I just wanted to check how to spell the plural of "weirdo" and came across a strange scenario in Google. According to Answers.com, here's the definition:
weird·o (wîr'dō) pronunciation
n. Slang., pl. -oes.
1. A person regarded as being very strange or eccentric.
2. A deranged, potentially dangerous person.
So, the correct way to spell it is "weirdoes". However...
Results 1 – 10 of about 1,320,000 weirdos
http://www.google.com/search?q=weirdos
Results 1 – 10 of about 132,000 for weirdoes [definition]
http://www.google.com/search?q=weirdoes
The 2nd one includes the "Did you mean: weirdos" link, actually suggesting the more popular incorrect spelling which I also ended up using, not least because it looks "more" right.
So if so many people spell something incorrectly, maybe it's time for dictionaries to be updated to include the most popular spellings regardless of whether or not they're correct. At least, if someone created a dictionary based on Google's spell checking algorithms, this would almost certainly be the case. |
it's pretty funny..
Google almost never wrong regarding to this issue.
weird.. : |
yeah, and i know almost doesn't count :P |
Tony – It all depends on what you use for your dictionary sources.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/weirdo
The first definition on the link above shows the plural being 'weirdos'.
–noun, plural weird·os.
"Google's spell-checking intelligence comes from examining all the documents on the web. Thus, correct spellings often dominate incorrect ones. The example of San Luis Obispo is interesting; if you take the Web as representing current accepted practice, it would appear that people do write that proper noun both ways – i.e., Luis or Louis."
So if you get enough incorrect spellings indexed in Google, it might overtake the correct spelling in the "Did You mean" suggestion. |
