Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Dictionary corner

Q. What have the following words got in common?

feminist, experience, excitement, psyche, appreciating, across, especially, thoroughly, possess, identifiable, privileged, stereotypical, ultimately, deliberately, emphasising, speaks, aligns, arise, acquaintances, benevolence, perceived, parallels, critique, separate, interpreted, extremely, assess, transfers, correspondence, irreverence, interaction, vagabond, devastation, appalled, successful, omniscient, gauge, occasional, predecessors, vengeance, defecation, preferences, language, supposed, bowels, habits, pigeon, fourth, noises, inferences, porous, friendship, atheist, condemning, definitely, received, device, breaks, complement, consumed, already, chooses, subservient, immediately, sadness, technique, revolutionary, androgyny, humorous, eagerness, personification, argument, despises, sinful, minutiae, decipher, concentric, indicative, existence, sanctuary, consistently, absence, explicitly, coherence, incorporating, consummated, overriding, transcendence, submissiveness, wherein, discover, pastiche, ignore, acquitted, phallic, colleague, idyllic, grotesque, aspirations, detrimental, tragedy, desperate, unbearable, metaphorically, independently, vows, stork, crucially, endeavours, dying, symbolic, whether, dramatically, illustrated, forfeits, mimicking, negociator, characteristic, linguistically, suggesting, consciousness, tendency, anonymously, camaraderie, blurs, truly, staccato, monsyllabic, achieves, dysfunctional, approaches, precedes, hallucinogenic, inconsistency, appearance, patriotism, related, dissolves, testament, flippancy, repertoire, misogynistic, deteriorate, compulsory, writing

A. They were all spelt incorrectly at least once by first year English students in the exam scripts I have just finished marking. Bear in mind, too, that I only saw a quarter of the total - my share being 62 scripts...

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