Roget's Thesaurus notes that both are correct homey.

*SNAP!*

The i- words seem to be preferred in the US - imbed, insure, artifact as compared to embed, ensure, artefact etc. But they're still considered acceptable 'variants' in British English too.

I don't care what Roget says, Embed is the correct usage.

Imbed is there only because there are so many idiots in the world that it's become accepted - kind of like people who spell Web site as "website." Web is a proper noun, which describes the site. At no time is it proper English to make Web site one word, or lowercase the word Web when it's used in reference to the World Wide Web. It's just accepted because there are so many retards out there, that Internet shorthand has become the norm.

Unfortunately, the stupidification of people on the "interwebs" is so widespread, these things are becoming normal acceptable speech. Kind of like "we be" in the ghetto (as in "we be goin to rob the liquor store).

If you don't like website and someone calling you a looser you should very much care what Roget and his kissing cousin Oxford's English Dictionary says.

Because Embed is the new word, imbed was the first and best usage but we let the damn english get their way and embed is now more common.

1778 was the first use of either word and it was imbed that Whitehurst used to describe marine fossils imbedded in a mountain top. (Darwin thought this very interesting.) It wasn't until more than 60 years later in 1861 before Hulme the idiot described leeches embedded in the earth. (His paper's thesis was proved wrong but his mouth breathing spelling lived on.)

Although imbed is still common usage in biology and physics the common usage on the street is embed. The idiots won but I will stick with imbed.

Website I would argue is a new word, not a misspelling. My editors tell me to use e-mail and not email but I think they will lose that fight. New word.

Now if looser shows up in Oxford's I am going to protest.

Do you mean that one usage is looser (as in not so tight) than the other?

I think that there's a semantic difference between the two words. With the "i" it suggests that the foreign object is incorporated into the base material; with the "e" it suggests that the object merely lies on the base material.

OK, so I made that up . . .

No, I meant looser as a jarring misspelling of loser. It is the type of misspelling that is becoming more and more frequent as writers use the crutch of a spelling corrector. "To funny" always makes my brain pause no matter what. Looser makes my head spin as it is usually something that needs more brains, not more tightening.

Your two definitions match up to what the biological definitions for the two words are as I think of them. The only times I have seen embed is when a sample is stuck to the surface of paraffin. If the paraffin is melted and the cells are within the paraffin I would call that imbedded.

Embedded reporters in the Iraq War seems to follow that logic. They were not soldiers and do not belong in the patrol so they are embeds. It seems like the Iraq War was the beginning of the end for the word as the proletariate has taken embedded and run with it polluting the word by using both intonations.

My html links were imbedded into the PDF document. They are legitimate occupants of the document and live within not upon the file. But that could be argued semantically ad infinitum. I call that one a toss up.

I love discussing spelling because I wish I could spell better. I submit stuff to an OCD web editor and I swear this a-hole finds two grammatical errors per sentence. A lot of them one could go either way but I thank him and never argue with all the red ink.

i remembe a thing a couple years ago about the people in Portugal getting upset with the changing of Portuguese mostly coming from the use in Brazil.

To me it's a compromise of what is normal usage and what is historic usage. I rather like the historic myself but quite often I will bastardize it to make an effect. I do like the word "interweb" as it makes fun of itself so that it gets more attention. Except, many people with whom I use it, think it normal so it goes over their heads.

dave

To your defense (not defence - another common Internet typo), there's a difference between your accidental misspelling and ignorant fools on the Internet who truly don't know the difference between "too" and "to" or "your" and "you're."

Everyone makes a typo now and then. It's when you begin to see a pattern in the "typos" that you just want to smack the shat out of someone and tell them to pay attention in class, or go back to school!

I certainly am not excellent at English or grammar but some things, when I see them, really hit me in the head: Like "your" instead of "you're". And the missuse of the words "to, and too".

Another thing that gets me but doesn't seem to get anyone else is the use of "fewer" and "less". Somehow I was taught to use "fewer" when the quantity is discrete or can be counted and to use "less" when it is the whole amount as one. (i.e. "Less" money and "fewer" dollars. or Less sand and fewer rocks)

dave