Friday's English Language Lesson #6**
Jul. 9th, 2004 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ajvaTo shore up interest in my little series of lexical vignettes, I shall henceforth offer a small prize for the first person to spot a typo in an installment. Alas, this will not apply retrospectively, although I have left my howler of a fortnight ago unedited as it is amusing.
The prize will be an item of fruit of the winner's choice, decorated in a whimsical style of my choosing.
Anyway, to the business at hand - and briefly, today, as this one should be so damnably easy to grasp that even a lemon on a stick could manage it.
Are you interested to find out what it is? Well, perhaps not. Perhaps you're uninterested. What you won't fucking be is DISinterested. After all, my postings here are pretty one-sided so it doesn't give you much of a chance to be impartial.
Anne's top tip:
uninterested = not interested
disinterested = impartial
An uninterested referee would make for a chaotic game of football. A disinterested one, though, is just what you need.
If you use "disinterested" for "uninterested" in my presence, and I suspect you have read this, I will think you very stupid indeed.
Sleep tight.
The prize will be an item of fruit of the winner's choice, decorated in a whimsical style of my choosing.
Anyway, to the business at hand - and briefly, today, as this one should be so damnably easy to grasp that even a lemon on a stick could manage it.
Are you interested to find out what it is? Well, perhaps not. Perhaps you're uninterested. What you won't fucking be is DISinterested. After all, my postings here are pretty one-sided so it doesn't give you much of a chance to be impartial.
Anne's top tip:
uninterested = not interested
disinterested = impartial
An uninterested referee would make for a chaotic game of football. A disinterested one, though, is just what you need.
If you use "disinterested" for "uninterested" in my presence, and I suspect you have read this, I will think you very stupid indeed.
Sleep tight.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 03:13 am (UTC)It is, of course, a common misspelling of the word which I have reproduced in bold type below.
I shall henceforth offer a small prize for the first person to spot a typo in an installment.
'Instalment' has but one 'l'.
Later,
J
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 04:28 am (UTC)Better luck next time.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-11 08:12 am (UTC)According to Collins English Dictionary 2000 edition:
instalment, or U.S. installment, [...] 2 a portion of something that is issued, broadcast, or published in parts, such as a serial in a magazine.
I wish you greater felicity with your subsequent sally.
J