Czechoslav* (for Czechoslovakia, etc.)

Kostnice Sedlec, or Sedlec Ossuary, is the final resting place of an estimated 40,000 souls. It’s located under the Cemetery Church of All Saints, Kutná Hora, in the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia), and many people refer to it simply as the “Bone Church.” That’s because in the 1870s, Czech woodcarver František Rint used the skeletal remains of the occupants to redecorate the chapel, lending it an eerie but strangely delicate beauty. Among Rint’s creations are a chandelier containing all the bones of the human body, four “bells” (one for each corner of the chapel), and two monstrances located near the main altar.

Czechoslav* persists on the list of high-probability errors, even though the country of Czechoslovakia officially perished in 1992. In fact, one might say today’s typo is a linguistic memento mori. There are 25 English-language entries for it in the OhioLink database, and 33 occurrences altogether.

(Kostnice Sedlec chandelier, by Daniel Wabyick, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Mystrey (for Mystery)

When Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune, moved from New Haven, Connecticut, to San Jose, California, in 1884, she began building a mansion. It would eventually contain 160 rooms and cost about $5,500,000 over the course of the 38 years it took to complete. That’s not so unusual, perhaps, for someone of her wealth and status.

But the story of the Winchester Mystery House is far from ordinary in every possible way. Sarah, grieving after the loss of her husband and only child some years earlier, had turned to spiritualism for solace. A medium pronounced she was being haunted by the spirits of people her family’s weapons had killed; they had caused the deaths of her loved ones, and she herself was in danger. However, she could she could appease these spirits by moving west and building a great house for them.

That’s exactly what Sarah Winchester did. Construction continued around the clock for the rest of her life, and the results were as odd as their owner—staircases leading nowhere, doors opening onto walls, secret passageways, and the like. Rooms were built, torn down, and rebuilt in an endless cycle. And not surprisingly, the number of reports about cold spots, unexplained noises, and ghostly sightings grew along with the house.

Sarah died in 1922, and ten years later, the Winchester Mystery House opened its doors to the public. It’s still a popular tourist attraction and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mystrey is a typo of lowest probability, meaning one should expect to find only one such entry in OhioLINK. As of this writing, there were two in that database, but this is balanced out by the fact that Mystrery—in the same category—retrieved nothing.

(Ambrotype of Sarah Winchester, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Terrois* (for Terrorism, etc.)

Today is the birthday of Yorkshire actor Peter Firth (1953). Fans of the Kudos/BBC television program Spooks will recognize Firth for his portrayal of Sir Harry Pearce, the formidable head of MI5’s counter-terrorism unit. As a leader, Harry doesn’t hesitate to make the tough decisions when the safety of British citizens is at stake. Nor does he suffer fools gladly, particularly when they place political or self interest above that of the nation. Harry’s a master of the one-liner when expressing contempt for those who fail to live up to his standards. (“I’m sorry–that’s the sound of incredulous laughter being stifled.”) And he’s one lucky fellow, given the dangerous nature of his job and Spooks’ penchant for killing off its characters; Firth is the only actor to have survived the entire run of the series thus far.

But this current project is hardly Firth’s first taste of success. In his youth, he played the part of troubled teenager Alan Strang in Peter Shaffer’s Equus, both in the original London and Broadway stage productions, and later in the film version with Richard Burton. For a complete list of Firth's credits, check out the Internet Movie Database's extensive filmography. Firth received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from University of Bradford, West Yorkshire, in 2009.

Terrois* is a low-probability typo on the Ballard list with 7 entries in OhioLink. Should you find any in your catalog, be prepared to take immediate countermeasures.

(Peter Firth at the 2009 BAFTA Television Awards ceremony, where Spooks was nominated for Best Drama Series. Photo by damo1977, from Flickr)

Deb Kulczak

Alaphabet* (for Alphabet, Alphabetical, etc.)

Edward (St. John) Gorey is an American author and illustrator most often associated with the macabre. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his abecedarian, or alphabet, book The Gashlycrumb Tinies, first published in 1963. In fact, one could call this the original “Series of Unfortunate Events,” with 26 children all meeting ghastly or even absurd ends. In verse, no less, as this couplet illustrates:

M is for MAUD who was swept out to sea
N is for NEVILLE who died of ennui

Gorey wrote or illustrated around 100 books, including at least five other alphabet ones (The Fatal Lozenge, The Utter Zoo, The Chinese Obelisks, The Glorious Nosebleed, and The Eclectic Abecedarium). His creepy cartoons (animated by Derek Lamb) have adorned the credits of the PBS series Mystery! since it began airing in 1980.

Alaphabet* is another low-probability error with 5 OhioLink English-language results. There are additional French (alaphabétique) and German (alaphabetisch) entries, and if you look, you just might find some lurking in your own catalog.

(Cover art for The Gashlycrumb Tinies, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Syndrom (for Syndrome)

Bats are scary, right? After all, they’re really just mice with wings. Most carry rabies. They’re blind, so they could fly into your hair and get tangled up. And some are even blood-sucking vampires just waiting to feed on unwary humans! Such is the mythology that commonly surrounds bats.

In truth, bats have more to fear from us than we do from them. A case in point: White-Nose Syndrome (WNS). Scientists are still struggling to understand the nature of this threat, but according to Bat Conservation International, it’s killed more than a million bats in 14 states and 2 Canadian provinces since first being discovered in 2006. Those affected commonly exhibit a white fungus on the nose or wings that causes them to awaken early from hibernation and freeze or starve to death. Humans can contribute to the spread of WNS–which often makes big leaps in its progression from site to site–so caves and abandoned mines in many parts of the country are being closed to visitors.

Why should we care? If compassion for a fellow creature isn’t a good enough reason, these winged marvels have an important role to play in keeping the insect population under control. A single bat can consume its body weight in bugs each night!

Syndrom is a low-probability typo on the Ballard list. By my count, there are currently 10 instances of it in the OhioLink database for materials coded as English-language. But this one is a little tricky to tease out, because “Syndrom” is the German counterpart, and it sometimes appears in records for English translations, bilingual titles, and works that simply refer to a particular syndrome by its German name.

(Townsend’s Big-Eared Bat, or Corynorhinus townsendii, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Lanscap*, etc. (for Landscap*)

In a nice confluence of the digital revolution (in which "everyone is a photographer now," according to a coworker) and the economic depression (in which cultural institutions can barely afford to stay open anymore, much less spend money on new exhibits), the New York State Museum has exhibited some creative juice of its own in its latest installation, Not Just Another Pretty Place: The Landscape of New York. This is the "first exhibition of landscape art to be completely culled from the State Museum’s vast collections." As a corollary, it has also invited members of the public to submit their outdoor snapshots, vacation photos, and other pictures of New York State for display in the museum. This initiative, called Wish You Were Here, has been a smashing success and these wonderful images are now available for viewing on Flickr. We found 21 cases of Lanscap*, six of Landcap*, four of Landsap*, and one of Landcsap* all littering the landscape in OhioLINK this morning.

(Photograph of the Olana Mansion, Columbia County, New York, home of Frederick Church, father of the "Hudson River School" of landscape painting, by Rolf Müller, June 2007, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Writng* (for Writing*)

Yesterday was "National Day on Writing," a fact that had escaped my notice until I showed up at a local book talk last night by Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of Salon.com and the author of Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software. Scott gave an interesting lecture about the history and significance of blogging, deftly fielding complaints (from audience members and critics in general) that blogging is too ephemeral, too casual, too personal, too anonymous, too impolite, too narcissistic, too shallow, too un-serendipitous, too unpublished. Basically, that it isn't really writing. Scott is living proof, though, that it is. He blogs about writing and writes about blogging. And, while there are fundamental differences between books and blogs (the combination of the two even has its own predictably ungainly wordform now: blook—coming soon to a dictionary near you!), at bottom they both speak to the same human impulse: to express one's thoughts in unspoken words and to do so publicly among a community of readers. There were eight cases of Writng* (for writing*) found in the OhioLINK database, and in 97 in WorldCat.

(Scott Rosenberg and his new book, Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters.)

Carol Reid