Thursday, May 31, 2007

Just Deserts

It's spelling bee week, and look how the New York Times has been stung in a profile of the painter Hunt Slonem:

The long dining room table is set with pink porcelain plates, a few of which have been over-set with paper plates. Lunch is Louisiana takeout: boudin sausage, pecan pie, a local desert called ooey gooey. The talk is of a portrait, just hung, of Catherine of Aragon.


It's dessert, not desert. We believe, to a snooty arts writer, that being forced to eat Jell-O salad would constitute just deserts be for such an error. (And yes, here, the word has just one s, as it shares the root word with deserve.)

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