June 18, 2007 - Westminister

Overwhelmingly apt to be a typo for Westminster, Westminister could be the rare exception that proves the rule. I say "could" because it's hard to tell. There are so many instances of the latter on Google that it almost seems as if one or two of them might actually exist somewhere. But none of the gazetteers I looked at included this spelling. Of course, "-minster" means minister, so perhaps we can be forgiven our spelling sins. The magnitude of this typo reaches almost Biblical proportions: there are 324 instances of it in OhioLINK and 138 in my own library’s catalog. Westminister appears on both the "highest probability" and the "high probability" portions of the Ballard list, linked with London, Press, Abbey, England, and University. (Illustration is The Thames Below Westminster by Claude Monet.)

Carol Reid