Do you remember when you were told in English grammar class that “would of” is incorrect? You were corrected and informed that the speaker is saying “would’ve” which is a phonetic identity of “would of”. You probably made this mistake because of the abundance of the preposition “of” in sentences that you had both vocalized and written. Also, identically spelled homophones such as “The boat rocks an alarming amount!” and “The rocks on the shore braced themselves against the currents” would further suggest that the phonetic identity indicates a spelling identity.

Recently, however, I have wondered about the validity of the phrase “kind of”:
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