paramat(e)rize

[Arnold Zwicky]

Randy Elzinga fretted on his blog,
   http://idiotstrings.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-spelling-is-already-bad-and-youre.html
about spelling:

   Frequently in my class (which ends tomorrow), I have to take about
parameterizations. Whatever that means. It doesn't matter. This isn't
a math lesson ... Normally, I only need to talk about one of them at a
time. You would think that forming the singular of that word would be
as simple as deleting the s. But according to the spell-checkers of
both Firefox and my text editor, the singular of parameterizations is
parametrization. Look carefully. The 'e' after the first 't' that
appears in the plural is absent in the singular. Really! What's up
with that?

i then noted:

   The OED has an entry only for parameterize (and various
derivatives) -- but, entertainingly, the citations vary between the -
meter- and the -metr- spellings. It seems pretty clear that both
versions are ok.

[but the OED doesn't seem to recognize that.]

arnold

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