Friday, January 11, 2008

January 11, 2008 - Achive*, etc. (for Archive, Achievement)

My mother used to feed us chives as children, gathering them from the garden, their soft purple tops bobbing, snipping them with scissors into little sections, and sprinkling them over cottage cheese. We understood that they were "good for us," but didn't really mind. It was much later I achieved the knowledge that chives were members of the Onion Family, which only made them seem friendlier still. OhioLINK yields 25 instances of Achive*, making it a typo of "high probability" on the Ballard list. Approximately a third of these are typos for archive, archives, etc.; the rest are for words like achieve. Related typos include: Acheiv*, Achievment*, Achievemnt*, and Achieven*. (Drawing of a chive plant from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

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