Friday, January 16, 2009

Unity

In producing an announcement about the United Service in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity just now I very nearly added more than my usual amount of harm to inter-denominational relations by typing Untied. It being a proper word, the spell-checker missed it.

How about that? A six letter word which can be made to mean almost exactly its opposite by moving one straight line.

UNITED
UNTIED

Next time the after-dinner conversation drags I suggest you throw that one in and watch the ice form, I mean break.

5 comments:

Mike Peatman said...

A bit like the version of the Bible that had "go sin on more" rather than "sin no more"

RuthJ said...

Is an after-diner conversation one which takes place after a meal with the Borgias?

And Mike, ours was the church where the OHP slide read: 'Come on and celebrate, celebrate and sin!'

Steve Tilley said...

After diner. Sorry. Speed blogging doesn't become me.

Anonymous said...

They still talk about the service where the last 'i' was missing in 'Arise and mighty army, we arise'.

By the way, Steve, Filing?

Anonymous said...

But what about good old 'cleave', where it means its exact opposite without having to change a thing?!

My little sister fell off the pew once when the OHP had the words 'Give ear to my words, O Lord/ Consider my medication'.

And the c. 1631 edition of the Bible which is known as 'the Wicked Bible' because 'not' was left out of the 7th commandment!
Early Guardian proof-readers at work?