Mockery of Spell Check
This strip materialized when I realized that the stupid suggestions I get from my spell check hit the same pet peeve button as when my friends harp on a slurring of words or brain hiccup with my vocabulary. Dictionary.com defines pendantic as “overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, esp. in teaching.” Well acutally, it has another definition first, which is the kind that always annoys me in dictionaries. It uses another big word to define pendantic. It says “ostentatious in one’s learning.” If you look up ostentatious it again starts with a definition that is filled with 100 dollar words: ” characterized by or given to pretentious or conspicuous show in an attempt to impress others”. I think their definition of ostentatious is ostentatious. Is that the point? Are they trying to be funny?
One time my friend Dave used the word “esoteric” and his mom said “What does that mean?” “Only a few people know about it” “Why are you making it such a secret word? I don’t care how many snobs know about it. Why can’t you just tell me what it means?” Then after much laughing from Dave “No. Esoteric actually means that only a few people know about it.”
And my other favourite word defitintion problem was my buddy Jason was watching his friend talking to his girlfriend on the phone. “No. I am being sincere! I’m totally being sincere! Why don’t you believe I’m being sincere!” and then whispering to Jason “What does sincere mean?”
May 31st, 2009 at 4:45 am
There’s a Latin phrase “Ignotem per ignotus” (sic) that broadly translates to: “the explanation is more obscure than the thing itself”. You can imagine how the conversation goes when people ask me what the phrase means…
May 31st, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Wow. That’s esoteric.
June 1st, 2009 at 5:44 am
LOL! PeNdantic.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Hef, I think you just fell into his cunning trap.
June 5th, 2009 at 6:45 am
LOL! Cunning tarp!
June 6th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Not to be concerned with small details or anything, but perhaps you meant to write “pedantic.”
June 6th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Esoterically cunning warp!
August 29th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Once I was trying to say that all of my parents friends think I am a culturally deprived child and instead of child I typed triangle.
And I constantly type my friend Kaitlin’s name Kaitling before deleting the g and hitting enter. It’s just the next logical step when it comes to i-n! g!
September 30th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Once, I used the word ‘cumbersome’ in front of a friend who’d never heard of it. She asked me what it meant and I told her ‘cucumberlike’.
I found out a few weeks later that she believed me!
September 30th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Philosopher Zurg, I thought a cumbersome was what you wore around your waist with a tuxedo?
Mary, It’s good to know that I can tell people I make comics for triangles!
January 11th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Cummerbund- perhaps a cucumber enveloped in bread?