supersede" and
"idiosyncrasy" are just using words familiar to them in academic (or
other technical) talk; they aren't reaching for fancy words.  so it
doesn't occur to them to look the words up.  "supersede" *sounds*
like it belongs with
   precede recede concede accede secede intercede
     (also succeed proceed)
and "idiosyncrasy", with related "idiosyncratic", sounds like it
belongs with all those "-cracy" words with "-cratic" relatives:
   democracy theocracy aristocracy autocracy...
hence the spellings "supercede" and "idiosyncracy".  then, since a
fair number of these spellings will occur in print, they are reinforced.

now, of course, the implied etymologies for "supersede" (as super
+cede) and "idiosyncrasy" (as idio+syn+crac+y) are just wrong.  but
it is way too much to expect that people, even very educated people,
should know the etymologies of the words they hear. (and even if they
do, this knowledge isn't always a reliable guide to spelling.)

the advice to look up words whose spelling you're unsure of is not
very helpful in general, since first you have to *be* unsure, and if
you try to play safe by looking up every infrequent or technical
word, you'll be paralyzed (even if you can figure out *how* to look
up the words; if you think it's "supercede" you'll have something of
a task to find "supersede").

eventually, someone -- someone like me -- will set you straight, and
then you'll at least remember that these words are problematic.  or
you can use a spellchecker, though if your misspellings are
infrequent the spellchecker is likely to be a big nuisance.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)