The hoard speaks -- or writes?

[Charles Doyle]

Hoard, horde, whored, hoed--whatever. OK, I confess: I'm a bad speller!

Back when I was studying mathematics at the University of Texas in the 1960s, my aged mentor, Robert Lee Moore (inventor of what's now called topology; he called it point-set theory) used to proclaim that he'd known only one good mathematician who was also a proficient calculator, and that individual was ashamed of the fact.

I sometimes try to console myself by imagining that a language scholar who spells badly is analogous to a mathematician who calculates poorly--but I know that's a false analogy.

I wish somebody in the field of biolinguistics would just invent a chemotherapy for the condition. It would have to work more effectively than all these decades' worth of worn-out dictionaries have . . . .

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 08:47:53 -0400
>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>
>At 5/8/2007 08:30 AM, Charles Doyle wrote:

>>Here's another head-scratcher:
>>
>>Yesterday I watched the fine motion picture _The Scorpion King_ (2002), a saga of multiethnic barbarians in the remote past (at least one group referes to itself solemnly as "the hoard"), somewhere in the Middle East. Near the beginning the protagonist (played by that gifted thespian The Rock), pledges--jointly with two confederates--the destruction of an adversary: "As long as one of us lives, he will die."

>
>Yes indeed.  Did the movie have subtitles (a la Gibson)?  Or did it show the viewer the tablet of their commandments, where they misspelled themselves as "hoard"?  (Sorry, Charlie, I don't mean to pick on you; we all mistype -- or are mis-spell-corrected.)
>
>Actually, I like "As long as one of us lives, he will die" -- a strong statement.  And if both of us die, he will die too.
>
>Joel

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