fascinated by how "dislocate" seems to be a word used almost exclusively to refer to the misalignment of bodies, or parts of the body, from their proper place. it's distinctly anatomical. you don't say "i dislocated my keys" for instance, even though that's technically a correct and coherent sentence.

on the other hand, it would be really funny to say "i misplaced my shoulder" to announce a devastating injury

it went that way 👉

It's because the dis- prefix in English carries a strong sense of undoing or reversal, whereas mis- means to do badly

So if my keys are misplaced that means I put them in the wrong spot, but if they are displaced it means someone else moved them from where they were supposed to be.

There's a lot of dis- words for bodyparts! Dislocate, dismember, disarticulate - if a corpse is disarticulated that means it's all jumbled up and torn apart. If it's misarticulated you put it together wrong in the first place (and your name is Victor Frankenstein).

....a better minimal pair would have been disassembled (taken apart) vs misassembled (put together wrong) wouldn't it

The existence of the word "misadventure" (unfortunate event happening to you, typically of your own doing) implies the existence of "disadventure" (unfortunate event of someone else's doing) and I'll be bringing this into my vocabulary for situations where other people's mistakes have become my problem.

For a bit of fun linguistic trivia that only other nerds will care about (it's me. I'm the other nerds), i.e. stands for "id est" and e.g. stands for "exempli gratia."

no e.g. stands for “eggsample”

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

A zeugma walked into a bar, my life and trouble.

tricky words I always see misspelled in fics: a guide

Hope this helped! Please add more if you think of them!

Counsel/Council - counsel is advice, the advice giver, or the verb form of giving said advice. Council is the group of people who come together to discuss and/or make decisions.

Desert/Desert/Dessert - desert is a barren landscape where little precipitation occurs. desert - abandon (a person, cause, or organization) in a way considered disloyal or treacherous. dessert - a usually sweet course or dish (as of pastry or ice cream) usually served at the end of a meal.

OH MY TIME IS HERE! I HAVE MADE A POST I KEEP FOR THIS EXACTLY

Taunt/Taut - Taunt is a jeer or provocation, taut means to be pulled tight, or not slack

Weary/Wary - weary means tired and wary means cautious

Rogue/Rouge - rogue is a person who has unaffiliated themselves from what they were before (is the general understanding); a person or thing that behaves in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable way - rouge is red

Wonton/Wanton - a wonton is a dumpling, wanton is (of a cruel or violent action) deliberate and unprovoked and/or sexually unrestrained

Haphazard/Halfhazard - haphazard means to  have a lack of plan, order, or direction - the other isn’t a word

Corporal/Corporeal - corporal is a lack of plan, order, or direction and corporeal is to have a physical existence: to be tangible: of a person’s body

Peck/Pec - the first is a kiss (peck) and the second is the shortened version of pectoral (pec)

Virile/Viral - to be virile is to have strength, energy, and a strong sex drive (typically said about men) and then this last year (2020) has personally taught us, is how viral a plague can really be, so of the nature of, caused by, or relating to a virus or viruses

Vulnerable/Venerable - vulnerable means being susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm, and if a person is venerable they’re accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character (or if you’re religious, holy)

Dyed is something that is colored, and died is deceased

Chalk (it up to something) ; chock (-full of something); choked (to cutoff air).

to affect is the action, the effect is the end result

If something doesn’t bother you then you weren’t fazed by it. If you are between two states of being that is a phase.

Please. For the love of all things holy. I beg you.

Loose: the opposite of tight

Lose: to misplace something or the opposite of win.

I BEG YOU.

breath is the noun, breathe is the verb

I wrote a whole list of these years ago, but the same misspellings persist, unfortunately.

One more example that I don’t see misspelled, but do see misused:

This is partly why I stress that people READ more books if they want to be taken seriously as published authors. You make a lot more mistakes if you don’t know what your language should look like in print!

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but they also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a form of syllepsis.

Examples:

Source: [x]

Click HERE for more facts

do not fix your dark circles let the world know youre tired of its shit and ready to kill a man

you’re* it’s* Btw. I am a man.

oooooooooooooh my gooooooooooooooooooooooood ooooooooh my god. oh my god. ooooooooooh. my god oh my god

he’s literally wrong

Listen, I've remembered this rule ever since I read Lemony Snicket's "ASOUE: The Wide Window" back in '05, and that rule is whenever you see i-t-apostrophe-s, that means "it is", and i-t-s means "belonging to it" so if they had said "tired of it's shit" that would have meant "tired of it is shit", which is incorrect. OP had it right the first time.