Over the last couple of years I’ve striven mightily to reduce the level of snark directed at public grammar/syntax/spelling/usage errors. No, really—I have. Everyone makes mistakes, after all. But for some reason I can’t seem to extend that forgiveness to governmental entities. (Remember this?)
Maybe it’s because of my profound dislike of the political class. Or maybe it’s because those of us under the government’s thumb ought to at least have literate masters. Doesn’t matter. Just feast your eyes on this:
See that? “EXCEPT TO RETREAVE HARVESTED ANIMALS.”
It got me to wondering: Maybe retreave is actually a word—not an alternative spelling of retrieve, but rather something related to hunting and “harvested animals.” You shoot a deer, you treave it, and then, for reasons unknown (to me anyway), you need to treave it again: retreave.
Alas, it isn’t so. While Google returns 89 million hits on retrieve, it yields only 18,000 for retreave—primarily from comments sections in obscure forums, where people aren’t known for accurate spelling. So it’s a simple error; a misspelling. And here I thought I’d discovered a new word to add to the helveticka lexicon.
