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The dilemna dilemma

How do you usually spell it?

  • Dilemma

    Votes: 12 85.7%

  • Dilemna

    Votes: 2 14.3%
  • Total voters
    14
Selias

Selias

Well worn.
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So, "dilemma" is apparently spelled with two ms, rather than an m and an n. This is a bit of a surprise, because I definitely remember being taught that it was spelled "dilemna," when I was in school. This isn't something that's restricted to just me, either. From what I can find on Google, people all over the world have this problem. I mean, some French people apparently spell "dilemme," the French word for "dilemma," as "dilemne," from what I read. No joke. Dilemna isn't even an alternate spelling of dilemma, so nobody really knows where it came from.

Anyone else get taught to spell it the wrong way?
 
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This is the first I've heard of it. Most of my issues come from mispronouncing words I've only ever read.
 
For what it's worth, I can't recall ever spelling this particular word anything but "dilemma", but I have several other words that my mind is stuck on the wrong spelling for (relevation, recurrest, substract, geniune, diactritic, IIRC a few more - the generally accepted correct spellings are "revelation", "resurrect", "subtract", "genuine', and "diacritic", respectively).

I recall that the first time I consciously noticed "resurrect" (circa 2010) I thought it was a weird misspelling, actually.
That said, while the first four words on the list do make sense (contamination by "relevant", "recurrent", "substrate", and "genius", respectively), I can't think of any remotely plausible explanation for the extra letter in "diactritic".
 
Never had that problem. Then again, etymology is something of a hobby of mine and I have an eidetic memory, so spelling is atypically easy for me (I usually turn off spell-checkers, because false positives due to technical terms are far more frequent than actual mistakes).

I do get muscle-memory typos quite often, but they're always spotted instantly.
 
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