Monday, December 04, 2006

Brandling

Some perfectly good words go wrong when unintended graphemes leap out at you. For example when TV trailers promise that a programme will repeat 'weeknights at 7', I just can't stop myself reading it as 'wee knights'. It's quite common to hear the word 'biopic' (as in biographical picture) pronounced to rhyme with 'myopic' (as in short sighted, or in practical terms unable to see wee knights in the distance). And the other day I actually heard someone on the radio say 'mizzled' (misled).

So when I saw the expression 'brand-led' broken over two lines:
brand-
led
I reassembled it as 'brandled' (rhymes with 'handled'). A great word - somewhere between branding and footling.