Words Lost to Spellchecker

I've spent the last week or so wasting a lot of time reading stories and things online, and I've come to the conclusion that certain words are being lost to our society because of our reliance on spellcheckers. The most notable of these "lost words" is the word "definitely". It has completely disappeared, replaced by the apparently more spellcheck-friendly "defiantly". This change has appeared in dozens of stories, all by different authors, so it is not an isolated event. It has come to the point that if I see the word "defiantly", I read it to myself as "definitely". Which leads me to wonder if I would even recognize "defiantly" if it were to appear correctly in context. I may have to stop and think about it. Hmmm. Maybe "defiantly" is the lost word...

Once I became terribly excited to see the word "definately" before I realized that it was incorrectly spelled, and only closely resembled the correct word because that particular author had neglected to run spellcheck on her work. Ah, sigh. Thank heavens for the work of copyeditors in most printed/published works.

In case anyone wonders, I only rarely use spellcheck (never on my blogs), and then very carefully checking the context before accepting recommended changes. Most of the time my spelling errors are the fault of my atrocious typing "skills", though some of my classes on the history of the language did a number on my ability to recognize standard forms, and I find myself having to look up correct spellings more after college than I ever did before.

So there's my rant for the day and a caution. Beware the use of the spellchecker, and always reread to make sure of the context. Has anyone else noticed other words that have fallen victim to the plague of the spellchecker? I know there are more. Maybe I'll start up a collection.

I can't believe that I would see the day that I would cross over to the dark side and join the Grammar Police. But here I am. :o)