Note 264 – Word confusions: Do you confuse lose with loose?

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A work colleague suggested today’s blog.  He told me that he’s seeing an increasing amount of people confusing the words lose and loose.  Apparently it’s been a word confusion for many years, more so recently because of predictive texts. 

Why is everybody starting to spell “lose” wrong? writes a very frustrated user on yahoo answers.  This question is followed by quite a few replies by irritated people and one even said “by 2050 I bet people won’t even be able to put sentences together”.  I hope not!

If you have trouble with these words The Essay Expert.com have written a whole paragraph of text using both words in their article Common Spelling Mistakes: Lose vs. Loose.  Also you can try and remember that lose is an verb as in to lose your mind (where lose rhymes with booze) and loose is mostly used as an adjective a loose thread (where loose rhymes with goose).  

Grammar Monster look at this word confusion from a different angle and suggest that “this is due to the lack of consistency in pronouncing words that end ‘oose’ and ‘ose’.  For example, loose (LOOSS) rhymes with noose (NOOSS) but not choose (CHOOZ)”.

That’s all for today.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra
Freelance Writer
www.sandramadeira.com

Photo attribution: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:So_many_words.jpg