ME

ME

Monday, March 27, 2006

The helplessness of the long-distance spellchecker

The intended word was EMERGE, instead of which the typed word was IMMERGE. On questioning why the Spellchecker hadn’t spotted the mistake a discovery was made; immerge is similar in meaning to the word immerse, almost diametrically opposed to the sense of emerge.

Of course, were the rather more rare IMM word to be deliberately used in conversation, chances are that the listener would assume the EM word was intended; hopefully the context would enable the truth to emerge. Life gets confusing at time but, as has frequently been said, “the meaning of a word is its use in language”.

Occasionally a difficulty arises as to what is a word and what is language.

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