SPEAKING OF NOTHING, LET’S LEARN TO SPELL THESE WORDS:
silhouette
refrigerator
simultaneous
miscellaneous
engine
fuchsia
conscience
conscientious
squirrel
Of these I can consistently spell “miscellaneous” correctly, because I used to work in classifieds and during the summer we transcribed a lot of garage sale ads. They were a package deal and had no real line limit, so we took great pleasure in spelling things out. I can also spell “fuchsia” correctly now because of Randall’s color test.
Last week (when updating the Supermodernity post) I had to google the phrase “give a little whistle” to confirm the spelling of “conscience”, which I used to know for sure because one can think of it as “con-science” and that’s fine. But I’d suddenly wondered if I had that tangle of letters mixed up with “conscientious” which is really not the same sort of word in modern usage. It is itself composed of letters that don’t seem to match up with the sounds. Kawn-chee-ehn-chus. “Con-” is fine, and “-tious” at the end is almost acceptable because of other adjectives that seem easier (luminous, pretentious). It’s that chee-ehn part that gets me. Must think of a clever way of remembering that...
