Misspelled name: The Fantastic Trope Of Wonderous Titles

It's wondrous.

You Grammar Nazi :)

(But yeah, you're right.)

edited 27th Feb '11 9:40:05 AM by Stratadrake

Both wonderous and wondrous are correct as of the dictionary. Variant spellings are not evil. Websters. Free dictionary.

edited 27th Feb '11 10:11:57 AM by shimaspawn

The OED says "wonderous" is obsolete (it lists it as a 15th-18th century variant); the single citation you've found — which also explicitly lists it as a variant of "wondrous" — is the only other dictionary I've found that acknowledges its existence at all. (The free dictionary points back to Webster's, so it's not an independent source.)

So basically, it looks to me like one editor at Webster's thinks it might be acceptable (but is still dispreferred) and every other lexicographer out there thinks it's unacceptable.

edited 27th Feb '11 10:25:12 AM by Micah

• Webster - Not found, suggest wondrous instead.
• Wiktionary - Variant spelling.

edited 27th Feb '11 11:25:55 AM by Stratadrake

Google search for "Wonderous" results in "Did you mean: wondrous".

I'm on board for swapping to the more common spelling.

It's not even in Oxford or Chambers (Oxford explicitly says the other is correct). I'd say go for 'wondrous'.

edited 27th Feb '11 11:40:38 AM by halfmillennium

I disagree. The trope definition says especially when set in the past. Using an obsolete variant is more consistent with the trope than using a modern spelling. Google is not an authority on this; they're making an assumption about what you're searching for, but they'll often try to change a legitimate search term just because it's less common.

Adding the modern spelling as a redirect, at least, would still be helpful.

^ While there's no arguing that, I'd prefer to go further and change the name to read wondrous.

Disagree Strongly.

"There's a tendency in media to create very long titles full of rare (or fake) multisyllabic words that paint a picture of whimsy, fun, and adventure, especially when the work is set in the past. This is almost a Dead Unicorn Trope as most of the titles are homages to works that never existed at all. It's often associated with pseudo-Victorian throwbacks and Steam Punk. "

Emphasis mine.

It's meant to convey a certain old-fashioned sort of sentiment and makes absolute perfect sense with 'Wonderous'. Make the modern spelling a redirect to avoid confusion, leave the old name. Being a Grammar Nazi about a legitimate, if old-fashioned, spelling of a word when it is named that AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE TROPE IT'S DESCRIBING is just wrong.

Put it on the This Trope Name References Itself index, add the modern spelling as a redirect, and call it a day. Actually, I'm going to go do that right now.

edited 13th May '11 7:46:31 AM by savage

But "wonderous" is older than the Victorian era, seems to have been rare even when it was extant, and the use of obsolete spellings does not appear to be a common feature of the trope.

That's overly pedantic. This is poetic license used well.

I'm gonna have to agree with the pedant here. There is no sense in leaving it like this when it wasn't even used that much when it was considered acceptable.

Okay, it's been about a month, so what do we do here?

That's actually an argument for leaving it considering the nature of the trope.

edited 12th Jun '11 7:36:03 PM by shimaspawn

Is it easier for a internal search to find one name over the other? if not, I vote for leaving it alone.

I'm with @dementia 13 here: The word being obsolete makes it better.