RANT: losing vs loosing

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Published Posted Saturday, May 21, 2005 9:14 AM by Nino

I'm starting off my 'Rant' category with a word usage issue that, well, gets me little tweaked.  “Losing” and “loosing”. I have lost count how many times I have seen “loosing” using in place of “losing”.  Do you see that they are different? Great. Now get it right!  I did a quick search in FeedDemon [of feed posts that have been downloaded] and here are some examples of incorrect word usage:

“. . . loosing all the pictures . . .”

“. . . never regret loosing to a machine . . .”

“. . . loosing faith . . .”

I'm trying to figure out the genesis of this issue and I am a bit flummoxed.  Is it a case where one person made a mistake once that was not corrected, so they now subconsciously think that “loosing” is correct instead of “losing”?  I am not certain. Regardless[1], the word “losing“ is only one “o” folks, only one – it really ain’t* that hard.

-Nino

*for some reason, “ain’t” seemed appropriate here

[1] To be the topic of another rant

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Comments

. Saturday, May 21, 2005 10:29 AM

+1! I *hate* that.

Nino
. Saturday, May 21, 2005 10:48 AM

Losing vs Loosing. Its not such a bad thing, irregardless of it's tendancy to be used wrong. Its the principal of the matter.

(I an out of examples which drive me bonkers. See "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss if you want a great read on one woman's crusade against bad grammar and punctuation.)

Nino