I had a request to do a little primer on the words "lose" and "loose" because the two words are often confused. Writers use lose for loose and loose for lose.

How many times have you seen someone write, "He is going to loose his reputation," or "She acted lose at the party" ?

Well, "lose" rhymes with the Spanish word "luz," which means light, but it also rhymes with Jews, booze, and that northern expression "youse" (youse guys)-- equivalent to the sourthern, "y'all."

"Lose," according to Amercian Heritage Dictionary, means "to be deprived of ownership." That also means it is a verb: to lose.

"Loose" is an adjective for the most part that means "not fastened or restrained." For example, "He is a loose canon." But the word can also be a verb in rare usage: " Loose the dogs." And on even rarer occasions, "loose" can be used as an adverb: "He acted loose." That last usage might indicate the person in question was drunk.

"Loose" rhymes with moose, caboose, juice, duece, goose, and if you don't get this, maybe we ought to get the noose.

When you write and if you have trouble with these two words, maybe you ought to sound it out to make sure you have the correct "L" word.

Of course, when writing the two words, spell check won't be able to read your mind. So spell check will cowardly tell you "OK. This is correct." Not (as Shakespeare said so many years ago).

Here's a little poetry from the Toastmasters "Toastmaster" magazine to conclude this :

An Owed to the Spelling Checker

Wee have a spelling checker.

It came with hour PC.

It plane lee marks four are revue

Miss steaks wee can knot sea.

By the way, the title of this blog was a parody on "lose" and "loose." -- Slainte!