How do you spell Dreidel? Shame on you Microsoft!

Posted on December 9, 2012 | 15 Comments

First of all, I would like to wish everyone celebrating today a blessed Chanukah or Hanukkah. (I’ve found it spelled both ways) I don’t celebrate Hanukkah, but I appreciate the holiday, and its significance.

While I was writing a guest post this morning, I found myself smacking myself upside the head over the word “dreidel.”  Why would I do such a thing?

Well, it seemed an easy enough word, but no matter how I tried to spell it, a wavy red line appeared beneath it (using the Microsoft Word program.)

So, I did a left-click on the word, all ready to choose the correct spelling.  What came up?

Deride, derided, derides, dreaded, derider.

I don’t know about you, but I figured that I must have been SO DERN FAR OFF in my spelling that it couldn’t figure out which word I wanted.  So I tried several different combinations.  No dice.

Not to be thwarted in my holiday spirit, I copied the original spelling and went to Dictionary.com.

I pasted dreidel into the website, and low and behold…

——————————

drei·del

/noun, plural drei·dels, drei·del.

a four-sided top bearing the hebrew letters nun, gimel, he,  and shin,  one on each side, used chiefly in a children’s game traditionally played on the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

——————————————————–

You guessed it, I’d spelled it right to begin with.

Now, I ask.  How the heck can a big company like Microsoft not have a simple word like dreidel in their spell-checker dictionary?  SHAME ON YOU MICROSOFT!

And, I must now say, shame on WordPress too, because when I pasted this post into WordPress, I find it is being underlined here, too.

Soooooooo… This made me wonder.  How many words have you come across that a spell-checker didn’t have on file?

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15 responses to “How do you spell Dreidel? Shame on you Microsoft!”

  1. mywithershins | December 15, 2012 at 12:20 pm |

    Being Canadian, I use a lot of French words in my ‘MS Word’ texts, as well as other words from other languages and none of them come up in the normal spellchecker unless they are spelled like an English word. If you switch your language settings to whatever language the word comes from, more often than not, they have the correct spellings. I realize that Dreidel is a common enough word, but it is technically Hebrew. If you highlight it and change the language setting, you should get rid of that annoying red line. 🙂

  2. Richard Leonard | December 10, 2012 at 7:04 am |

    Some spell checkers have the option to ignore words with first capital letters. This might help reduce the red-line fever. 🙂

  3. Richard Leonard | December 10, 2012 at 7:02 am |

    Scrivener is developed by http://www.literatureandlatte.com/about.php
    based in Truro in Cornwall, England. One of their team members is in Sydney, Australia.
    When I digress, I go all the way! 😉

  4. Let's CUT the Crap! | December 10, 2012 at 12:21 am |

    Plenty of fish where that one came from….Microsoft might want to take a better look underneath the hood…

    Great idea for a discussion post, Jennifer.

  5. Tasha Turner | December 9, 2012 at 10:03 pm |

    Hebrew words are hard to do in spellcheckers as many have 2-6 spells when you transliterate. Chanukah has at least 4 different English spellings. As my husband points out every time I complain about this “it’s spelled only one way when you use Hebrew letters”… Too many common Internet and basic programs don’t show up in spellcheck on many programs. Draidel can also be spelled draydel.

  6. caitlinstern | December 9, 2012 at 6:18 pm |

    I remember writing something where Cinderella was accepted, but Rapunzel wasn’t. I had to look it up to have one of those ‘I totally spelled that correctly’ moments, too.

  7. jmmcdowell | December 9, 2012 at 5:16 pm |

    Blog and blogging are words that frequently get tagged by spell checkers. And Word has so many that don’t make sense, I’ve practically given up on it!

  8. Mary J. McCoy-Dressel | December 9, 2012 at 11:53 am |

    Far too many to count. I went through this yesterday as a matter of fact. Frustrating when a spell checker makes you doubt yourself. Dictionary dot com is my friend.

  9. Laith | December 9, 2012 at 8:19 am |

    I’m drawing a blank at the moment about any specific examples, however I have noticed the same thing in most every program with built in spell checking. Microsoft (Word & Outlook), Word Press, Google Drive, Firefox; they all have this issue.

    There are a few words that I know I will use that will trigger the dreaded red squiggle, my name for example. I’ve gotten into the habit of quickly typing in the common ones and doing an ‘add word’ whenever I’m dealing with a new copy.

  10. frommymusings2u | December 9, 2012 at 12:19 am |

    I’ve come across quite a few words that my word processing program didn’t have on file, so I just hit the “add word’ option and keep going. But it really is aggravating at times…Many thanks for sharing!
    Rachael 🙂

  11. Carrie Rubin | December 9, 2012 at 12:15 am |

    I haven’t noticed that so much with Microsoft, but I do notice it a lot with WordPress. I figured it was because it’s an Australian company, and our slang doesn’t necessarily match up. But certainly, Dreidel should be found among both!

    • Richard Leonard | December 9, 2012 at 4:05 am |

      Hi Carrie! Sorry, but which is an Australia company? All (both?) of the above mentioned as Australian would be news to me. All USA as far as I know. 🙂

      • Carrie Rubin | December 9, 2012 at 11:34 am |

        Oops, now that you’ve got me thinking about it, I realize I was referring to Scrivener, not WordPress. That’s the one where I notice some words don’t jibe, and I believe Scrivener is an Australian company. But I could be wrong. I’ll have to look it up once I get off my tiny phone and onto my laptop. 🙂