The grammer police strike again!

To deal with this situation, I believe you should think like Machiavelli, but act like St. Francis. This guy clearly feels put down and undervalued at work. You, nickerbocker, are clearly in a position to step on the back of his head and grind his face in the dirt, and your fellow engineers might well cheer you on. How about finding a way to use this incident to give him some status, instead? Youv'e made some mistakes in spelling in your question and your responses; perhaps you may occasionally do something similar in whatever written materials you must produce on the job (I find your overall use of language expressive and enviably strong, by the way). Could you possibly find an excuse to write something and make a gruff remark to the effect of "since you got so excited about 'electronical' maybe you'd like to look this over and tell me what I did wrong now"? By doing that, or the like, you would not only give him something he wants so badly he's willing to jeopardize his job for it, you would establish yourself as someone of such unshakably high status you can afford to joke about your mistakes. You would also establish yourself as someone who is in a position to hand out praise, and there is nothing more high status than that.

reasonablye

"the part in my hand looked electronical." Hmm.. In the context of what ROU_Xenophobe is saying, this might have been reasonably. You could have been saying that the part looked either electrical or electronic, that you didn't know or care which. Saying electronical in an ironic way could convey exactly that idea.

As someone who often inadvertently mangles words, but conveys meaning perfectly well despite the mangling, I've had to deal with this situation occasionally. A quick admission of guilt over the misuse in conjunction with dismissal of the importance of the misuse usually works. Something like a very quick, "Ok, sure you're right, but what I am saying is...". Or, if there is doubt in your mind over the legitimacy of the claim, "You may be right, but, what I am saying is..." And get back to the topic at hand. The fellow managed to derail the story with your help. As the silly old saying goes, it takes two to fight. Much better to acknowledge and move on quickly than to get bogged down in a I'm right, you're wrong fight over small stuff. As far as what to do on Monday. Say hi act polite. Really, honestly let it go. If he keeps making it an issue, something like, "Ok you where right, I used the wrong word. Can we stop now please?", if he doesn't. talk to the supervisor, accept some of the blame, but stress you want to move on but he is being harassing.

Irrespective of whether it is in some sense a word, "electronical" is a very bad word choice. Appending extra suffixes to words is a classic "I'm not very smart/knowledgeable but am trying to sound as if I were" thing to do. I've heard people mention rendezvous-tations and how they'd observated something, and so on. So something to avoid, especially since your job centers on technical competence. Would you say that something looked electronicalish? Electronical is from the same planet -- that planet that abortions like "impactfulness" come from. The better word choice is simply "electronic," because that's the one that doesn't make you look foolish or ignorant. This would be very different if your defense had been "Electronical is a very specific term that means something different from `electronic'" or had otherwise implied that "electronical" were an actual term-of-art commonly used in electronics. Then I would look ignorant and foolish for not knowing that. But you didn't say that. That doesn't make your co-worker less of a prig. Dealing with the dude: Do you have HR? If you do, talk to HR and explain that you're tired of being talked down to by Mr. Technician and that he should be more respectful or polite to the people he works for. If you don't, it's probably time for you and some other people to collectively explain that you don't care to have your word-choices corrected by him, and that his job in part depends on how well he interacts with you and the other people he works for.

"Electric" and "Electronic" really have different meanings in the English language these days. It seems like Electric means a much simpler type of circuit, like a light bulb or something, while electronic usually means a complex digital or analog device. Electronic implies the presence of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_component, which almost always means semiconductors (tubes are active, and are considered electronics). Other components in an electric or electronic circuit are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_component (well, they have the property passive, but they are collectively passives, even though you rarely say actives). Note that wikipedia indicates that the difference between passive and active components is the latter's need of a power source to function, which would make diodes passive. However, there are other definitions in use. Sometimes the distinction is drawn between components which have a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear#Linear_functions (passive) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinearity (active) response. I believe that in this usage passive is usually implied, a component is either active or other. This is complicated because a certain class of integrated circuits are classified as http://focus.ti.com/analog/docs/amplifiersandlinearhome.tsp?familyId=57&contentType=4&DCMP=TIHomeTracking&HQS=Other+OT+home_p_amp - the most well known being an op-amp. These are active components, they can not be passive by any criteria, they require a power supply and they contain non-linear components. There is one final distinction between active and passive I've encountered. Active circuits are sometimes seen as the source of oscillation. Which is to say, rather than just being excited by an incoming frequency, an active circuit creates it's own frequency. By some definition this requires the presence of an oscillator, but it is interesting to note that any non-linear component will inherently generate frequencies different from the excitation frequency - these are called harmonics. Now if we want to really start getting circular.. Linear sometimes refers to a certain class of power supply which uses linear regulators (in this case linear in the same sense as an op-amp). The only other class I can think of is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_power_supply. How do you properly use italics to single out a word when you are talking about its definition? Oh ya, Electronical.. It sounds very very wrong!

You should definitely orientate yourself to utilize some proactive preventative preplanning, or this eventuality will repetify.

This thread is very metafilterish and metafilterific.

Ironical is a real in-the-dictionary word, and means the same thing as ironic. I still think it's dumb, though.