The mysteries of paintballing

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Now appearing on Language Log...

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003629.html

Comments welcome.

On 10/1/06, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> At 9/30/2006 08:52 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> >Yes, this looks like a spellchecker artifact. Most likely the
> >misspelling was "dentified" -- MS Word suggests "identified",
> >"dandified", and "denitrified". Another word processing program might
> >rank "denitrified" first.
> >
> >By the way, this has been dubbed "the Cupertino effect" by European
> >Union translators:
> >
> >http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002911.html
>
> Amusing; thanks, Ben.  So, remembering the earlier "orthodentist"
> discussion, I tried Word on "orthodentist" and
> "orthodentify|fied".  Quel disappointment.

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