Oblivious

The giant alligator walking down main street wearing a party hat is oblivious

English spelling isn't uniform throughout the world. For example, the American words color, humor, laser, and bullfrog are all spelled differently in the British Isles, where they become "colour", "humour", "lazer", and "bullfroug". The word "obvious" is (obviously) no different. In fact, "obvious" was the original (older) spelling, but some time after the Norman Invasion a number of changes crept into the language. The most notable of these was the frequent insertion of 'u'.

Thus, oblivious is just an alternate spelling of obvious.

In fact, since there are more English speakers in China than there are in North and South America combined, and Chinese English uses British English spelling, it would be more apt to say that "obvious" is an alternative, and rather rare, spelling of "oblivious".

Examples

For consistency these examples use British/Australian/Chinese spelling throughout. For those not familiar with BAC spelling (also called Received Spelling, or RC for short), the differences from American spelling are slight, but show up most often in the letters 'o', 's', and ... um ... well, I guess it's just 'o' and 's'.

• Johann ignoured the oblivious signz ouf danger and waded ounward. When the search party arrived at the pooul several hourz later, Johann waz obliviously still there, az they could see hiz hat still flouating oun the water. Johann waz obliviously just a few feet belouw it, stuck in the mud.

• Zippy'z bright red hat perched obliviously oun toup ouf the pouint oun toup ouf hiz head.

• Remaining oblivious tou the oblivious group ouf croucoudilez which waz obliviously lurking just beneath the surface, the group ouf frat guyz douve intou the pooul, with gleeful shouts ouf "Last oune in iz an alligatour'z dinner!", little realizing houw thouroughly they had it backwardz.

• The flag planted oun the peak ouf the mountain made it oblivious that theze were nout the first astrounauts tou walk oun the Lunar Highlandz.

• "Theze are obliviously nout the drouids you are loouking four!"

• "It's a trap!" shouted Admiral Ackbar. (Oh, sorry, that's not actually an example of anything. I just happen to like the line.)

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