In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,
Being an avid albeit untalented learner of the English language, I have a bad habit of asking people the grammatical validity of their sentences. This habit may be annoying to others but I see it necessary for me to improve my poor command of the language.
One day, there was a shout-out on an instant messaging software that piqued my curiosity.
"I am invicible!"
Is invicible a valid word? Feeling small that I do not know the word , I mustered all the strength in my cold body to ask him about the word.
Me: assalamualaikum
The other guy: Salamzzzzzzzzzzz. yo yo yo whats up?
Me: Hey, I have a question.
The other guy: k, k, sk wy?
(I assumed he said: Okay, okay, ask away)
Me: What's invicible?
The other guy: La dude........... Go google lah. Don't waste my time.
Me: Heheh, okay. Sorry.
So I did just that. I googled the word. You can learn so much from Google nowadays.
For example, I learned that invicible is not a valid word. Invisible, on the other hand, is a valid word and according to answers.com:
invisible - adjective
1. Impossible to see; not visible
2. Not accessible to view; hidden.
So maybe my acquaintance misspelt the word invisible. Hoping that others would do the same to me, in the sense that others would correct me when I'm wrong, I decided to message my aforementioned acquaintance.
Me: Eh, I think you spelt the word wrongly. Maybe you wanted to write invisible instead?
The other guy: Eh lah, what lah you? Please no try be super clever and be rite all the time. I got this from a song lah! It must be rite. Go shove this word up your nose lah!
(Please no try be? I apologise to my readers for the poor grammar used by the other guy.)
Me: But, I googled it. It is wrong. It should be invisible.
The other guy: Hey you cottage boy! (Maybe he wanted to say budak kampung?) This invicible is not meaning cannot see. This meaning i am super. Cannot be beat. Now go away!
Me: Oh, okay. I'm sorry.
Before I even got the chance to press enter, the other guy decided to go offline. (Did he really? Maybe he just appeared offline to me.)
That was an egg on my face. I didn't know that he took the word from a song. How was I to know?
With my face still red, I googled the term "song invicible". The first result is a YouTube link to a video clip of a song by Muse, which according to the video description, is entitled 'Invicible'.
So this was the song that The Other Guy was referring to. Silly me for wanting to correct him.
After 3 minutes of listening to the song, I found the lyrics to be quite interesting and maybe I could improve my English if I knew the lyrics to the song.
Again, I googled. This time I googled "Muse lyrics".
To my surprise, I couldn't find the lyrics to the song 'Invicible'. Instead I found lyrics for the song 'Invincible'.
I was really dumbfounded. Is 'Invicible' a valid word? Or should it have been 'Invincible' instead?
I looked up the definition for these two words and came to a conclusion:
Invicible is invincible spelt wrongly but deemed to be proper by those who think that people on the internet do not misspell words.
Summary:
1. invicible is wrong.
2. Invisible is a proper word.
3. Invincible is also a word, which according to dictionary.com, is defined as an adjective which brings the meaning of incapable of being overcome or defeated.
4. When someone corrects you, be nice to him or her.
5. Your collection of illegal media is not the definitive source for proper spelling.
Allah knows best.
