From Howard Swains in The Times:
... Late Night Poker, the Channel 4 series that pioneered the game as a televised spectacle by introducing under-the-table cameras to peek at players' hole cards. This innovation offered an unprecedented look behind the poker face and made celebrities of many of its participants as television audiences were left in awe of their phenomenal composure under pressure and audacious derring-do.

Where does 'derring-do' come from? Is it related to the 'daring', and if so, how did it acquired its double r?

This is a very interesting phrase. Apparently, from etymology online, it was first used in the 1300s, from dorrying don, or 'daring to do.' However, in the 1500s it was misspelled as derrynge do and mistaken for a noun by Spenser, who took it to mean 'manhood and chevalrie.' There were other terms for 'daring,' too, such as durring and durren ('to dare'), plus don ('to do').

I wonder how many words have changed over the years merely because of innocent misspellings.

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I wonder how many words have changed over the years merely because of innocent misspellings.

Well, in the 1500s English spelling was pretty much a matter of personal choice, with the most common spellings ending up as the "right" spellings given in the dictionaries that were produced later.

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Well, in the 1500s English spelling was pretty much a matter of personal choice,

Is that why you still use so many gratuitous U's?

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Is that why you still use so many gratuitous U's?

So shouldn't that be "gratuitos", then?

Spelling varies with dialect and when education was somewhat patchy ther was alot of lattitude. Just look at old family history records and census returns. These were educated people for their day yet the spellings for family names vary from record to record. Our family underwent a name change when they moved from Dudley in the West Midlands to Durham in the North East.

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Originally posted by Caterwauller:

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Well, in the 1500s English spelling was pretty much a matter of personal choice,

Is that why you still use so many gratuitous U's?

Much of our language has been filtered through French and, for instance, the French "couleur" has become "colour" in British English spellings (and, I think, Canadian and Australian as well) which is why we retain the extra "u". The difference between "Commonwealth English and American English spellings is almost solely due to Noah Webster. He decided to make his dictionary definitively American by including colloquial American terms, removing what he considered "non-essential" letters and simplifying the spelling of other words. For example, out went the "u" in words like "color", one "l" disappeared from "woolly", an "-re" ending became "-er", words like "realise" became "realize" and "plough" became "plow" (which was actually its original spelling).

'Plow' was not its original spelling. The German is Pflug: there was originally a gh sound, which in Middle English softened to w or y depending on adjacent vowels (bow, day).

Welcome, Quark!

How is it I have missed your other 12 posts? Thanks to Doad for recommending us!

I am beginning to feel outnumbered by UK posters! It is a good feeling, though. I love reading about all the differences.

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Originally posted by aput:
'Plow' was not its original spelling. The German is Pflug: there was originally a gh sound, which in Middle English softened to w or y depending on adjacent vowels (bow, day).

I wasn't going back as far as the original German. I meant the "original English" spelling as in William Langland's 14th century work Piers Plowman.

I sang in a lot of church choirs (before the days of electric guitars and modern "worship praise" songs) and I used to read the hymn books when the sermons got too boring. The music copies gave the name of the tune and its composer (with dates), the writer of the words (with dates) and the translator (if appropriate) and the syllabic metre of each line of the words(very important in deciding what tune to set to a hymn). I always remember that "We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land" was rendered as "Wir pflugen und wir streuen" (MIDI file audio link at the bottom of this page).