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Doc says...
Greetings. It's September 24. Today, we'll have a little trivia fun as well as a tip on handling one of the spelling puzzles of the English language.
On this date in 1895, Annie Londonderry succeeded in her quest to
bicycle around the world,
exceeding
public expectations, and then
proceeded
to tell the world that new horizons were opening up for women. People of the time
conceded
that Annie had set a
precedent
, but her name has now
receded
into the dim annals of trivia.
Now, you have probably noticed that English can sometimes be tricky with its correct spellings. For example, we see in Annie's story that some words use the root spelling c-e-d-e, and some
c-e-e-d
, even though that syllable (and, as you'll see, that morpheme) is pronounced the same in any of the words that use it. But Annie's story can help us out. Imagine her glee! Whee! How great it was for her to proceed to succeed, and how great to exceed people's expectations!
Those three positive-thinking words, and only those three words--proceed, succeed, and exceed (besides their grammatical kin, such as proceeds, succeeder, or exceeding)--spell the root c-e-e-d rather than c-e-d-e.
So now you know a fun piece of trivia and, more importantly, have one of the many concise little language tools that will make you a better speller. With that, let's now proceed to today's video.
Morpheme of the week:
The root CED
