As Humpty Dumpty said

[doire]

I have been foolish.

I left a review.

I don’t know now why I did it. All the signs were there: mispelt title, posted in the wrong section, intertextual authors’ notes… But there was a spark of something there, so I praised the author’s ideas and suggested that getting some one to look it over before posting would help improve it. I then suggested that if a sentence wasn’t understandable without notes it should probably be rewritten and I pointed out two, out of many, words that I thought should be changed; one a homophone and the other either wrong or used in a very odd manner.

The story disappeared only to be reposted without my comments.

I got personal messages telling me that notes in brackets are a writing style to enhance emphasis.

And another to say that typos are due to a broken keyboard.

And in response to my wondering if kirtled was meant to be cuddled in this sentence. “The woman kirtled into his arms and cried.” “Yes I meant kirtled. Like when something shrivles, or something.” WTF!

Kirtled is a fine word, both concretely and used in metaphor. But I can find no use that doesn’t mean wearing, or draped, or surrounded.

Help!
Restore my faith in my knowledge of English words. Or tell me I’m wrong. What does kirtle mean to you? It would be mean to ask about shrivles. What did she mean?

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh! I bet it's supposed to be 'curled'. And then shrivles is shrivels.

But dude, I totally had to stare at that for several minutes to get it. I suppose it's possible that she doesn't even realize she's misspelling it, if it's a word she's only heard out-loud.

[doire]

That's certainly more plausible than my guess.

I had wondered if it was a spell-checker proposed word, but non of the spell-checker dictionaries I have access to recognise it.