Every time I see someone write “definately”, I want to yank out each of my eyebrow hairs one by one and then force them all back in.
They’re herding their cats over there.
Please share–I’m immensely curious now.
replenish
plenary (though I’m not sure this one won’t give you trouble)
plentiful
splendid/resplendant/splendor doesn’t have the same root, but if it helps you to remember the E (rather than A) in plenty by using any of those, have at it. My method for myself is to use words with common etymological roots, but that doesn’t mean it has to be the method anyone else uses. Hell, use spleen (adjective form: splenic) if it helps:)
More of same lists, please! I’m fascinated.
With the same word, or a different one? plenty doesn’t seem happy to share its root with the rest of the class. Here, though, are some words that have -len- or -plen- in them:
lent
plenipotent
aplenty (the a in there is a schwa in most dialects of English, so it likely won’t throw you)
plene (which I hesitate to use, since the point of these word lists is that you use knowledge of similar words to figure out the spelling of the word in question. Plene ain’t exactly common.)
The root+ending combination in some words results in a -plen- letter string that might help, for all I know. I’ve never tried it before, but here goes:
suppleness
ampleness
purpleness
simpleness
The root -splen- alone has hundreds of variations, most of them medical terms. Here is the search I performed at onelook.com to arrive at the words with the string -plen- in them. Of those, the ones I actually listed in this thread represent roughly one percent.
I’m happy to come up with more word lists given specific words to work around–and how you usually misspell them, if you don’t mind; appology as a misspelling for apology is a different root from apollogy, for example, and so calls for a different list.
I can’t think of any words I misspell. I just find those lists fascinating. (For any words, not just plenty.) If a word strikes me as worthy of a root search, I’ll let you know.
Ah, okay. I use those things to help people learn how to spell some of the more commonly misspelled ones. -fin- words (definite, infinite and definitely, mostly) and apology are the most common. The reason I tend to stick with words in the same root family is that I find people are more likely to be able to remember a family if the meanings are similar.
Not that I am obsessive, but so many folk spell separately incorrectly.
Got one. “Tenant” misspelled as “tennant” and “tenet” eggcorned as “tenant” or “tennant”.
The one that’s been bugging me lately is “formally” when they mean “formerly”. I just don’t understand how so many people confuse the two. A woman on another board has it in her sig after a name change, and it drives me batty.
Almost like when you pronounce champagne with a g 
Iampunha-
No, I know how to spell plenty, it’s just my left pinkie finger always hits that “A” instead. That’s why I thought it was interesting. Occasionally is a word that I see people have problems with. Separately. Oh, titillate, perhaps because it is an uncommon word to type in conversation. Love etymology, Latin, by the way. What floors me is how common mistakes are becoming in advertising copy and the press.
I know someone who hasn’t figured out when to use “past” or “passed” and constantly gets them swapped.
I find it strange, as he is otherwise very intelligent and worldly-wise, especially about grammar and spelling.
Yeah, I like bugs too.
Testing---- testing----- 1, 2, 3…
Hey, at least I crack myself up.
Ento/etymology.
Yes, that was the joke.
I recently passed by a “Laundramat” which offered a “Tripble Load Special!” :eek:
Group sex in a laundromat? What will they think of next…
Oops.
Having struggled, for a number of years, to get the difference straight (heh) in my head (entos have exoskeletons; etym is the history), and having gotten used to people taking the one for the other, I figured the same might be the case with you.
There used to be a laundromat in Brooklyn which had lost the final “T” of its sign resulting in “Laundroma”.
The image of a painful, swollen, hot, expanding, dirty laundry mass that was possibly cancer made perfect sense to me.