Talk:develope

I originally added this page by mistake, writing a link for "developed" as [[develope]]d instead of [[develop]]ed.

I was then unsure which spelling was correct, so I checked Dictionary.com. It took "develope" but brought me to "develop".

The entry was then removed, but a quick google search shows a number of hits, some of which are clearly by non-native speakers, but some of which seem perfectly legitimate. Google itself wondered if I might not mean "develop".

IMHO, this is what Pinker et. al. would call a "muzzy" case -- a sort of mental hash collision, in particular with envelope/envelop. A spelling error that people consistently make in print seems more like an alternate spelling to me. I have no doubt that "develop" is the preferred spelling, but I don't think that "develope" can go away entirely.

I think we need to tread very carefully here. "Develope" is clearly an erroneous form of the correct spelling, and not just a mere alternative. No doubt incorrect spellings of almost any English word can be found by doing Google searches. Do we really want to try and incorporate all of these in Wiktionary? Some (such as "alright" and "miniscule", which are erroneous (but common) forms of "all right" and "minuscule" respectively) feature in other dictionaries and might be worthy of inclusion, but I doubt that "develope" is in any established print dictionary as a current or extant form of "develop". If we go down this road, where do we draw the line? -- Paul G 15:31, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This is a very valid point, and the general answer is to decide on a case-by-case basis. Usage changes. "You" used to be exclusively plural, but the "erroneous" singular usage became current at some point in the last few centuries.

There is a gradation from outright error ("enclyclopedic") to non-standard ("sox" for "socks"?) to alternate. I'm not sure exactly what terminology to use here, but I'm certainly not comfortable calling alright "erroneous". Perhaps "often considered erroneous" -- see http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/023.html

Similarly "miniscule". The second and third google hits on that were from ABC news and UC Santa Cruz, supporting my suspicion that this is a more American usuage. Bartleby, of course, would prefer not to say much on the matter: http://www.bartleby.com/68/84/3884.html.

So those two should be classed perhaps as "American spelling of" or "American alternate spelling of" or somesuch, but definitely not as erroneous.

Returning to the question of "where do you draw the line," the answer is probably "very near cases like 'develope'". The role of a modern dictionary is more descriptive than prescriptive. I have no trouble calling out "develope" as likely to be seen as incorrect.

If anything, though, this problematic status makes it a stronger candidate for inclusion, at least at this stage. If someone unsure of the spelling looks up "develope" and finds a note that it is generally considered a misspelling of "develop," this is more helpful than not finding it at all and guessing that we might not have added the entry yet.

(BTW, I apologize for the erratic signatures, though strictly speaking it's redundant with the change log -dmh 16:03, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC))

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There's a larger issue here, which is what do we consider an authorative source? In searching for "miniscule" I quickly turned up a major news agency and a press release from a major university. With "develope" I turned up nothing so convincing. The best looked to be something on msntv.com. However, there were dozens of uses in contexts ranging from software to musculature to language skills to psychic powers. Evidently the spelling is not dying out, but it isn't prevalent enough for major news agencies to let it slip by unnoticed.

The particlar term may turn out to be a shibboleth, with the spelling of develop/develope indicating just how much you've had drummed into (and out of) you by the educational system.

Again, I would suggest keeping "develope" for descriptive purposes, while noting it as non-standard for prescriptive purposes.

-dmh 16:03, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree that we ought to stick to authoratitive sources as resources, and that words need to be considered case by case. I also agree that dictionaries are better when they are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Even the OED contains numerous entries that it marks as dubious, erroneous or incorrectly formed. I don't know of any authoratitive evidence for "develope" being a legitimate spelling or emerging as a legitimate spelling. I doubt it is in any newspaper editor's in-house usage guide. -- Paul G 16:10, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So what's our tentative conclusion here? I would prefer to see a category established meaning "people use this, but it's not considered correct by authorative sources." -dmh 16:23, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't want to draw conclusions. I'm not a native speaker, but using develope instead of develop is something I would never do, except maybe as a typing error (which I believed was the way it entered into Wiktionary). That's why I deleted it. In my opinion develope cannot be pronounced the same way as develop. So I don't understand where the confusion can come from. Whether we want to add erroneous spellings to Wiktionary is something I'm going to leave to some other people to decide. If we do, those wrong spellings have to be flagged in a very clear way though. It cannot be considered an alternative spelling if it's an outright mistake. (no matter how prevalent it is on the internet). It's not like we lack the space (memory wise). So it's simply something we have to make a policy on. Polyglot 20:47, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(ack, I can see the utility of auto-logout, but it drives me nuts)

Anyway, I've changed the entry to "common misspelling". I think there is value in adding common misspellings, because this allows someone to see that that's what the word is, as opposed to some new word they didn't know. For various reasons, this one seems to be particularly common. I certainly wouldn't make an entry for every spelling mistake.

FWIW, here are some random misspellings and the number of hits they produce on google:

develope: 181,000 vs. 34,000,000 for develop

hotelle: 5620 vs. 206,000,000 for hotel

agrument: 6100 vs. 17,000,000 for argument

randome: 6180 vs. 26,600,000 for random

randomb: 310 vs. 26,600,000 for random

A couple of conclusions

1. People don't make spelling mistakes on the web all that often. We are conditioned to notice errors when they occur.
2. "develope" seems to occur considerably more often than the others.

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I've done a little research. The OED (2nd ed) has "develope" as an alternative form of "develop" that has been around since the 17th century, but does not give quotations beyond the 18th century. Chambers Dictionary (1997) says that "develope" is an "earlier form". This information leads me to conclude that "develope" can be marked as archaic.

People make spelling mistakes on the web all the time (I just made one in that sentence, writing "teh" instead of "the") but agree that the misspellings are generally less common than the correct spellings. Here are some results of my own from Google where the misspelt words are almost as common as the correctly spelt ones:

• miniscule : 206,000 v 340,000 for "minuscule"
• alot: 3,930,000 v 14,100,000 for "a lot"

I therefore think that marking "develope" as a common misspelling is an appropriate approach. I will add "archaic" to the entry as well. -- Paul G 09:32, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've added the entries alot and miniscule along similar lines. -- Paul G 09:37, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, I am proofing a copy of the book "ILLUSTRATIONS OF UNIVERSAL PROGRESS; A Series of Discussions." by Herbert Spencer (N.Y. 1864) for project gutenberg and noted that Spencer used "develop" 6 times and "develope" 4 times in this collection of essays, no apparent difference in meaning.

The spelling with an "extra e" was in common use up to about 1850 in American English and slightly later in British English, after which the form without the e at the end became the standard spelling, so "develope" should be marked as archaic rather than obsolete. Dickens used the archaic spelling (in Pickwick Papers), as did Southey, and Emerson changed his spelling from develope to develop in the 1840s. The latest cite for develope in the OED is from 1880. Dbfirs 19:40, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Missing template

"Template:obsolete (too old) spelling of" is missing.

For good reason. An obsolete term is one that's no longer in use and is unknown to modern speakers. There are plenty of terms that are much older, but still being used: "and", for instance, goes back to Old English, with the same spelling. Besides, we don't have different templates for every way you want to word things. "Obsolete" is a technical term used in dictionaries, and that's why we have a template for it. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:40, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

WT:FEED

The following discussion has been moved from the page WT:FEED.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Talk:develope

There are many words in the English language that have Old English spellings. This is one of those and is not incorrect. A common example of an outdated, Old English spelling of a word is "colour". I was taught in grade school that this was the proper English spelling of the word, but here in America we have simplified our language. We now spell it "color". If you have the opportunity, go to a library and find a really old book, something over a hundred years old. You will find many such oddities, quite possibly even the word develope.

I think you're confusing Old English with modern British English. Anyway, our entry for "develope" agrees with you that it's obsolete. Even in the UK nobody uses this spelling. Equinox ◑ 18:33, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

The spelling with an "extra e" was in common use up to about 1850 in American English and slightly later in British English, after which the form without the e at the end became the standard spelling. The situation is not at all the same as the word colour, but you are correct that "develope" should be marked as archaic rather than obsolete. Dbfirs 19:24, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

To someone who studies English, Old English, Middle English and obsolete English are distinct. This is I believe, obsolete English as datewise it falls in the Modern English period, but it is no longer used. Renard Migrant (talk) 21:58, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Ah, that's not how I've seen the terms used elsewhere in Wiktionary. I agree that Old English and Middle English are clearly defined, but how do you distinguish between archaic and obsolete? I'm happy to restore obsolete if archaic means something different to you and to others here. What period would you say counts as archaic? Perhaps in this case we could just say "outmoded" since the variant was superseded fairly recently? Dbfirs 07:48, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think in reality, we don't distinguish between archaic and obsolete. Supposedly, archaic terms are still found occasionally in modern contexts, for example olde used for archaic effect in shop names. I think if we applied that, very few terms would really be archaic, but rather obsolete. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:36, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

For alternative spellings, there isn't a clear distinction between archaic and obsolete from what I've seen. But for actual words, the distinction is clear: obsolete is no longer recognised or understood, while archaic words are still understood. So really, most obsolete spellings would be archaic spellings. The difficulty is that spellings that are outmoded or belong to an obsolete standard are called "obsolete" even if they are still well understood. This is presumably because spelling is more normative than word usage. —CodeCat 22:46, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Perhaps a usage note indicating how recently the spelling was changed would be appropriate. Dbfirs 14:04, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Pronunciations

I feel both have different pronunciation all together. Develop spells - They-weigh('aet' silent)-lup Develope spells - They-weigh('aet' silent)-law-p Decepti Brine (talk) 14:32, 22 April 2019 (UTC)