Resembling a grape

U´ve`ous
adjective
Resembling a grape.

I played this word in a game of Scrabulous yesterday. Like many of my games, I was playing against a random opponent matched through the “host game” function. I know it’s a weird word, but when you’re a Scrabulous fanatic like me you pick up interesting words along the way – words like jarl and ixia. And uveous.

Yesterday, however, I got an interesting – and unexpected – reaction after playing the word uveous.

“What the hell does that mean?” Huh. Not sure exactly how to interpret her tone, I tried to respond as neutrally as possible.

“It means resembling a grape. also, please don’t swear.” Dude, I am so polite.

“Who swore? SURELY YOU DON’T MEAN THE WORLD HELL” What the…?

“Well, I guess it was more your bitchy tone that bugged me. But yeah, I meant the word hell.” OK, maybe I crossed a line here. But seriously, what’s this chick’s problem?

“Oh, now I’m a bitch. That’s nice.” umm…didn’t call you that!

Our conversation continued on for the rest of the game and I must say, I found it pretty funny. By the end, she basically accused me of being uptight and anal (two things I am most definitely not!) and continually accused me of calling her a bitch (I didn’t call her this – I only made the comment regarding the bitchy tone. Big difference, right???). She continually insisted that ‘hell’ was not a swear word. I think that it is a matter of opinion, but I was offended by the way she used the word as a profanity. Part of her argument was that “clergymen use the word hell” – therefore it is not a swear word. Does this mean that any word a priest, pastor, deacon, etcetc uses is automatically not a swear word?

I was glad when the game was over.

It is way to easy to misinterpret what others are saying online, especially when you are conversing with someone from a different culture and continent (my opponent was from the UK).

Have you ever been misinterpreted online?

Photo by thomashawk