> The thing that has been on my mind specifically is the translation of verbal colloquialisms into written form. While I can't guarantee that the phrase "souped up" originated from the idea of making something "more super", I have always assumed this to be the case, and hence I would assume that the spelling should be "suped up". On the other hand, neither souped nor suped is a real word, and while most of us know how to pronounce it, a formal spelling has probably never existed.
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> The example of this sort of thing that bothers me the most is the use of the word "till" in a phrase like "He partied till the cows came home". This is obviously a contraction of the word "until", and I always assume that it should be spelled "'til", but "till" seems to be in common usage.

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> Don Monkey

I had an inkling about this one which proved to be true... I think I gathered from the spelling that the phrase "souped up" came from cooking, and according to the link below, it more or less did.

According to Bartleby, "till" is not an abbreviation of until, but rather, its own, less formal word: http://www.bartleby.com/68/67/6067.html

Mousies dig wordies.