Friday, June 15, 2007

Loses vs. Looses

Here's one of my pet peeves. I can't stand it when people use the word "looses" for "loses". For people who can't figure out the difference:

  • Loose - Baggy, slack, unrestricted, flowing, roomy, voluminous, ample
  • Lose - misplace, be unable to find, mislay, drop, fail, suffer defeat, shake off, evade, free yourself, be bereaved.

The word "lose" has many many meanings as opposed to "loose" which has only one basic meaning.

People; please be aware of this very very common spelling mistake. I've come across so many instances of this mistake in so many posts!

Sorry, to sound like a real snob, but as I mentioned earlier, it's one of my pet peeves! :)

p.s. I may be wrong, but I don't think the word "looses" exists anyway!

3 comments:

drac said...

actually, it does exist.

I'm at a loss to understand why you think it doesn't...

:)

Anonymous said...

My pet peeve is advice/ advise.
All papers in Sri Lanka dont seem to know the difference!
Another has to be the the superfluous descriptions most people use varying from "super" luxury apartments to VVIP's to "extremely" great batsmen. Dont you think that the added descriptions are unnecessary?

sach said...

I hear you on this. As Dictator of the Spelling Nazi and a person with borderline OCD (at least I think so) not just lose and loose but any spelling mistakes make me cringe.