London: What's the difference between 'strait-laced' and 'straight-laced'?
Well, while the former was phrase was originally used to describe a tightly laced corset, the latter is a misspelling that's become more common than the original - thanks to TV and the Internet.
And, such misspellings have become so regular that lexicographers compiling the Oxford English Corpus - a billion-word database of how English is written and spoken – are worried that centuries-old words and phrases in the English language are now at risk of being altered forever.
Catherine Soanes, The Oxford English Dictionaries' lexicographer, said that the changing of phrases was mainly due to familiarity.
"Our Corpus has around 150 million words from the web and the way words are written often has to do with familiarity. For instance, 35 per cent of people say "a shoe-in" when actually it should be "a shoo-in," the Scotsman quoted her, as saying.
"We have to accept spelling is not fixed and can change over the years. You only have to look back 100 years when the word rhyme was spelled 'rime'. But we adopted 'rhyme' because it is more like the Greek word from which it originally came," she added.
The Corpus is being compiled from monitoring books, TV, radio, newspapers, online sites and "blogs".
Some of the most words that are misspelled - with the correct and then incorrect versions - are:
1. Strait-laced; straight-laced
2. Fount of knowledge; font of knowledge
3. Just deserts; just desserts
4. Buck naked; butt naked
5. Chaise longue; chaise lounge
6. Free rein; free reign
7. Bated breath; baited breath
8. A shoo-in; a shoe-in
9. To home in on; to hone in on
10. Fazed by; phased by
11. Sleight of hand; slight of hand
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