this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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I always thought discreet was just a different way of spelling discrete, used by the same type of person who'd write wierd instead of weird, but apparently discreet and discrete are "supposed to" mean different things, a "discrete quantity" vs "discreet packaging".

I reject this notion and will continue to spell either sense as discrete. Both are from Old French discret, both are pronounced the same, both were spelled the same in Middle English, and discretion is still spelled the same for either meaning, so there is absolutely no reason why discrete and discreet should be spelled differently, other than to personally confuse me. There are enough people who confuse the two spellings as to make the written distinction between discrete and discreet absolutely useless.

Yes, I'm going to intentionally misspell a word because it annoys me. You should do the same for any words that you dislike the spellings of. Who's gonna stop us‽

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are discrete words, and you can discreetly erode that reality by discreetly misspelling them into a single discrete word at your own discretion.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

discreetion*

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

English suks and anyone trieing to defend it's honour by telling you to spell things rite is a nurd.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

standardized orthography was invented to sell dictionaries

reejekt meereeyam-ooebstir, imbrais phreephorm speling

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

deez creets

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

"Discreet" is a discrete word from "discrete", but people tend to be discreet about this fact.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

personally i bully the english language and its idiosyncrasies the other way around; i embrace its oddly spelled words and pronounce them exactly as they should be. for instance, at my job i sometimes write pseudocode, and then have a great time telling people about my 'p-sh-you-doo-code' and seeing how many men in the office i can make try to explain my own degree to me (it works depressingly frequently).

so yeah, as far as i'm concerned those are two different words: discreet and discrettay think-about-it

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Go the other direction, discrete and discreet should be pronounced differently.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

discrete now rhymes with meaty

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

And discreet sounds like disc-ree-ought

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Discrete will be pronounced like Socrates

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Yes, I'm going to intentionally misspell a word because it annoys me. You should do the same for any words that you dislike the spellings of. Who's gonna stop us‽

waow-based

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

you can form a pretty reliable gaydar from this alone, if my various experiences on grindr are an example of anything (correcting men who have written 'discrete' in their profiles lmao)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

realizing it also works as a mathdar...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which is to say, those who don't know the difference are or are not?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

hahaha I was being completely unserious but if a man knows the difference and doesn't seem math/language inclined I'd be willing to bet they've used grindr at some point specifically because that is one of the profile tags. Not trying to read into it too much because I was mainly joking but come to think of it, there is also an argument I could make from personal experience that 'straighter' men tend to default to spelling it as discrete when they mean discreet (i say straighter because lets be real, if you're on grindr looking for some ass you're nowhere near it - but it is always the blank profiles with the 'discrete - never tried this before.....will send pics only if you verify you're not within 6 degrees of knowing anyone i interact with' type of bios that spell it wrong......)

have typed too much about this now and am judging myself what have you DONE oooaaaaaaauhhh

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't worry about that; there's no Academie Anglaise, unlike those Francaise

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My only dream is for ESL countries to each set up their own regulatory bodies for the English language specifically to codify their own homegrown "mistakes" as equal to whatever Brits and Seppos think is correct, in an effort to hasten the dissolution of English into a neo-Anglic branch of the Anglic languages

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Of course, you would, as part of thy Norwegian plot... sicko-beaming

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

no-no-no-wait-wait-wait Not another one... no... no!... NO!!!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like, the vast majority of homophones actually have a reason to be spelled differently, and actually have some way for you to remember which is which, and a lot of them are only homophones in some dialects anyways. So most homophones I don't really mind, although if others choose to merge words that I personally wouldn't, then that's their decision and I respect that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk discrete and discreet are pretty separate adjectives to me. "Discrete systems" is not a spycraft class.

It is weird that "discretion" hasn't separated though

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

"Discrete systems" is not a spycraft class.

Yeah and a "red cup" is not a communist football tournament.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Your reasoning is sound and you have convinced me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I would appreciate you being discreet about using the word improperly, and only in a few quite discrete instances

It's really about the value of your principals

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

i live by the old maxim, excretion is the better part of valor.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

right on! this is like my personal fight against the word "helyiség". there's no such thing. nobody says that. "helység" has two discrete meanings.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hungarian pog

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is the only thing I remember from a book about physics I read when I was 17.