Haughty

How many people do you know who have found a misspelled word in the New York Times -- that wasn't in a letter to the editor?? Well, now you can add me to that illustrious list!

I found this word -- misspelled as "hautily"! -- in A Free-for-All on Science and Religion, by George Johnson in the New York Times Science section. I think the misspelling alone makes this word memorable!

Haughty (haw-tee) [Origin: 1520-30; obs. haught (sp. var. of late middle English haute via Old French from Latin altus high, with h-

adjective

  1. disdainfully proud; snobbish; scornfully arrogant; supercilious: haughty aristocrats; a haughty salesclerk.
  2. lordly, disdainful, contemptuous.
  3. Archaic. lofty or noble; exalted.

Usage: Hautily [sic] telling Napoleon that he had no need for the God Hypothesis, Laplace extended Newtown's mathematics and opened the way to a purely physical theory.

[NOTE: in this sentence, the word was used as an adverb and -- amazingly enough -- was misspelled by the NYTimes]
.

More like this

This fine word is often used by molecular biologists and protein chemists to describe proteins that are comprised of separate subunits. However, this word has a long and distinguished history outside of biology, as I recalled when I found it in a crossword puzzle in a book published by Dell;…
I see words as power: words provide people with a deeper and richer meaning to their emotional and professional lives, especially because so much of our lives rely on words. So not every word that I use in this little feature is completely unfamiliar to you, or at least I hope it isn't, because…
I found this fine word this morning in the New York Times story about William Styron entitled Styron Visible: Naming the Evils that Humans Do, by Michiko Kitutani. Oeuvre (Å-vruh) [French uvre from Old French uevre, work, from Latin opera, plural of opus, work] n. A work of art. the works of a…
I remember this fine word from the GRE exam from a dozen years ago, but I haven't seen it since, until now, thanks to The Republican War on Science, by my friend and fellow SciBling, Chris Mooney. This book was recently released in the more affordable trade paperback. If you haven't read this book…

Did the Times also misspell, "Newton?"

By Another Kevin (not verified) on 25 Nov 2006 #permalink