Archives for the 'Misused Words' Category

• 5 Confused Word Pairs
• Analog vs. Digital
• Entropy vs. Atrophy
• Evoke vs. Invoke
• Precede vs. Proceed
• Customer vs. Client
• Archetype vs. Prototype
• Stationary vs. Stationery
• Affect vs. Effect
• Whether to Use “Whether” or “If”
• What’s the Difference Between a Capital and a Capitol?
• Allusion vs. Illusion vs. Elusion
• 15 Frequently Confused Pairs of Verbs
• Marshal vs. Martial
• 15 Frequently Confused Pairs of Adjectives
• Vocation vs. Avocation
• 15 Frequently Confused Pairs of Nouns
• Do Sports Commentators Really Mean “Prolific”?
• Aisle and Isle
• Seasonal and Unseasonable
• 10 Pairs of Similar-Looking Near Antonyms
• Reeking and Wreaking
• 5 Mixed-Up Malapropisms
• Shifting Meaning of “Censor”
• 10 Words That Don’t Mean What You May Think They Do
• Humility and Humiliation
• In Regard to Your Letter…
• Who’s Misusing Whose?
• 50 Problem Words and Phrases
• I Just Got Wise to “Comprise”
• Literally the Worst Mistake You Could Ever Make
• Afflict vs. Inflict
• What Is Irony? (With Examples)
• Prima Donna
• “Affiliate,” “Franchise,” and al-Qaeda
• A Knight Errant and an Arrant Knave
• Three Peeves in One Newspaper Article
• Trooper or Trouper?
• Using “zeitgeist” Coherently
• Myth and Misconception
• Warbling and Garbling
• Flounder and Founder
• “Trifecta” Not Always Appropriate
• The Difference Between “Discreet” and “Discrete”
• Surprising or Not Surprising
• “Breach” and “Break”
• Stanch and Staunch
• Bust, Burst, and Arrest
• Understanding the Gist of the Matter
• Ferment and Foment
• Fleshing Out and Flushing Out
• Repudiate, Refute, and Reject
• Ingenious vs. Ingenuous
• “Sleazy” and “slazy”
• Hyper and Hypo
• Math or Maths?
• Vertical and Vertiginous
• Using the Adjective “Lackadaisical”
• Four “Censor” Words to Keep Straight
• “Bored with,” or “bored of”?
• “Cement” or “Concrete”?
• “Latter,” not “Ladder”
• Abstruse and Obtuse
• “Adequate” is Adequate
• To Open a Pandora’s Box
• Fluent in Speech and Affluent in Wealth
• Clamoring and Clambering
• Hordes of People Shouldn’t Hoard
• PIN Number
• Correct Use of the Adjective “Reincarnate”
• When did “Beware” Become a Noun?
• I Miss Not Seeing You
• Whelps are Puppies
• “Replacement for” and “replacement of”
• Dawned vs. Donned
• What the heck are “learnings”?
• Wrapping Things Up and “Rapping Things Up”
• The Noun is “Plea,” the Verb is “Plead”
• Bisect and Dissect
• The Adjective is “Immune”
• Don’t Waste “Decimate”
• “Hard Sales” and “Hard Sells”
• Reverse and Invert
• Is “fulsome” a complimentary word?
• What’s Going On with “Underestimate”?
• Orchestrate and Crescendo
• An Ultimatum IS “Final”
• “Economic” or “Economical”?
• What is an “Entree”?
• Some Advice about “Advise”
• Character and Caricature
• “Crapulence” Doesn’t Mean That
• Individual or Person?
• Razed to the Ground
• Octaves and Decibels
• Threw and Through
• What Do You Call the Enemy?
• Musings on the Uses of “Abash”
• How Do You Fare?
• “Epiphany” or Mere “Realization”?
• Epicenter vs. Center
• Jill Came Tumbling After
• Reign or Regime?
• Scotch
• Cutting the Mustard
• “Verbing” Nouns
• Imply and Infer
• Legs Akimbo
• Bring and Take
• Dammed If You Do…
• Allude and Elude
• On the Use of “Nemesis”
• The Demise of De Luxe
• Anyway, Any Way, or Anyways?
• The Curious Case of “Whet”
• Ambiguity or Futility?
• Soldiers or Troops?
• Might, May, and Can
• Forget about the “Dark Ages”
• Avert eyes, Divert attention
• “Female” or “Woman”?
• Stunned, Astounded and Astonished
• Into the Breach!
• Can’t we just “raise” the question?
• Let’s Just Prosecute to the FULL extent of the Law.
• Confusing “Passed” with “Past”
• Trouble with “Vigorously” and “Vicariously”
• “Intact” is One Word
• When is a “Mistake” Not a Mistake?
• Aesthetic or Aesthetical?
• Civil Liberties and Civic Duties
• 4 Exasperating Malapropisms
• “Before” and “Ago”
• The Chief Justice’s Prepositional Slip
• Making Sense of “Since”
• The Difference Between “Un-” and “Dis-”
• “A Historic” or “An Historic” Event?
• Compliment vs Complement
• Loan, Lend, Loaned, Lent
• A While vs Awhile
• Inquire vs Enquire
• Passed vs Past
• Let’s Not Eviscerate “Eviscerate”
• Especially vs. Specially
• Funny Images Conjured up by Web Comments
• Let’s Keep Some of the Old Verb Forms
• Used Transitively, “Avail” Is a Reflexive Verb
• Systematic and Systemic
• “Wreck,” “Wreak,” and Other [rek] Words
• Tibetan Situation Getting Sticky
• Robin Hood was Clad in Green
• Any vs. Either
• Wether, Weather, Whether
• Complex and Complicated
• For Want Of A Letter … Bated, Baited
• Sit vs. Set: Sit Down and Let Me Set the Scene
• For Want Of A Letter … Tic, Tick
• Continuous or Continual?
• A Man is Not a Widow
• Averse, Adverse
• Accent And Dialect
• Farther, Further: What’s the Difference?
• Hopefully Speaking
• “Famous” Doesn’t Apply to Murderers or Gangsters
• Will You Assent to the Ascent?
• It’s Not “The Ox-Bow Incidence”
• Persecute, Prosecute
• Malapropisms
• Crucial, Vital, Essential
• Elude vs. Allude vs. Illude
• Are You Sure You Mean “Moot”?
• Fortuitous and Fortunate
• Deprecate, Depreciate
• Prescribe and Proscribe
• Different from, Different to, Different than
• Between and Among
• “Disinterested” Not the Same as “Uninterested”
• Gross Writing Errors Found on the Web
• Percentage and Percentile
• A “Diploma” is not a “Degree”
• Glimpse and Glance: Same or Different?
• People versus Persons
• Titled versus Entitled
• CAUTION: Merging Words
• “Forte” or “Fortë,” “Cache” or “Cachet”?
• Quiet or Quite?
• Is that “-ness” Really Necessary?
• “Fictional” and “Fictitious”
• Less is More When it Comes to “Unique”
• Folks versus People
• Then or Than?
• Less/Fewer; Number/Amount: Still Salvageable
• Where and Whence
• Loose or Lose?
• Accept the Effect
• Whatever Happened to “Arrested”?
• Are We All Together on This?
• The Gentleman Fled on Foot
• Not Nice At All
• Principle, Principal
• The Everyday Blues
• I Hate “Kids”
• The Right Climate
• Accepting Complements
• The Difference Between e.g. and i.e.?
• There, Their, They’re

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