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Description
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xxxxx@xxxxx.com 2002-01-24
4530641 made me curious: how many other glaring typos are sitting in
/usr/dict/words, waiting for someone to stumble on them? While taking a break
today from more stressful activities, I decided to find out.
I cross-referenced our /usr/dict/words with the ones provided with Linux
and NetBSD, removed all remaining proper nouns, and ended up with a list
of 921 potentially incorrect words. I performed a visual inspection on
those, and found at least six more typos.
To kick things off /usr/dict/words has two spellings for sarsaparilla; the
latter is incorrect:
$ grep parilla /usr/dict/words
sarsaparilla
sarsparilla
... and two spellings for kaleidoscope; the former is incorrect:
$ grep kaleid /usr/dict/words
kaleidescope
kaleidoscope
... and two spellings for desiccate, *neither* of them correct:
$ grep sicate /usr/dict/words
desicate
dessicate
... then there's installment:
$ grep installment /usr/dict/words
$ grep instalment /usr/dict/words
instalment
... and finally, troubadour is botched:
$ grep trouba /usr/dict/words
troubador
It's also worth noting that there are a number of just plain bizarre
words -- for instance, what in the world is a `nosebag'? I know that
words run together with time, but "decisionmake" and "oneupmanship" is
really pushing the limits. Come on.
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