Message from @Deleted User

Join the KirkMahoney.com Readers Club and confirm by email to get a free ebook & more! Join Now

Kirk Mahoney . com
Better Communication for Smart People
Skip to content
About
Books
Contact
Blog
Readers Club
“Disconcerning”
Adjectives, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Verbs
My wife heard this yesterday.
Problem:
“Disconcerning” is a nonsense word.
Explanation:
Nearly everyone who says “disconcerning” actually is trying to say an adjective whose meaning is causing an emotional disturbance.
“Disconcerting” (notice the ‘t’ before the ‘ing’) — not “disconcerning” — is the adjectival form of the verb “disconcert”.
I believe that the use of “disconcerning” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to say “disconcerning” than to say “disconcerting” (which requires the speaker to emphasize the ‘t’).
For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words and got about the indicated numbers of matches:
disconcerning — 22,600 matches
disconcerting — 2,260,000 matches
This tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 100:1, which is very encouraging.
Solution:
“Disconcerting”
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Share this:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
11
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
11
Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
Related
"Anticlimatic"
April 17, 2008
In "Adjectives"
"Perogative"
February 10, 2009
In "Mispronunciations"
"HIS & HER'S WALK-IN CLOSET"
May 21, 2008
In "Possessives"
May 6, 2008
Post navigation
“… a cause larger than yourselves.”
“The police car was hidden in the medium.”
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Illustratr by WordPress.com.
Focus Retriever