Alright, so this whole “final s” words thing started ’cause I was reading an article aloud to my kid last week. Kept stumbling over simple words like “bus” and “kiss” when they had extra letters tacked on. Felt embarrassing, honestly. Thought, “Man, I use these every day – why’s it so tricky?”
The Hunting Part
First, I grabbed a notebook – the crumpled one from my kitchen drawer – and just dumped every “s” word I could think of. Wrote down obvious stuff like “class” and “grass”, but kept blanking on super common ones. Like, how did I forget “address”? Spent 20 minutes staring at my bookshelf scanning titles like a detective.
Then I hit the dictionary app and searched “words ending with s”. Big mistake. Thousands popped up! Scrolled through nonsense like “actinomycosis” – no way that’s useful. Filtered by short words only and found gold: “boss”, “cross”, “dress”. Scribbled ’em furiously, coffee splattering everywhere.
The Sorting Mess
Had pages of messy words, so I tried grouping them:
- Nouns: “glass,” “witness,” “focus”
- Verbs: “discuss,” “guess,” “express”
- Weird plural stuff: “series,” “species” (why don’t these change?!)
Highlighted what I actually use daily in red marker: “process,” “access,” “business.” Realized half my work emails have these.
Practice Disaster
Tested myself by making stupid sentences while walking my dog: “The genius lost his glasses crossing the bridge.” Neighbors probably think I’m nuts. Still messed up “analysis” (always wanna say “analysiss”) and “campus” sounds wrong if I say it slow.
Biggest headache? “versus” – I typed “versuss” in a tweet yesterday. Autocorrect didn’t save me. Felt like an idiot.
What Actually Stuck
Ended up with 30 must-know words taped above my monitor. Top offenders:
- “Success” (stop adding extra E’s!)
- “Awareness” (took 3 tries to spell just now)
- “Politics” (my brain insists it’s “politic”)
Surprise winner: now I notice these everywhere – menus (“lentils”), road signs (“bus lane”), even my shampoo bottle (“smoothness”). Feels like cracking a secret code.
Still forget “chaos” half the time though. Maybe next week’s project? Anyway, notebook’s stained with coffee but useful. At least my kid laughed when I shouted “walrus” randomly during breakfast.