A few years ago, we got a new lock on our office recycle bin and our department secretary gave me a key with a tag, which she had written “recycle bind” with a black sharpie. I had to giggle. She and I are good friends and I immediately told her that the word was actually “bin”. She looked extremely puzzled and checked the dictionary to make sure I was right.
She then said she couldn’t believe that she’d gone thru 50 years of life believing that “bind” was spelled “bin”.
Have you ever legitimately thought you were spelling a word correctly, only to find out years later that you were wrong?
Pabulum. I’d been spelling it pablum for a very long time.
But the tops in this category definitely has to be “definately.” It’s staggering to me how often I see this word misspelled, including on this very board.
I only learned in the past week or two that inditement is not a word, and the correct spelling is “indictment” (which I have been pronouncing wrong for years).
Turns out there’s no word “turrent”, but it’s “turret”. What with the amount of tank- and castle-related games and assorted geekery I’ve been through, I must have read that word tens of thousands of times, mentally seeing the ‘n’ every time. Good thing I never had to write it for a work-related thing.
If you discovered the pabulum spelling a few days ago on the SDMB, I’m right there with you. But I’d say pablum is correct, or else they’re both acceptable. The original Latin word is pabulum, and the cereal is called Pablum after the Latin word. It seems to me that the common usage today refers to the cereal.
Minuscule. My spelling is nearly perfect (really–once I learn to spell a word, I don’t mess it up again unless it’s a typo), but for years I was convinced that it was “miniscule,” which actually makes a lot of sense. Now that I know better, I don’t do that anymore. But I still prefer the misspelled version.
ETA: I never knew that about “rigmarole!” I thought it was “rigamarole” too! See, now, I have learned something today!
Oh! Just thought of another one: Chaise longue. I spelled it “chaise lounge” (and pronounced it that way too) for ages before I found out it was wrong.
I’ve been spelling ‘longevity’ as ‘longetivity’ my whole life. Not that I’ve written it many times, mind you. And I don’t think I’ve ever actually spoken it until I was on a conference call with another attorney a couple years ago and I said it as I had written it, as ‘longetivity’. He paused, and I paused, and thought to myself “that doesn’t sound right… d’oh”.
I was quite old when I realized that *canvas *and *canvass *are two different words. I don’t know why I never noticed. I spelled *surreptitious surrepititious *for far too long, also.
Whoah, you had me scared for a moment. I thought “Oh no, I was sure it was an I not an A!” I didn’t even notice you had spelled it correctly in the same sentence. Fortunately I’ve been doing it right.
Amphitheater. Apparently it has an “h” where I thought it had an “l”. I had to look it up several times in several dictionaries to really believe it.
In my defense, “Amplitheater” makes sense. It’s a theater that is shaped to naturally amplify the words spoken on stage.
Also, for a long time I believed that “bagel” was OK to pronounce “baggle” (like boggle) instead of BAY-gle. I just thought it was an alternate pronounciation, like tomayto/tomahto. Unfortunately, I discovered otherwise when I was reading an announcement in front of my class in high school about a club doing a bagel fundraiser - and everyone laughed.
I used to write for a jewelry magazine, one or two articles a month, and I could never keep straight the difference between karat and carat. I had a note on my computer to remind me which one was used for gold and which one for diamonds. It seems odd to me now that I would ever have been confused – gold is labeled 14k so you’d think I could have remembered the difference that way.
Go figure.