In a magazine article covering Custer's death, there is this statement:

"This story of those last moments wasn't publicly told until 81 years after the rash young commander and over 200 of his calvarymen were wiped out in the infamous Battle of the Little Bighorn" (emphasis mine). [From: "The Warrior Who Killed Custer" in True West: Celebrating the American West May/June 2003.

I was very surprised to see cavalry misspelled, particularly in a magazine about the West.

Now a little mnemonic I've always used is:

Calvary has that 'l' in the first syllable, which I look at as the vertical beam in the Cross; cavalry, instead has the "V" in the first syllable that I imagine to be the downward slope in the saddle in which a cavalry sitter sits. It's a stretch, but it works.

Any other mnemonics for these two sometimes confused words--or perhaps others? [We've talked about mnemonics before, but I thought maybe mnemonics for words might be fun if anyone's so inclined.]

i have so many mnemonics --almost half my vocabulary..my memory was my tool to get round dyslexia..(i now remember it has a Y-Why? its not a dis, to have trouble spelling..

others include..you'd never really fri the end of a friend..

or Mike isn't a heal (hence, Michael)

there is some science to being conscienous..(and a whole host of other words that have sci of science hidden in them..)

Its Acupboard (not cupbored..or cupbord..)
or Brian has a brain inhis head, not his name..

sometimes it's the simplest of words that give me problems!

There was, supposedly, a tradition among calvarymen, to reverse the pronunciation of the name of the hill upon which Jesus was crucified with the name of the mounted military force.

Has to be that way. If the Romans had been at Little Big Horn, the result would have been rather different. Indians 0, US Cavalry 0, Romans (from Calvary) 1