Deftly Ill

‘Deftly Ill’ is the name of the rap album I had planned on releasing in the very distant future.

So far, these are the only rhymes that I have, and they are literally ‘sick’:

I was coughing green gunk left and right
It was not a pretty sight
Even with that Robituss’
That bug sure put up a fight

It will sell zero copies, as even I wouldn’t buy it.

So I have been feeling deathly ill. This head cold has been with me for nearly two weeks now. It had deterred me from returning to Houston and dampened my New Year’s Eve debauchery. All I did was stay home and cough and blow my nose and snipe people (and popos) from tall buildings in Grand Theft Auto III, which was surprisingly fun (I would snipe someone and then snipe all the victim’s would-be robbers).

I think the cold is nearing its end. My colds always start with a sore throat, progress to sneezing and nasal congestion, and end with a fit of coughing. I’ve gotten to the coughing part, so I guess that’s good even if I can’t sleep much.

So there, that’s my excuse for not posting for the past few weeks. Coughing and typing are contraindicated. Trust me; I’m a doctor (of pharmacy).
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When I came up with the title for this post, it got me thinking about stuff I’ve always heard misspoken.

‘Deathly ill’ means so sick as to be on a deathbed, while ‘deftly ill’ means that you’re skillfully sick or that you spit hot fire, like Mos Def (I assume ‘Def’ in this case is short for ‘deft’ and not ‘deaf’).

Here’s two others that are similar:

Wrong: ‘Play it by year’. Right: ‘Play it by ear’.
Wrong: ‘For all intensive purposes’. Right: ‘For all intents and purposes’.

I always cringe when I hear someone say those phrases incorrectly. It’s just a little pet peeve of mine.

Though it is more excusable than gross misspelling (even Mozilla Firefox has a spellcheck feature): no computer program is going to put red (or green) squiggly lines underneath ‘play it by year.’

What are some of the misspoken things you’ve noticed?