Talk:ne're-do-well

RFD discussion: May–October 2016
Rare misspelling of ne'er-do-well. Never does not become ne're when the 'v' is elided. Renard Migrant (talk) 21:28, 19 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Seems less rare than some of our misspelling entries. (I suppose people mix up the ending with words like they're.) But at least change it to a misspelling from "possibly nonstandard". Equinox ◑ 21:37, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I think "ne'er" is a corruption of "never", if so "ne're" is glaringly wrong, but anyway I have never come across the spelling in question. Donnanz (talk) 22:58, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Looks to me like a simple transposition typo: er --> re, though for some people it may be interference from the pondian -er/-re distinction or it may be trouble believing that the sequence "e'er" exists because it's archaic and not used much anymore even in poetry. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:16, 20 May 2016 (UTC)


 * For reference: . I don't know how to put a multiplication formula in the search since once I use multiplication (*), the dashes are interpreted as minuses. This might be a common misspelling. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:18, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I couldn't get a graph, either, but it says "ne're-do-well" (which has only been common enough to register since 1965) peaked in 1972 when it constituted 0.0000000311% of all phrases in the corpus with that number of words. "Ne'er-do-well" is older; it peaked in 1928 when it constituted 0.0000163387%, and in 1965 it constituted 0.0000107765%. When each was at its peak, "ne'er-do-well" was 525 times more common than "ne're-do-well". Comparing "ne're-do-well"'s peak of 1965 to "ne'er-do-well"'s data from that year (a non-peak year for it), "ne'er-do-well" was 346 times more common. However... paging through, there are ~50 Books hits that contain "ne're-do-well" alone (before the search results stop actually containing the word), whereas there are only two that contain both "ne're-do-well" and "ne'er-do-well". If "ne're-do-well" were a misspelling, or especially if it were a typo, I would expect more books to use both spellings. Hence, it might just be a nonstandard intentional spelling, at least for some authors. - -sche (discuss) 05:33, 23 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete rare misspelling. DCDuring TALK 17:51, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Weak delete. - -sche (discuss) 18:44, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Deleted. — SMUconlaw (talk) 21:13, 8 October 2016 (UTC)