There is no trophy in catastrophe.
It must be the full moon … two occurrences of catastrophe misspelled in a single week. One in a newspaper, the other in a TV news graphic. And the culprits were both people who write for pay.
Catastrophe is of Greek origin and, like many words that came to us through Latin and Greek, its spelling seems strange. In most English words of more than one syllable, a final e is silent.
But it’s in the dictionary and spell checkers know about it, so there is no excuse for writing:
catastrophy
English teachers sometimes provide students with tricks to help them remember spellings. In elementary school we were taught “I before E except after C, or if sounded as A as in neighbor and weigh.” (The student who asked about seize was quickly shushed …)
My fourth grade teacher taught us to spell Geography with the sentence, “George Eats Old Gray Rats And Paints Houses Yellow.” All the little girls realized that one actually works … after we stopped squealing Eeeeeeew!
Our high school chemistry teacher told us we could remember the order of colors in the spectrum with the name Roy G. Biv (for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). But we’d never heard of anyone named Biv so it was easier to memorize the color spectrum than to remember the silly name.
People’s minds work in different ways. Tricks like these help some people recall rules and lessons. For others, the trick just complicates the process. It creates such a vivid mental picture that the student isn’t sure if that picture is the right way or the wrong way. So it’s with great caution that I warn you—the word catastrophe does not contain the word trophy.
If your fingers carelessly type catastrophy, picture it:
cat as trophy
Unless you’re writing about a feline Best in Show award, it’s wrong.
Greek and Latin words can be challenging, but there is no calliopy in the merry-go-round and exaggeration is not called hyperboly. So just remember that to spell catastrophe ending in y is the epitomy of sloppy writing and a recipy for disaster.
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