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  • The intentional spelling of sports used by people who hate sports.

    sprot: a splinter, a fragment.

    June 14, 2015

  • Is there a linguistic term for this intentional misspelling or pronunciation change?
    See sprots, hoik. If not, there should be one.

    June 14, 2015

  • There's a whole genre of this in Indonesian, known as plesetan, which translates from Javanese as 'slipping'.

    One of the better examples that sticks in mind in English is a Monty Python sketch where John Cleese was giving a speech as the Minister for Pisrenunciation.

    June 15, 2015

  • Googling "deliberate misspelling" I find that many people have posed this question. There is cacography, which is just bad spelling, whether or not deliberately inflicted. Wikipedia provides an entry for Sensational spelling, which is a common marketing ploy as in "froot" for "fruit." Such misspellings are meant to confer cuteness rather than express scorn.

    If I understand correctly vendingmachine's quest is for a term to describe the practice of deliberately misspelling a word as a way to convey disapproval or contempt. I think "disspelling" is a good candidate if it is allowed to cohabit with the sense of dispersal or dissipation. (I also find a "dispelling ring" defined as an apotropaic piece of jewelry in the Dark Souls game, but this is probably ephemeral.)

    disspelling is a combination of dis + spelling.

    June 15, 2015

  • Thanks, gms. I like the term "disspelling". (If only autocorrect would allow it. It keeps changing "disspelling" to "dispelling"!)

    June 15, 2015

  • Oops. I didn't intend to disspell your Wordnik user name on purpose (as a way to convey disapproval or contempt.) It was pure carelessness.

    June 15, 2015

  • See disspelling.

    June 25, 2015