:: If you ever wondered how hard it was for the actors on Star Trek: The Next Generation to get their lines out, full of fake technobabble as they were, wonder no more: they relied heavily on the word "shit".
Via MeFi and SFSignal, respectively.
UPDATE: Above, I use the idiom "baited breath", which is, of course, supposed to be "bated breath". I am aware of the correct spelling, but this is one of those homophones that my fingers don't know, and thus refuse to type correctly unless I'm watching them carefully. (My fingers are pretty treacherous, actually: in The Promised King, I constantly have to be on alert lest my characters leap onto their trusty horses and take up the reigns before riding off.)
Upon doing a bit more research, I find that this error is so common that it may become standard as our language evolves:
The correct spelling is actually bated breath but it’s so common these days to see it written as baited breath that there’s every chance it will soon become the usual form, to the disgust of conservative speakers and the confusion of dictionary writers....It’s easy to mock, but there’s a real problem here. Bated and baited sound the same and we no longer use bated (let alone the verb to bate), outside this one set phrase, which has become an idiom. Confusion is almost inevitable.
So there you go. Bate, bait, where will it end? The befuddlement is enough to leave my breath thoroughly Beta'd.
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