Seven videos about language

A few years ago I shared six videos about language, so posting seven this time may set a perilous precedent. (I’ve also blogged a bunch of others, before and since, if you want still more audiovisual diversion.)

Below, there are two short, three medium, and two long videos, in that order. See what grabs your fancy.

A wild one to begin: Why Werner Herzog refuses to speak French:

‘Defiantly’ is the new ‘definitely’

If I made a list of words I often see misspelt, definitely would definitely be among them. But while it was once *definately or *definatly I’d read in casual, unedited writing, nowadays it’s more likely to be defiantly. I ran a search on Twitter:

If you search for "defiantly" on Twitter, you'll see 99% of people using it to mean "definitely" and 1% complaining about the misspelling.

— Stan Carey (@StanCarey) October 17, 2014

The figure is taken from thin air, but it might not be far wrong: see for yourself. Defiantly is used a couple of times a minute around the world on Twitter, almost always to mean definitely. I suspect that’s also the case in text and instant messaging, but I haven’t looked into it.

In fact, just about the only time we see defiantly ≠ definitely on Twitter, it’s not because someone is using defiantly to mean defiantly, but because they’re mentioning it to complain about the misspelling.

It could be, as @GramrgednAngel suggested, that people are typing definat… (like in the good ol’ days) and autocorrect is transposing this into defiantly. If so, it’s having a big influence.

I’ve not heard the error in speech, nor yet spotted it in print; for now it seems mainly restricted to informal digital communication. But who’s to say it won’t spread, defiantly.