Do you use "mould" or "mold"? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by ABasilPlant@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

50 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've always thought that mold is the fungus, and to mould is to shape. When talking about it with my colleagues yesterday, I was surprised that this isn't common. Most people use one of the two spellings to refer to both.

Doing a quick search on duckduckgo also confirms that:

mould is the British spelling referring both meanings.
mold is the american spelling referring to both meanings.

In my quest to prove them wrong, I was surprised at how wrong I was... until I discovered a few people on the internet who said the same thing:

I'm not looking for what's correct or incorrect anymore, I just find it very fascinating that there are some people who use the words similarly to me, but the vast majority of others who use it in a different way.

So: what's the difference between mould and mold according to you?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] frazorth@feddit.uk 4 points 2 weeks ago

On a related tangent, because I see that this is mostly discussed to death, I dont get why Americans decided to merge other unrelated words.

For example, being exhausted and the rubber circle that cars and bikes use to roll smoothly are the same word in American English whereas we (UK) use different spellings.

Tire - Being exhausted

Tyre - Round rubber wheel thing

[-] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

Like many of the differences, I suspect that one came out of the attempts as English Spelling Reform, which took greater hold in the US. Ultimately, the process hasn't succeeded, but it has excised some of inconsistencies from the English. Though, it has also led to some confusion, as in the tire/tyre case.

this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024

88 points (96.8% liked)

Asklemmy

43915 readers

989 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS