Gid and man on my iPhone
I was finishing a text message when I accidentally typed “Gid bless you." Rather than fix the typo by inserting “God," my iPhone underlined the errant word in red and offered me three corrections: “Giddy," “Did," and “Kid." You know, “Giddy bless you!" Or: “How in Did’s name did that happen?" Or: “Kid bless America." Apple can’t be expected to wade into the minutiae of every message—but how could it exclude the obvious option from the list of fixes? Microsoft Outlook approaches the “Gid" problem more inclusively. It proposed remedies of “Gad," “God," “Gide," “Gild" and “Gird." I’m not sure how Gide made the list, since it isn’t a word. But I do understand why “gild" did.
Its secondary definition, according to Merriam-Webster, is “to give an attractive but often deceptive appearance" to something, which is what Microsoft did when it gilded its list with God. This experience piqued my interest. When I mistyped another deity, “Talor Swift," my phone offered the correct spelling of her proper name.
Yet when I spelled it correctly and recast her 2019 hit as “False Gid," the device asked whether I meant to write “Gods." That’s a step up from Giddy, even if a bit pantheistic. For the record, I wish Ms. Swift had named her song “False Giddy"—a more apt description of her behavior in the Kansas City Chiefs suite whenever her beau, Travis Kelce, scored a touchdown.
But I digress. If Apple couldn’t recognize God, what about Lucifer, ruler of hell in Dante’s “Inferno"? I typed “Lucifar" and my phone instantly corrected the spelling, no questions asked. Can’t blame Apple for not wanting to play with fire.
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