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Defiantly / definitely

Mind that apostrophe.
NomoneyNohoney
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Defiantly / definitely

#350878

Postby NomoneyNohoney » October 26th, 2020, 10:12 pm

"My Alienware pc is a beast but defiantly need one of these mad lad of a laptop for my travels!"


I've seen this usage of 'defiantly' a few times recently, and something has just occurred to me. If you twist the word as you say it, 'defiantly' could be used instead of 'definitely.' "Def - ian - t - ly" Do you think that explains why this happens?

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Re: Defiantly / definitely

#350897

Postby GrahamPlatt » October 27th, 2020, 12:17 am

Why d’ya have to aks that?

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Re: Defiantly / definitely

#350911

Postby GoSeigen » October 27th, 2020, 6:30 am

NomoneyNohoney wrote: Do you think that explains why this happens?


No I'd say autocorrect is to blame.

GS

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Re: Defiantly / definitely

#350923

Postby swill453 » October 27th, 2020, 7:12 am

GoSeigen wrote:
NomoneyNohoney wrote: Do you think that explains why this happens?


No I'd say autocorrect is to blame.

I'd say only in as much as if you spell a word completely wrong, autocorrect may suggest a correctly-spelled but wrong replacement. Depends how wrong you are in the first place though.

Could be for other reasons though - the OP has a point, it might be the case. Lots of wrong usage come from supposedly close pronunciations e.g. draw for drawer, "could of" for "could have" etc.

Scott.

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Re: Defiantly / definitely

#350927

Postby GoSeigen » October 27th, 2020, 7:24 am

swill453 wrote:
GoSeigen wrote:
NomoneyNohoney wrote: Do you think that explains why this happens?


No I'd say autocorrect is to blame.

I'd say only in as much as if you spell a word completely wrong, autocorrect may suggest a correctly-spelled but wrong replacement. Depends how wrong you are in the first place though.

Scott.


Definately.

GS

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Re: Defiantly / definitely

#350941

Postby bungeejumper » October 27th, 2020, 9:12 am

Not to mention mitigate against, instead of militate against. Half-educated wazzocks everywhere.

And now I'm hearing about all those social media affluencers. Whereas, as any fule kno, the correct term starts with an e. ;)

BJ

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Re: Defiantly / definitely

#350971

Postby Dod101 » October 27th, 2020, 10:44 am

As for the original question, I think defiantly has been used in an attempt to spell definitely as some pronounce it these days as 'defintly', but then maybe as GS said spell checker changed it to defiantly to 'correct' the spelling.

Dod

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Re: Defiantly / definitely

#351027

Postby Gengulphus » October 27th, 2020, 12:12 pm

swill453 wrote:
GoSeigen wrote:
NomoneyNohoney wrote: Do you think that explains why this happens?

No I'd say autocorrect is to blame.

I'd say only in as much as if you spell a word completely wrong, autocorrect may suggest a correctly-spelled but wrong replacement. Depends how wrong you are in the first place though.

The term "autocorrect" derives from the software automatically correcting misspelt words by changing them to what it reckons is the closest correctly-spelt word. If I remember correctly, merely suggesting corrections rather than automatically applying them was an option that was added very early in the development of most (possibly all) autocorrect software, and depending on exactly which autocorrect software is used, it may be the default option in the software as delivered - or of course a user may have set it as a persistent option long ago and have forgotten that automatic correction was ever in effect. But certainly automatically correcting misspelt words and not merely suggesting corrections is still the default in some circumstances - my Android phone does it in some cases. (And I actually find it quite useful on that phone, because the fiddly small touch keyboard increases both the likelihood of typos and the difficulty of correcting them manually... Though I do get a bit aggravated when it automatically 'corrects' the 3-letter day-of-week abbreviation "Thu" to "The", especially as it doesn't do the same with "Tue"! And whenever I find an automatically-correct-vs-suggest-corrections option on hardware I access via a proper keyboard, I choose the suggest-corrections option...)

So I'd say that it could easily be a case of "defiantly" being an automatic mis-correction of a misspelt version of "definitely".

Gengulphus


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