"Farrier," not "ferrier"

O gentle reader. Help my blood pressure stay low by remembering, O dear ones, that when we are speaking of the professional who cares for a horse’s hooves, it is “farrier,” not “ferrier.”

While I don’t know exactly what a ferrier is, I think it is someone who transports domesticated weasels across bodies of water.

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They are both correct. Alternate spelling of the same word.
“Ferrier” is the earlier spelling, coming from the Frence for someone who works with iron (fer).

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OMG, Janet! I stand corrected! Thank you!

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I have always, always, always seen farrier (in books and articles, all American) but for some reason for a while dictation on my iPad/iPhone was spelling it ferrier. Now it is spelling it correctly but capitalizing it!

Oh well, it is still closer than mayor. But, wow, it got gelding right (not “gilding”) when I tried to include it in the previous sentence.

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I use “horse-shoer” when speaking to non-horse people. I have been flabbergasted that some of my most educated associates had no idea what a farrier is. And that included a PhD psychologist whose hobby was blacksmithing.

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And a furrier is an entirely different profession. :rofl:

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Neither the AP stylebook nor any publisher worth its salt would accept ferrier for blacksmith. Though it stems from the French (Latin, really) for iron, in a quick search, I don’t see it used as a French word either.
Unless we’re writing for a 1560s era audience, we probably want to use farrier.

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the amount of misspelled words I see, FB, or wherever, even the newspaper, people must be willfully ignoring spelchek. lol

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Yeah. And I’ve never seen ‘ferrier’ used by anyone who knows Middle French… Unless, there is a sudden interest on Craigslist that I missed…
But to be kind, there are so many words out there that a) you never hear, and so miserably mispronounce to laughs. Or you never see written, and so write incorrectly.
English is a formidably unkind language.

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It’s like people writing alphaalpha for alfalfa or using bath for bathe….:crazy_face:. Pretty sure people using ferrier are not using a long disused form of a word.

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Pink to pinque for than nonexistent colour of a red hunting coat?
Kimblewick to Kimberwick? To be fair, Kimblewick is a slightly awkward word to pronounce.
Conformation to confirmation?

My phone autocorrects to ferrier not farrier, and I despise it.

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Lots of very smart people suck at spelling.
Add in auto correct and those who can’t spell assume the computer knows better than they do.

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I participate in a few mustang groups and the amount of ignorance is astounding. “Ferrier” is common, and there is so much bad grammar that it twists my brain into *nots". (yes, they have spelled it that way!)

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The last two are two different things and both correct

And so is a furrier furry… just fyi, don’t Google it :joy:

Oh now I’m imagining a furry furrier! Buffalo Bill, in a genuine buffalo fursuit.