Squared Away

A couple of months ago I sniped about someone who used "cubicle" when she meant "cubical", and now just look at this. Just look at it.

See that in the upper left-hand corner? "5 Easy Ways To Turn Your Cubical Wall Into An Emotional Wall That None Can Truly Penetrate".

Goddammit. Goddammit all to fucking hell. Is it really so hard to use those two words correctly?

"Cubical" is an adjective that means "cube-shaped". "Cubicle" is a noun that means "a small room or compartment". They're not the same word. They're not interchangeable. If you work in an office but you don't have your own office, then you work in a cubicle, which has walls, and they're cubicle walls.

You can tell this pisses me off because of all the italics. They're not cheap, people.

"Cubicle" and "cubical" are related, though, back in the mists of time. "Cubicle" is the English adaptation of Latin "cubiculum", "bedroom", which is in turn derived from "cubare", "to lie down", or more accurately "to fold oneself up", because it comes from Indo-European "keu-", "to bend, to fold". "Cube" comes from the sense of bending, because a cube is bunch of lines with bends in them, and "cubical" just adds the usual "-ical" ending to form an adjective.

But that doesn't make them the same damned word!