takeheartTIL about Titivillus a medieval demon that would feed on misspellings, mispronounced syllables and mumbled words. He was considered a natural enemy and tempter of scribes.
I initially wrote ‘temptor’ in the title but then double checked. Not today, Titivillus.
Saber_is_deadCaveat Temptor
Flying SquidThose medieval people were silly and backward. Why would anyone think a demon would drag them to hell just because the mispeeled a
Ah, so that’s why they mean by “the road to hell is paved with good in tensions”
DruidI think you a word
LillyPipOh no. Now we’ll never hear from FlyingSquid again. RIP, fiend, we’ll mis
You wouldn’t think how far clerical errors could go when it was laboriously copied by hand by exhausted monks in candlelight.
The whole Mary was a virgin thing (aka immaculate conception) was started because someone mistranslated young woman as (sexual) virgin. In some languages those terms are really close (even today for example in German: junge Frau Vs Jungfrau).
You’ve got Paul Bunyan and John Henry, but I’ve never heard a tall tale about a scribe or a printer.
My patron saint
ummthatguyBased on sheer numbers and the inclusion of “internet speak”, that must be one well fed and powerful demon.
samus12345Yes, once the internet became popular I imagine he became powerful enough to overthrow Lucifer and take over Hell. There’s a place there where the smallest detail of what you write or say is nitpicked. It’s hell for people who aren’t good at grammar and spelling and heaven for grammar nazis.
With the anount of should of/ would of I see I have to think the demon is dead.
To be fair some languages like English or French have so horrendous and outdated orthography that I’m not going to fault the writers.
Writers. Why is there even a W in that word still? Ridiculous, write?
If it eats the mistakes wouldn’t that be helping? I’ll take the thing if no one else wants it.
delirious_owlYou accidentally a word
SpitzspotAnd that demon grew up and bought Twitter.
Aka Mr. Vile Tits
egretsHow was there a demon of misspelling before standardized spelling?
If there’s no agreed upon standard, everyone sets their own standard.
If you read the article you would have seen that when it was first made up it was more about going to church and singing or praying out of rote and not doing it full heartedly.
I wondar wat he’s up to these daze.
Track_ShovelMFer got obliterated by MSWord spell check
That’s what you think. He thrives on British English, so every time MS Word autocorrects colour to color or aluminium to aluminum, he is further sustained.
why did they stop at “aluminum”? why don’t they have “magnesum”, “barum”, or “radum”?
why don’t nfl games take place in a “stadum”? why is the size between small and large not a “medum”?
either their table salt ahould contain sodum or their treatment of aluminium is so dumb.
I guess ask the Romans about half of those.
The last time I saw a TIL about this sort of thing though it turned out that “Aluminum” was the original but some academics thought “Aluminium” sounded fancier. My understanding is that it relates to the oxide names, which in the case of aluminum is alumina, after which the -a is swapped for the -um, similar to how magnesium oxide is magnesia. But I’m too lazy to fact check.
Also Molybdenum exists too, so it’s not like Aluminum would be the one exception that is just -um and not -ium.
Would I curse in his name or praise him if I misspell something?
How do you misspell something before standardised spelling?
There was some degree of standardization. Especially for important legal and religious texts alteration, even if accidental, was considered a sin/vice.
Scribes very often simply had to produce 1:1 copies of existing texts. So the standard was right in front of them.
AkasazhIt’s rather ironic that his name is spelled ‘Tytinillus’ in the document of John the blind.
Stupid sexy Titi Villus, don’t tempt my spell ing.