The View From Kalamazoo

You know, I had really thought I saw it all – that is, that I’d seen every possible way someone could cruelly abuse the spelling of medieval. When I was teaching, of course, I had some fantastic misspellings cross my desk (my absolute favorite was Charlemange. very contagious, leads to an unsightly desire for external conquest and internal reform. And no, schmartass, it wasn’t a mere typo – it was spelled the same way throughout a 5-page essay in which they actually managed to reference The Two Lives of Charlemagne and spell it correctly. hoo boy). Certainly there is no end to the amusement when teaching undergraduates, but the really amazing sadistic twisting of the poor word comes via the post office.

Letters, postcards, boxes full of books or supplies or whatnot – great or small, very important or nonsense tossed directly into the recycle bin, the address labels give us much in the way of mirth.

Ah but today, today. Today we chortled in our joy – hilarity, I tell you, as we discovered (like Schliemann finding Troy! Ok, maybe not…*snicker*) an amazing new rendition of our favorite ill-treated word!

midevile

This we add to our hallowed list of misspellings, to wit:

mid-evil (my favorite of the bunch! we’re not a little evil, we’re not very evil, we’re only middlin‘ evil!)
mideaval
midiful (I must admit, I can abide nothing full of midi!)
medevial
mideville (distant cousin of Cruella, I’m sure)
medeval
middevil (it’s just so Faust)
midevul
med-evil (as opposed to small or large, I suspect)
midival

Now, now I can die a happy Lisa. Fulfilled…