TITLE: Learning by Dint of Experience
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 27, 2005  7:29 PM
DESC: I learned something about an American idiom this evening.  Lots of people helped.
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BODY:
While writing my
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2005-09.html#e2005-09-27T19_10_30.htm">
   last article</A>,
I encountered one of those strange cognitive moments.
I was in the process of writing the trite phrase
"through sheer dint of repetition" when I had a sudden
urge to use <EM>dent</EM> in place of 'dint' -- even
though I know deep inside that <EM>dint</EM> is correct.

What to do?  I used what for many folks is now the
standard Spell Checker for Tough Cases:  Google.
Googling
<A HREF="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22dent+of+repetition%22">
   dent of repetition</A>
found 4 matches; googling
<A HREF="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22dint+of+repetition%22">
   dint of repetition</A>
found 470.  This is certainly not conclusive evidence;
maybe everyone else is as clueless as I.  But it was
enough evidence to help me go with my instinct in the
face of a temporary brain cramp.

Of course, our growing experience with the World Wide Web
and other forms of collaborative technologies is that the
group is often smarter than the individual.  The
<A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385721706/104-3666722-5528762">
   wisdom of crowds</A>
and all that.  It's probably no accident that I link
"wisdom of crowds" to Amazon.com, either.

To further confirm my decision to stick with 'dint', I
spent some time at
<A HREF="http://www.m-w.com/">
   Merriam-Webster On-Line</A>,
where I learned that 'dint' and 'dent' share a common
etymology.  It's funny what I can learn when I sit down
to write.
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