A little mini-rant on The Human Condition, but first a funny story about the word Misled.  There has been a little meme circulating recently which states something to the effect of: “Don’t make fun of me for mispronouncing something, I learned it from reading”.  This is a real thing.  For years I was afraid to say “inchoate”, even though I knew what it meant, and knew how to use it, but it wasn’t until I FINALLY heard it said out loud one day that I was confident on its pronunciation (this was before the days of online dictionaries, gentle reader, although can you always trust the Google voice?). Another one that I have both misspelled and mispronounced is “expedite” — there, it turns out, is no such word as “expediate”. (There should be– for to expedite is to make things speedier, no?)

And so, one day many decades ago, sitting in a lecture at Uni the Prof told us the story of how she, likewise, had a word that she knew the meaning of, knew how to use it in past tense, and said it (incorrectly) for years.  The word was misled, but rather than saying “miss-led”, she pronounced it “my-zuld”.

Here we are, then, feeling slightly foolish in an attempt to have a richer vocabulary, but not without a sense of satisfaction that at least you had good intentions. That is rather how I feel about my own relationship with the word “misled”.

It’s a simple story–not remarkable, not unusual enough to even retell in any great detail, but I came to the realization one day that I had completely misjudged a person, their intentions and their regard for me. And, I don’t mind admitting to you, lovely reader, that I was angry when I realized this person had misrepresented themselves.

But here’s the thing…. I was angry with myself for being misled.  It never occurred to me at the *ripe* age of 50, I could still suffer the starry-eyed naivete of my youth, where in a similar situation, I would have gone into victim-mode, with justifiable high-dudgeon, a “How DARE you!” kind of umbrage. Rather, today, I’m just mad at myself for letting someone “misle” me. If I could “expediate” a passage for you through this same quagmire, I guess I would say to this: “They are called stereotypes for a reason”.

Too good to be true

Buyer Beware

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions….

Actually, I guess those are platitudes or idioms, but you get the idea.  Don’t be misled by some idiom.

🙂