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Comment by bignaj | Hacker News Reader

Discreet = careful and circumspect in one's speech or actions, especially in order to avoid causing offense or to gain an advantage. Discrete = individually separate and distinct.

This one always gets me, especially in a mathy/technical audience that should have seen "discrete" mathematics or photons or something before.

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Homophones with shared etymology are quite rare, though; so it's a reasonable mistake to make. "Discreetion", anyone?

Besides, in every other Latin-deriving language there is no such distinction. English is the exception, not the rule --and for rather obtuse reasons, at that [1]:

Spellings discrete and nativized discreet co-existed until after c.1600, when discreet became the common word for "careful, prudent," and discrete was maintained in philosophy, medicine, music and other disciplines that remembered Latin and made effort to obey it.

[1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=discreet

Maybe he means it looks like this:

http://www.jzmic.com/vintage/wp-content/gallery/transistors/...

(as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_circuit, see)

Upvoted for the laugh/nerd-out. Great post :)

You are of course completely right; my language sensor tingled, but not enough. Thanks for the heads up, that would be the last time I made that mistake! I'll eat my humble pie now.. I'm a programmer, and, despite the evidence to the contrary, I do value precision of language.

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