What is the word for intentionally incorrect spelling?

Oh, and Dyske, I probably wouldn't count "nite" or "lite", because, sadly, most people who use them don't do so intentionally.

I propose: "Adsing".
More often people use the term "ads" to refer to the [actual spelling] word: advertisement.

I think unique spellings have less to do with fads or ignorance than the fact that they 1) draw attention to your product, 2) create a memorable brand name, 3) can be protected as a trademark, and 4) can create instant product recognition (Kleenex must have something to do with being clean).

Colloquialisms...I do not know if this would be entirely applicable to this; however, it is pretty close. It may not be applied specifically to the spelling, but more the word itself. Good try? Perhaps..

At the risk of running off on a tangent, I believe that "Cum On Feel The Noize" was by Quiet Riot.

When kids misspell words it is called an invented spelling.

When freespellers intentionally misspel a word it is also called an invented spelling.

What is interesting about the invented spellings at www.freespeling.com is that the freespellings are almost always orthographically plausible spellings. They do not deviate that much from the accepted norms.

There are usually 5 ways to spell most English words. In fact there are usually 4 ways to spell most phonemes. Someone reading these plausible misspellings would have no difficulty deciphering them.

Such freespelling was the norm before 1755 when the Johnson dicitonary spelling began to be considered the one way that a word should be spelled.

These high frequency spellings account for 85% of the spellings in dictionary. To see the most likely way that a phoneme is spelled, go to www.foolswisdom.ocm/~sbett/spelling-patterns.htm

It takes only 3-7 months for a child to learn how to spell in most languages. It probably doesn't take much longer to learn how to spell the five most common ways in English.

What is difficult is to remember which of the plausible spellings is "correct". Which spelling matches the lexical spelling.

actually im also trying to find misspelled words for an advertisment project..
and i agree you guys must have no life.
espacially joe.
get laid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

What is the word for intentionally incorrect spelling?

Invented spelling CHRAIN for *train
not always intentionally incorrect
Phonetic Spelling KUM for *come
Plausible Spelling ACOMODATE for *accommodate
Reformed Spelling: ACOMMODATE for *accommodate
Poetic spelling TYGR for *tiger
Variant spelling THRU for *through, THO, ENUF
Spelling Manipulation PHISH for *fish
Mutation
Texting (abbreviation) GR8 for *great
Neologism (attempted) BYTE
Trade Names KODAK KLEENEX
Archaic Spellings: YE OLDE for *the old, AULD
Ye or þe is an approximation of the old AS letter "thorn"

A variant spelling is in the dictionary so it is not
"incorrect" In fact over half of the 300 respellings recommended by Pres. Roosevelt and the SSB were variant spellings. They were just not the most popular correct spelling.

The approval of the USGPO style guide was never an executive order. Congress refused to pay for documents containing spellings that were not in the dictionary. Most of them were in Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary so altho Roosevelt withdrew his support after the editorials in the Hearst controlled papers, I am not sure how much this altered the USGPO house style.

It did have a major impact on spelling reform and usage.
Most of the 30,000 teachers and educators who had agreed to use the more phonetic spellings reneged.

There are about 2000 variant spellings in English dictionaries. thru is a variant spelling of through. It is not considered to be the preferred spelling altho it probably should be since it is shorter, more phonemic, and easier to spell. (see www.amereicanliteracycouncil.com)

*lite for light, popular in beer commercials, was a variant spelling before 1755 and it is probably still a recognized variant in some dictionaries.

It is not used that much outside of the ad world and SMS texting. You can check the web freqeuncy at
http://spellweb.com/dualwebber.php

More on spelling in general at www.spellingsociety.org

Does it need a name? How about "suedoe" spelling. "Suedoe" is an intentional mispelling of "pseudo" which means false.

I've heard it referred to as "divergent spelling," as someone else pointed out above.

Also, Slade did "Cum on, feel the noize," originally and Quiet Riot covered it on their Metal Health album. Not to mention umpteen others including Oasis of all people who did an awful cover of it about 10 years ago.

Jeez, Patricia ~ what is it your love-making that leads you to PITE afterward? Too muh verbalization? Or not enough? ;->

Wow, reached you guys by accident, and I love this site!
Was looking for the etymology of the word "hi", but I'm not still happy with what I have found so far.

I began to laugh when I read Patricia's reaction and comment about geek 1 and 2 (we all know there's only one child with multiple, yet identical personalities).
"They" would be scratching their heads if they read the "post-coital" comment. See...it pays to know a few words geek.

I think the point about words being unintentionally spelled has it's merit. I belong to one board that uses the Wiki way to collect information and there are a high amount of entries that spell government without the n. I had seen it so much I started to doubt myself and had to look it up in a dictionary.

I understand the points made about intentional mis-spellings. It seems a little unfortunate for those that spell incorrectly on a constant basis without even knowing it. I wonder what it says about our education system. I have a close relative that is not from this country and he spells better than most people I run into on the streets of this country on a daily basis.

why the hell are yall leaving these responses when people actually need answers.?!
yall actually need lives

is the answer purposely?

A friend sent me the link to this interesting site when I recently posed the same question myself. Having read the discussion and considered the various suggestions, how about "SPERV"? Being a diminutive of "spelling perversion"?

Hmmm. This is all very interesting to me, but I am looking for the word for intentional misuse of a word, not intentional misspelling. Can anyone help me? My example would be from when my friend and I would be surprised by something, one of us would say, "I think I'm having a cataract," instead of "I think I'm having a cardiac [arrest]" or "I think I'm having a coronary." We got started with our "mis-phrase" years ago, and I only now am wondering what this linguistic occurrence is.
Thanks!

Ian, I don't think there's a word for that, but I would call it a "misnym."

METAPLASMUS I think this is the work you are all looking for :) Hope this helps

I meant to say word

The only problem with using "malapropism" is that they must sound similar. If all of Ian and his friend's words sound similar to the original, then the puzzle is solved. If, however, the word replacement is arbitrary, then that won't do at all.

Actually, Name, a malapropism is a ridiculous, absurd, or humorous, misuse of a word. It isn't necessarily similar in sound, but usually is. As such, I would say it is exactly what Ian has described, except, of course, for the intentional part. I'm not sure what you're describing. If the word replacement is purely arbitrary, say, “I think I’m having a lamppost.” instead of “I think I’m having a coronary.” then I guess it wouldn't be a malapropism. It certainly wouldn't be funny or ridiculous. It also wouldn't be what Ian was describing. It would just be a pointless non sequitur.

Well, to be fair, I'd never heard of "malapropism" before. I should also allow that Wikipedia, which was my source, isn't necessarily accurate. I also usually look for alternative sources to see if they match up with Wikipedia. I somehow missed doing that this time.
So, according to Wikipedia, the words must sound similar with no concern over whether it's intended. Ian's example does sound similar, but that doesn't mean that all of he and his friend's replacements do. He didn't state that they all do.
Having corrected my previous failure to examine other sources, it seems that it's common that they sound similar, not required. It also does not seem to be required that it be intentional, especially considering the source of the word: "Mrs. Malaprop."

In short, my bad.

However, in light of a more in-depth search, I have to disagree on the arbitrary replacement. I would consider the above example of "I'm having a 'lamppost,'" rather than a "coronary," to be a malapropism as well.

"I'm having a lamppost!" Actually, I think this is hilarious! I need to suggest this to my friend as a replacement for "cataract." Non-sequiturs have always been fun to me. I like nachos.

Porsche, I enjoy all your posts, by the way.

I couldn't find Victoria's suggested "metaplasmus" in my dictionary, so I hereby dub the metaplasmus to be any unidentified animal that looks kinda like a bird/duck/beaver/anteater. Or maybe that's a metaplatypus. I don't know.

Aaaaanyhoo, I think I'm gonna go with "intentional malapropism." Thanks to all who posted!

I dunno. To me a malapropism is a funny (in fact ridiculous) error based on an ignorant confusion of two similarly pronounced words. Certainly all of Mrs. Malaprop's errors were of that sort.

Still, malapropism or not, "I'm having a lamppost" is very funny. It obeys the standard rule of humor of preparing the hearer for one thing and then doing another.

Deliberate grammatical "errors" are all over the place. Advertisements are rife with them, as are the lectures of good teachers and the sermons of good preachers. They serve many uses--adding interest, inserting humor, waking the reader or listener up, making something more emphatic ("I ain't gonna do that,"), or even something routine like my "I dunno" that I started this post with--a non-confrontational way of saying I think you might be wrong.

I have looked around and cannot find a name for them, so I suggest we choose a name. First, they would fall under the category of Figures of Speech. Ideally the name would itself be a grammatical error. At a minimum I would say it should tell us immediately what is being done, so the word "gross" in the name suggests itself. Something like, "gross wordifucation?"

It's called a spelling error.

L33tspeak. :3

Isn't it called an Americanism?

:)

@Hairy Scot ... Only when it makes sense! LOL ... Otherwise blame it on the French! (Always blame the French ... ).

I was going to suggest "premalapropism" just 'cause its premeditated. It took a while to stop laughing.... I'm having a lamppost! Dang that is whey to phunny! Then I reconsidered and thought yeah weigh! Premalapropism was just perfect! Although I do love metaplasmus, it just doesn't completely describe the effect as intentional misuse persay more as to misspelling.

I know there is a specific term for the use of a "misspelling" in place of the real word, such as Karpet instead of Carpet - one of my elementary English teachers told us - but I can't remember since it was YEARS ago - I went online to find out what the term is and I can't find out - I found this instead.

One possibility is cacography, which is deliberate misspelling for comic effect:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacography

I call it freespelling ... I spell it with two L's, the website spells it with one L: http://www.freespeling.com/

@georgiapeanut: A word or phrase deliberately used incorrectly is called a mumpsimus. I know you posted long ago and may not read this but someone else may find the thread and wonder.

I think what you are looking for is the word "SIC"
Sic

Google it

It is used in print when a word is intentionally spelled wrong or differently.
E.G. "The new bank across the street is so unique, it calls itself Modern Banc (SIC) "

Solecism

I agree, this thread is wonderful!

It has been my unfortunate experience that a word misused by mistaking it for another word is funnier than doing it on purpose. At least people laugh AT the person when they did it by mistake. When I do it on purpose for comic effect, my less silly friends are in confusion. Then they correct me, and I have to explain that I said it to be funny. I gotta get some smarter friends!

My mom worked for a guy once who always got words and phrases mixed up. He was a Real Estate agent, and one of my favorites was, "We have to put the money in an escarole account."

I call it "being an idiot."
Some of the reasons people use this form of grammar and spelling is because of social networks, such as Twitter, which only allow a certain amount of characters.
Such words might include:
Dis- That
Dat- That
Da- The
Luv-Love
Wuv- Love
Plz- Please
Tank-Thank
and so on.

What drives me ABSOLUTELY CRAZY is when people use words such as:
Lyke- Like
Iz- Is
Wuz- Was
Luff- Love
Pwease- Please
Shank- Thank
Meh- Me
and so on.

There is no reason not to use the correct form of these words. I believe that some people use this form of typing/speaking to look "cool." Ignorance is not attractive.

This is coming from a 13 year-old, so if you believe that all teenagers nowadays talk like this, that is not true…

P.S. I believe this form of writing is called "text talk."

There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors.
- Preface to A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings, (1790)
This quote illustrates the reformed spelling advocated by Webster.

Ve haf vays ov making u tok!

oy vay

is there an alternate spelling for supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Satiric misspelling

There are often situations in current humorous literature where one would want (thus need?) the intensional use of a misspelling. The fact that it does not have a 'name' by this point in human evolution is staggering. I am limited to only 3 languages that I would consider myself capable enough to use the various tools of that language to 'search' for the missing word. I am not sure of the total number of languages current and viable to make a mathematical calculation on this missing 'piece' of written language. To what global body does one propose a universal addition to written language. Somebody must oversee this issue. While not universally qualified by being ignorant of many written languages, I do propose that I should be appointed to this position because of my dedication to such causes. I thank you for your vote and look forward to inventing any new words you might possibly need.

Well, 7 years after this thread was started...
I do believe there's finally a wiki entry for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensational_spelling

Malapropism is what it is called.

@dlockner - I'm afraid wrong on both counts. A malapropism is neither intentional nor to do with spelling, but rather the unintentional use of a similar-sounding word instead of the one you meant, 'often with a comic effect' (Oxford Dictionaries Online), for example 'dance the flamingo' instead of 'dance the flamenco' (although that wouldn't actually be so bad, seeing flamenco is Spanish for flamingo).

It seems that the term "Sensational Spelling" goes back to at least 1964 - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YdgsQQnkmHAC&pg=PA129&dq="sensational+spelling"&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rqsLU4XKGIWy7Abe1YDIBQ&ved=0CJ4BEOgBMBY#v=onepage&q=%22sensational%20spelling%22&f=false

@Peter Reynolds - interesting - Google Books won't let me see that page - they say 'You have either reached a page that is unavailable or reached your viewing limit for this book'. I use Google Books a lot, and I've noticed before that availability seems to depend on country. I've been corresponding with a guy in the States about the first occurrences of 'have another think coming' and he gets full access to books that I only get in snippet view (I'm in Poland)

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2014/01/having-think-about-another-think-coming.html

Warsaw Will - here's a screenshot - I find Google Books inter-country restrictions infuriating too - in my case they affect my access to 19th century material from Britain that is definitely out of copyright but Google in their ultra-cautiousness will only allow Americans (whose copyright laws are different) to view.

http://img.gg/1HNpt9H

This is called 'cacography' or 'satiric misspelling'

@K¥£!€

I believe cacography has already been mentioned.

:-))

@Peter Reynolds - Thanks.

Many people use
(sp?) for (I don't know how to spell that word)

Julie Andrews sang, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (sp?), with great gusto.

So, why can't we use
(sp!) for (I am deliberately mispelling (sp!) this word

QUESTION

Is there actually a specific word that does mean deliberately misspelled?

I know that [sic] (usually [sic], sometimes (sic), but brackets are preferred)

is used to indicate that the word was misspelled in the source document

Potential subset: Satiric Misspelling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satiric_misspelling

metaplasmus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacography

I know this was posted a while back, but for others who are looking for the answer it's 'Satire misspelling'.

Orthographic Variation

cacography

@HS Why are you resorting to Greek? Why do you think that we must find and borrow a Greek/Latin word in order to make up a "proper" word for something? Why not just use an English expression like "willful misspelling" or something?
BTW "cacography" would just mean "bad writing" IIRC - 'kakos' means 'bad' and 'graphein' is to write cf 'cacophony' = bad sound

The whole thrust of the original question is misguided. Why do we need "a word" for "intentionally incorrect spellling". Surely the "word" is "intentionally incorrect spelling" if that is what one means. Why bury the meaning in some obscure word that few know or understand? Where does this mentality come from? We seem to do it all the time; for example "arachnophobia"? Who are we kidding? It's just very Stephen Fry and snobby. What's so wrong with "fear of spiders" - or even "spider-dread" or something that a normal person would understand. After all, isn't language for communicating with normal people? Why make it so esoteric?

@jayles - OK, let's deal with cacography first. Yes, literally, in Greek, it means what you say, and that seems to be the standard dictionary definition, but it also seems to have taken on a new meaning, at least in linguistics:

"Cacography is deliberate comic misspelling, a type of humour similar to malapropism ... A common usage of cacography is to caricature illiterate speakers." Wikipedia.

Languages are creative like that, giving new meanings to adopted words, and so HS was perfectly correct.

You ask HS why he is resorting to Greek. But I could also ask why these (for me, at least) weird Anglish-inspired words have been noticeably creeping back into your own comments recently ("spider-dread" - come on, get real!). For me they have even less to do with natural English than Greek loan words, and I very much doubt that "normal people" have much time for them either.

English is a glorious mix - and I relish it. I have no objection to keeping things simple, but personally I hate this idea of language purism as much as I hate pedantry. Leave the language alone, it's just fine as it is!

I wouldn't have mentioned this if you hadn't brought the subject up :). And as for Stephen Fry, he has made one of the best commentaries on English I've ever seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY

@WW Sorry, I assumed 'cacography' was just a made-up word - it's all Greek to me ;}

@jtu

Your apology is noted.

:-))

Idiocy

REF: http://literarydevices.net/solecism/

Solecism is a stylistic device, which is defined as a grammatical mistake or intentional use of incorrect grammar in written language and speech. Hope this helps.

Grammar Intentionally Incorrect (or GII).
Insert cute emotji here.

The word for an intentional incomplete sentence is ellipsis, and the word for 'writing in an accent' (ex: ya'll) is diction, if I remember correctly. Not sure if there is a term for intentional improper spelling, though...

When spelling something incorrectly but intentionally, you would use [sic]. See here for full info: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/what-does-sic-mean/

Hope that helps!

The word is often "cacography" or "intentional cacography". I believe this is what you're looking for. It's usually used to mean "bad handwriting" or "bad spelling", but it was popularized by E. E. Cummings as an actual literary technique.

@Riss

I believe that "cacography" has been mentioned on at least two occasions in this thread.

The term for this is 'sensational spelling'
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensational_spelling

Usually a brand name or a play on words, used in advertising. Like the old pop brand, "Hi Klas" rather than "Hi Class" I want to say what that is called. Would an advertising agency know, I wonder? Or a college course in advertising maybe?

An extension of solecism?

a person who is poor in spelling and is bad in handwriting is called CACOGRAPHER. He has CACOGRAPHY

Satirical spelling

Malapropism

The closest thing that comes to mind is "[sic]". In literary works, it follows words that are intentionally misspelled, usually used when quoting another source verbatim.

I was told by my English teacher that the phrase is officially "Vernacular spelling"
To spell something incorrectly on purpose, to represent a character's education (or lack thereof)

The term is disambiguation

It really should have it's own name. I believe the concept you are talking about is often called Satiric Misspelling ("so phuny") or Sensational Spelling for when it's more for impact (think Beetles as opposed to Beatles).

sensational spelling

I learnt dat frum dis new ting dey got called Wikipedia

solecism