Sometimes I think that universal Spellcheck is the work of the devil, because I'm convinced that it's slowly but ever-so-surely stealing my obviously god-given gift for arranging letters into words. (That last sentence was so tongue-in-cheek that I think I may have bitten said tongue, a little bit.)

I've spent the last 5 minutes staring intently at the word "business," convinced that this is not, in fact, the proper spelling, the letters jumbling themselves into gibberish - not unlike my preschoolers, who say a word over and over until it has completely lost all meaning. My main confusion lay in the fact that "business" is so obviously "busy-ness" - being engaged in activity, full of clutter. "Busyness" should not be a real word - its mere appearance betrays its innate clumsiness. And yet that is the accepted spelling, and "business" is assigned to describe staring down the barrel of a gun or that errand you have to take care of during lunch. Maybe it's no coincidence that "business" should really be pronounced "busyness"? How do words mirror their creator's outlook on the world? When do they start taking on a life of their own?