Meme

[jack]

Meme: What are the most recent five words in your custom dictionary? Pick a line of five from the middle (fudge if you want to) -- can you remember when you used them?

Last five:

squee
online
Cracus
Hulme
snarky

Middle five:

Orcs -- Can I just say "anything by Tolkien is ok?"
Hagrid -- For that matter, how much national effort must have been wasted adding Harry Potter names to dictionaries? Would we save much energy by getting someone to issue more comprehensive dictionaries? :)
leet -- Irony
Euthyphro -- Conveniently, I can google where I used this: hpost
exes -- OK, a bit non-standard
snork -- :)
Slytherin's -- OK, maybe there's a good reason not to automatically add plurals and possessives and inflected forms to the dictionary when you add a word. But you could add them to the list of suggestions if you had time to code it...

Comments

[simont]

in your custom dictionary

I presume the implicit context here is "in your spellchecker"?

If so, I'm intrigued by the assumption that spellcheckers are so much a part of everyone's life that they needn't be mentioned explicitly in a post like this; I've never found a need to use one, and while I wouldn't be too surprised to find myself in a minority on this I'd be startled to find I was in a particularly small minority.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Indeed - I don't use one either.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I'd assumed most people used a spell-checker at some point, though now I realise probably not. But most memes only appeal to a fraction of the audience anyway, I thought it was amusing enough to post.

It'd be interesting to see how many people do.

It occurred to me because I've been using firefox's spell-checker, which I do find useful, and when I wrote some fiction (in Word, as it happened), I discovered I didn't hate word's spelling checker as much as I thought. I hated the grammar checker, but when I first use Word I was young and not as linguistically arrogant, so I felt sure the grammar checker must be there for a reason, and was cautious about adding words to the dictionary. But turning off the grammar, and adding firefox's custom dictionary as an extra so it already knows my common non-dictionary words, made it just as useful as the firefox one.

[simont]

It'd be interesting to see how many people do.

No sooner a word than a whatnot, as my mum says.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Cool, thank you. The poll seems ok.

[mair_in_grenderich]

I don't. On my phone-before-the-one-before-the-one-before this one, I added things to the predictive texter. This phone, I just turned predictive text onto, but it didn't have long to learn anything before I ran out of credit. I don't know how I'd find out what I've taught it, anyway. 'Mair', I suppose, to start with...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I admit, I hadn't thought of predictive text. I have not reached a great compromise with my phone.

[cornute.livejournal.com]

Spellcheckers aren't terribly useful for me either; I have a funny feeling about words I may have misspelled, with about a 30% error rate (that is, I think it's wrong, but it's right when I look it up). I can't remember the last time I misspelled a word and didn't know it was wrong, but I know it was over two years ago.

The online/software sort would, thus, only be useful for (a) flagging that one word in two years, and (b) telling me instantly without the trouble of looking it up when I have a funny feeling about a word I think might be wrong.

The words I have trouble spelling are actually written in pencil on the frame of my monitor. They are:

tyranny (no doubled "r")
judgment (the US spelling; the UK one seems to have the "e" I always want to add)
penicillin (People have two eyes. Antibiotic has three.)
acetaminophen (paracetamol, to y'all)

I used to have trouble with Fibonacci, too, but I've quit trying to add the extra "n" to it.

[sunflowerinrain.livejournal.com]

My current dictionaries are a Langenscheidt French-English and my beloved but tatty old Smith's Smaller. Both are rather unaccustomed.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

I love this meme! :)

I worry about adding too much to the dictionary though, in case I start adding things that could easily be typoed for other (perhaps more frequently used) things.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always did that. If it's a real word, I'll check in a real dictionary first. If it's something I just typed, I generally just go ahead nowadays -- there must be occasional mistakes, but I think on balance that's more productive.

Of course, in theory, I would be worried about obscure words with similar spellings to common ones (generally jokes of some sort) but it's never actually been a problme.

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

Slytherin's -- OK, maybe there's a good reason not to automatically add plurals and possessives and inflected forms to the dictionary when you add a word. But you could add them to the list of suggestions if you had time to code it...

Mulberry used to give you a list of derivatives that might work from that word and ask you to add them. The problem is that the computer doesn't know whether the word you've just added is a noun (and so need, plural and genitive forms) or a verb (so third person and past forms) or an adjective (so adverb form) (or any other possibilities I've forgotten).

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I'm interested as to how my surname got in there :P

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I couldn't remember, I guessed I'd referred to you by full name in livejournal or email and (apparently) it wasn't in the dictionary. But when I searched I remembered I posted about Dan Hulme being elected Reeve, so it was there whether or not you needed it :)