common speeling errors

[Clueless Morgan]

It's "bated breath" not "baited breath"

OOOOOOOOh, good one. Now, is that an abbrv "abated"? I'll let someone else be the bearer of knowledge.

The verb "to bate" is not commonly used in English anymore, but it means to moderate or restrain. In this idiom it's used as a contraction of "abated", not an abbreviation, meaning "lessened or reduced" so to have bated breath means that you nearly stop breathing.

- if I ate a can of tuna in front of my cat, could I call my breath baited?

"the bastard human with baited breath glared down at me, his prisoner, with gleeful malice"

Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
~ Cruel Clever Cat by Geoffery Taylor

---

Yeah, not sure what happened over there after our ancestors left. They've really let the language go to hell.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/wor...n-spelling

British and American spelling

There are several areas in which British and American spelling are different. The differences often come about because British English has tended to keep the spelling of words it has absorbed from other languages (e.g. French), while American English has adapted the spelling to reflect the way that the words actually sound when they're spoken.

Regarding Aluminum vs. Aluminium, Sir Humphrey Davy, discoverer of the metal, initially named it Alumium, then changed it to Aluminum (the American usage), and finally settled on Aluminium (the common British usage). It's thought that the American usage of the world was informed by how it was spelled in Webster's dictionary when aluminum started to become more widely available. Aluminium is officially the correct spelling, according to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, but that doesn't stop us 'Mericans from pronouncing it however we damn well please.