I've often been told that I'm too picky when it comes to spelling and grammar.

Thursday 22 September 2011

Loose vs Lose

One of the things that bothers me the most is when someone uses the word "loose" when they mean "lose." The two words have similar meanings, but they're not the same. "To loose" means "to free from bonds or restraint. To release, as from constraint, obligation, or penalty." (from Dictionary.com) "To lose" means "to fail to keep, preserve, or maintain. To suffer the deprivation of." (from Dictionary.com)

Obviously, the reason so many people have such a problem with these words is that 'o' is not often pronounced 'oo.' However, I have never seen someone write "moove" when they meant to write "move." This is probably because "moove" is not a word, while "loose" is.

This mistake is probably one of the most common grammatical/spelling errors on the Internet, and it seems to be getting more and more prevalent. I think when we see errors enough, they start to look right to us, and then we have the tendency to make the same mistakes.

1 comment:

  1. moove...that's my new favorite word. I can imagine a cow singing, "I like to moove it, moove it"

    ReplyDelete