Gold courage and fortitude?

August 20, 2008, 1:56 p.m. Yahoo's front page reports "Amputee swimmer shows gold mettle."

Yahoo typo mettle medal

Let's check the definition of "mettle," according to Dictionary.com:

met·tle
–noun
1. courage and fortitude: a man of mettle.
2. disposition or temperament: a man of fine mettle.
—Idiom
3. on one's mettle, in the position of being incited to do one's best The loss of the first round put him on his mettle to win the match.

While the swimmer certainly has a lot of courage and fortitude to win Olympic gold in her circumstances, since the article itself didn't use the word "mettle" once and I wouldn't use "gold" as a modifier for, say, "courage," I'm marking this one as a big mistake by poor speller. (It may, however, be a tactic by a frustrated, passive-agressive intern. We may never know.)

Way to go, Yahoo!

August, 20 2008 - 2:03 pm

This article has no comments.

Comment on this

:

:

:


8 + 8 =