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No, it piqued your interest.



Is there a name for that phenomenon, where people hear terms in use but map them to the wrong words? Or the opposite, where people learn words through reading but mispronounce them?


Linguists call them real-word errors. They're very common in writing and spell checkers do nothing to protect against them.

I work on a free browser extension called After the Deadline. It picks a lot of this stuff up. It didn't pick up this particular example, next time I deploy an update to our service it will.

You may want to check it out, it works here on HN too: http://www.afterthedeadline.com

(as a note, I tend to make the same types of errors)


Actually I suspect that spelling checkers have made them more common. I know I see them a lot more often on the Web, and have been seeing them increasingly frequently over the last few years.


There are a few mild forms of dyxleia that cover thoses symptoms. For example, I cannot "sound out" words. I have to hear them before I say them. Makes for some funny times, thank god I have a great memory, or I'd look stupid all the time


I submitted a Wikipedia article on this very subject :-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1477763

Apologies in advance for engaging in the clichéd 'submit a Wikipedia page' pattern!


malapropism


or "eggcorn", if the substituted term makes some kind of sense in context.


Malapropism.


Thanks for core wrecking my miss take :p




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