If you didn’t know, I put out a book last September about words that often get confused. (Do think about buying Word to the Wise, if you haven’t. If you have, feel perfectly free to just skip to the reading links at the end.)
Part of the goal of the book was to persuade readers that while clarity in language is a worthwhile goal in itself, writing in which all the parts work in a precise, well-oiled fashion is beautiful. This means evading errors of grammar, logic and spelling, and correctly judging tone and style. As well as always employing the right word for the job. The truth is, we all muddle words from time to time. The book began life as a reminder to myself the meaning of a few words that stubbornly refused to adhere to the inside of my head.
Why do we confuse words? In the interviews and talks I gave about the book, it became clearer, at least to me. One reason is that words often sound alike, like compliment/complement. Others are semantically close – procrastination, prevarication, vacillation. Unfamiliar words can trip us up: sangfroid, complaisant. Then there are everyday slip-ups that people may not even be aware of: lose/loose, it’s/its. A fifth category of error appears to happen because some words are changing/have changed meaning: moot, nonplussed, bemused. If a word means something different to the speaker and the listener, well then Houston we have an issue.
Here are a dozen or so things that people often muddle up.
Refute means to convincingly disprove. A journalist friend, an excellent reporter, claimed on Twitter this week: “I refute the ‘junk’ allegation! But there is a premium section which you could bookmark as a homepage if you prefer.” She wasn’t actually refuting it; she was denying it, or rejecting the claim. Refutation requires compelling evidence. You can rebut with argument, though that doesn’t sound quite so authoritative. Were Apple and Amazon really “strongly refuting” in this report from last year? A recent column by Ben Zimmer might suggest that exonerate is going the same way.
Fewer and less get picked up by traditionalists. Fewer applies to things that can be counted individually, less to things that can’t, as well as time, money, distance and weight. Generally less takes a singular verb, like is, and fewer a plural, like are. If it’s a target or if numbers provide the size of a quantity, like 50 runs, 200 pages, 40 calories, two days, you can use less. It is always one less than one fewer.
Infer and imply are frequently confused, even by careful users of English. To imply is to suggest something. To infer is to deduce, to read a meaning into something. An implication is made by someone and an inference about what she is saying is made by someone else. The Guardian later changed this use of inferring to implying: “And in theory at least, saying that Semenya can’t race in women’s events as her natural self shouldn’t be taken as inferring that she is not a woman.” If you ask, What are you implying, that's usually fine. It’s far less common to ask what someone’s inferring.
Cars don't careen down a hill. They career. To quote myself: “To career means to move at high speed in an uncontrolled manner, the sense coming from an old French word for a racecourse – so any course, as with one's professional life. To careen means to lurch or tilt over, the sense – carina is Latin for keel – coming from the original of tilting a vessel for cleaning or while in the water.” Having said that, the use of careen to mean hurtle out of control is now common, and there is almost zero chance of its going back.
Literally. Unless you want a throng of pedants chasing you with burning torches, use it to mean that something actually happened. Or that something an exact translation of something else. Using it for emphasis or exaggeration is still considered a no-no, even if we all know outside the context of a hospital room that “I literally died” is not literally true. And that to be fair, if we get hard-arse on literally we should also be so on really, truly, in fact, totally, honestly. Right?
Irony is when there's a sharp contrast, often humorous, between what is expect to happen and what happens. Or when someone says something but means something else, often its opposite. If you’re going to say something is ironic, check you don't mean serendipitous, paradoxical, perverse, wry, spooky, amusing, convenient, etc. It's not a Freudian slip, which is when you say something and mean your mother. Boom tish.
The use of alternate to mean alternative, as in the phrase an alternate reality, irks me, though I am probably in a subset of one. Here’s Oxford Dictionaries: “In both British and American English the adjective alternate means ‘every other or every second’, as in they meet on alternate Sundays, or ‘(of two things) each following and succeeded by the other in a regular pattern’, as in alternate layers of potato and sauce. Alternative means ‘available as another possibility or choice’ (an alternative route; some European countries follow an alternative approach). In American usage, however, alternate can also be used to mean ‘available as another choice’: an alternate plan called for construction to begin immediately rather than waiting for spring. This American use of alternate is still regarded as incorrect by many people in Britain.” Because many serious writers and even linguists use alternate in this way now, I checked that things were actually different once and that we haven’t always been at war with Eurasia. On Google Ngram, alternate universe is not cited in American English till 1951, while alternate reality took off in the 1960s though it is still not as popular as alternative (presumably not for long). In British English alternate reality is much less cited than alternative reality, though since 1940s alternate route has been much the same.
Crapulence, crapulent and crapulous are literary words for drunkenness or drunken actions. They don't have anything to do with crappiness, excrement, being of poor quality, or unhealthy behaviour, despite what you might read or see on The Simpsons.
You hone a piece of wood, a manuscript, an argument. You don’t hone in on something. You home in on it. There is no such thing as a honing pigeon.
If you list three things, and want to talk about the third thing, it’s the last. It’s not the latter. We know what you mean, but it’s wrong. “I like merlot, pinot noir and shiraz, but the last is my favourite.”
If you’re giving a speech, it’s “without much ado” – a-doo. It’s not “much adieu” – ad-yoo. Adieu is French for goodbye. Yes, you would be surprised.
Minuscule is spelt thus. There’s no such word as miniscule. There are many words I’d like to change the spelling of, but this is not one of them.
I accept that many of these are extremely dead horses that I am flogging. The same goes for disinterested, which means both uninterested and impartial. Stanch is the original word for stopping a wound bleeding, but staunch has now overtaken it in citations. It would be nice to preserve the sorry distinction between hanged (a person) and hung (everything else), but it seems since that even before Anthony Bourdain left us this was disappearing in some quarters.
Untranslatable
It's good to know language conventions, but be polite, don’t rub it in people's faces. The Finnish have a term: Pilkunnussija [pil-koon-noos-ee-ya]. It means nitpicker, but one definition has it that it’s “person who believes it is their destiny to stamp out all spelling and punctuation mistakes at the cost of popularity, self-esteem and mental well-being”. Don't be a pilkunnussija.
What I've been reading, language-wise
‘Untranslatable’ words tell us more about English speakers than other cultures.
Does anyone really need to use a dictionary?
How a Victorian gentile, George Eliot, played a central part in the birth of Israel’s national language.
“Camp should be fun. Has the cultural conversation of the last few weeks, especially around the Gala, felt fun to you?”
Some writing advice. Don't take writing advice.
“Growing up in a home filled with books enhances intellectual capacity in later life, even if you don't read them all.”
Other reading
Why Alabama's abortion bill ruins John Roberts’ Roe plan.
How Peppa Pig became a $1b dollar phenomenon.
Why copying the anti-immigration populist right isn’t going to save the left.
The idea of the ‘good Swedes’ has enabled the rise of extreme rightwingers.
The Chinese phenomenon of “renrou sousuo” or “human flesh search” — “the deliberate marshalling of the forces of the internet against those deemed harmful to the public good”.
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