I'm not a language snob ...
posted by McFrozen on June 18, 2001
but in the last few weeks, I've seen a few words misused and/or misspelled, depending on how nice you want to be toward the authors. These are three cases, two that I stumbled on through browsing, and one (Case 3) that I had anecdotal evidence of and had to search for it using Google, but the place I found it really cracks me up. I also think it's interesting that all three cases happen to be exercise equipment. I think that's probably a coincidence, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Case 1 This guy says he rides a recombinant bike. What the heck is a recombinant bike? I assume that he means a recumbent bike, because I don't even know how I would describe what I think a recombinant bike is. Does is have human DNA in it? Is it a viral bike? It sounds like something from a William Gibson novel.
Case 2 This woman, in an otherwise very nice piece of writing (okay it's a little whiney, but hey it's personal), refers to her brand new stationery bike. What's that? A bike made by Hallmark?
Case 3 These folks (self-proclaimed "fitness experts") refer to some new equipment that they bought as "ecliptical trainers". For those of you not familiar with the equipment, an elliptical trainer is a piece of equipment that's somewhere between a treadmill and a stair climber. You stand on these little platforms on either side of a big chassis, and your feet move forward and backward and up and down in an ellipse.
I know English is a weird language with all its antonyms and synonyms and such, but really. In these three cases we're talking about supposedly well-educated professional making mistakes about equipment that probably has the misspelled/misused word printed on it somewhere. Yeesh.