Weary and Wary are different words, right?

May 26, 2018 8:37 PM

The past few years I've been noticing more and more people saying (and writing, but less often) weary when they mean wary. To clarify, folks will say "wEARry" to mean "cautious of" which I thought for sure was pronounced "wAIRry" (Not to say that I think its happening more often, I think I just started noticing it and can't stop noticing it.) Is this a regional pronunciation thing, or just a common word mixup? Or am I wrong?
posted by Grandysaur to Writing & Language (24 answers total)

Well, you are right, but shifts in vowels are a thing, and maybe one is happening there? I don't know how to find out.
posted by thelonius at 8:43 PM on May 26, 2018

I've noticed this too, to the point that I now have to do a momentary double-take to recalibrate whenever it happens. I just chalk it up to a common word mixup.
Same for occurrences of "irregardless" and mixing up subjects/objects ("Me and him went to the store" and "He called you and I").

[For reference, my language "region" is CA but I consume a lot of media in UK/Commonwealth English as well.]
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 8:44 PM on May 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

I have also noticed this! My theory is that regional accents that have fewer distinctions between different a and e sounds have confused people to the point where people forget that there are different a and e sounds even in their own accents.
posted by bleep at 9:14 PM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

My superpower is noticing every little error in grammar/usage/spelling and I've noticed this both in writing and less so in pronunciation. If it's written then you know that the person really doesn't know that the two words are different, whereas if it's spoken you may not be able to tell, especially if they're sort of in-between. It's also not possible to tell what's a mispronunciation and what's an honest-to-god mixup. Add to that the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (wherein it might always have been there and you're only now noticing it that you've become aware of it) and it's impossible to tease out. But they're definitely different words (one means tired, the other means cautious) pronounced as you describe, although I'm no prescriptivist to it's possible drift is causing the two to become conflated.
posted by axiom at 9:16 PM on May 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Yes I've noticed this, and I'm pretty sure people are conflating it with "leary."
posted by velveeta underground at 9:19 PM on May 26, 2018 [37 favorites]

Best answer: People don’t know the difference, in my experience. I grade a lot of papers and I see the weary/wary mistake in writing quite often (people using weary when they should be using wary).
posted by stellaluna at 9:20 PM on May 26, 2018 [8 favorites]

"leary" seems to be a subvariant of "leery," and is most often found as a last name. I too have been noticing "weary" and "wary" being mixed up, though "weary" seems to be the commonly used error. Just in the last year, it seems to have become more and more common, but I have no clue why.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:27 PM on May 26, 2018 [9 favorites]

I've noticed it too. I think people want to use "wary", think wear is the correct sound (and not war) and then spell it that way. I'm not sure why we see so much more of it lately- confirmation bias? Or perhaps fewer people looking it up and instead relying on spell check. If you don't happen to know that weary is a word meaning "tired" it doesn't get fixed.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:02 PM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I've definitely been noticing it, and my theory is also that people are conflating "leery" (cautious) and "wary" (cautious) and thinking that "weary" means "cautious."
posted by lazuli at 10:10 PM on May 26, 2018 [8 favorites]

One thing is, it's the type of mistake that won't be caught by your spell checker, because both are valid words.

My theory is, we're tending to see more of this type of mistake in recent years vs just straight-up misspelled words--the "spell-checker effect".

There are no red-wavy lines in your doc but there are still mistakes because the spell checker doesn't understand context and you don't know the difference.
posted by flug at 10:46 PM on May 26, 2018 [10 favorites]

I haven't noticed this, but I notice similar mistakes all the time. About an hour ago, it was something that had "peaked" the writer's interest, rather than piqued it.

One particular evolutionary quirk of the English language, though, is its adaptability: after a while, weary will probably officially become a variant spelling of wary. The same goes for grammar: I expect the comma splice will be welcomed into the fold eventually, and maybe someday schoolchildren will formally study the use of marks for emphasis.
posted by tapir-whorf at 11:45 PM on May 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm with the "leery" theorists.
posted by praemunire at 12:02 AM on May 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I've noticed it too. I think people want to use "wary", think wear is the correct sound (and not war) and then spell it that way.

My theory is, we're tending to see more of this type of mistake in recent years vs just straight-up misspelled words--the "spell-checker effect".

This and this, in summary. It’s irritating.
posted by Salamander at 12:47 AM on May 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

Wary, leery, chary = cautious, apprehensive, distrustful, fearful, uncertain; suspiciously reluctant

Weary = tired

Leary = acerbic Bostonian comedian/actor
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:45 AM on May 27, 2018 [7 favorites]

I suspect they are hearing "wary" in their minds and writing it as "wear" (like with clothes) "-y". I haven't seen this yet, but I know it will drive me insane with rage when I do. :(
posted by heatherlogan at 5:48 AM on May 27, 2018

i dunno how peeps mess those two up. its similar to people messing up the spelling of peek. it drives me nuts to read about how people peak around a corner. what does that even mean?!?
posted by speakeasy at 6:18 AM on May 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

It's definitely people smushing together leery and wary.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:21 AM on May 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: (adding some more thoughts, partly to summarize other comments)
The explanation could be any one of many:

-People don't know the "correct" way. For whatever reason, they're not fluent or that familiar with the language. (The fluidity of language, and the outdatedness of written English as a reflection of spoken English, may contribute to this.) (The spell-checker effect theory goes here too.)

-They could but don't pause to think about it or do a simple proofread or spell-check. Maybe there's no time, there are other priorities, or the thought of proofreading just does not occur to them (I have known people like this).

-They don't care. A lot of people simply don't pay that much attention to words or their meaning. It just doesn't seem to matter to some people, with or without consequences. I had a colleague who was annoyed when someone pointed out that "i.e." is not the same as "e.g."--he insisted it was the same thing, whereas I'd bet there are lawsuits that hinge on the difference.

-It might just be a slip-up. We've all had moments of brain fog, despite knowing the "correct" way.

-Once some people make the mistake, it proliferates. The reason I do the double-take mentioned in my first comment is that, now that I've seen the word spelled wrong, repetitions of the misspelling push it towards normalization in my brain...

And as everyone's comments here show, once you start, you notice these errors everywhere, from Netflix subtitles to news articles to apartment listings with weird things like "dinning" rooms...
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 9:17 AM on May 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

I haven’t seen this, and I’m surprised to hear of it.
posted by FencingGal at 9:24 AM on May 27, 2018

I have seen this. Add to this: fleshing/flushing out. As in, "I think we really need to flush this out so people understand the whole problem."
posted by oflinkey at 9:38 AM on May 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Oh my god this has been appearing around me for the past 2-3 years, out of nowhere, and slowly driving me crazy. I’m in Los Angeles in a professional environment, if that helps.
posted by samthemander at 11:11 AM on May 27, 2018

I hear and see it A LOT and as a person whose parents constantly corrected me I feel both annoyed at my own parents for being such snobs and at other parents for letting their children to around saying stuff wrong. Agree that it's a conflation of weary/wary/leery.
posted by masquesoporfavor at 1:44 PM on May 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: This bothers me enough that my reddit username is a reference to it. I also believe it’s because of people confusing weary, wary, and leery. Leery and wary mean generally the same thing, but people mean wary, and so combine the two somehow into weary.
posted by sixfootaxolotl at 7:24 PM on May 27, 2018

Best answer: I notice it a lot and it annoys me to no end. People irl say it as well as online and on the news etc. My DH says it too and smiled wickedly when I used to correct him. I don’t bother any more because its like whack a mole, I rarely hear anyone use wary at all, they’re all so weary I guess. I think its been the last 5-10 yrs its been happening in my corner of the world.
posted by RichardHenryYarbo at 7:43 AM on May 28, 2018