Just a few words I've stumbled across that I really like. For whatever reason.
Immiserate. v. I never knew there was a word specifically for making people or conditions miserable. Just found this in 1491, p. 350. "In their home ecosystems these species have, like all living things, a full complement of parasites, microbes, viruses, and insect predators to shorten and immiserate their lives." Mosquitoes can sure as heck immiserate my life!
Bloviate. v. To go on and on, windily and without much meaning. This one isn't in a lot of dictionaries, which is a shame, because it was invented for politicians. To describe them, that is. It may have originally just meant idle chatter (see Wikipedia), but Warren Harding used it to describe political speech and there it stays. Politicians bloviate from one day's end to the next.
Weskit. n. Waistcoat; what we in the States would call a vest, as a man's garment (the vest in a 3-piece suit). Hobbits wear weskits.
Kvetchable. I don't think this is a real word, but it was in today's paper and I love it.
Making distinctions: hurt vs. harm. I'm not sure that this is completely 100% per the dictionary, but this last six weeks of recovering from foot surgery has taught me the difference between hurt and harm pretty effectively. Bottom line: lots of things hurt the blasted foot, but very few do any actual harm. Physical therapy hurts, but far from doing harm, it is necessary if I want the thing to stop hurting. Go figure.
And to go with my earlier post on not misusing words, this one is for the record:
Literally. An adverb meaning something should be taken in the literal sense, i.e. exactly according to it's meaning. So if you tell me lunch was so late you literally starved to death, I'd better be looking at your lifeless body. Now, my copy of Webster's admits the use of it as a form of emphasis, but the OED does not, and I'm with Oxford this time. Using "literally" to emphasize a figure of speech makes no sense. Just don't do it.
Showing posts with label tricky words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tricky words. Show all posts
Monday, February 25, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
Words to Watch For
I'm doing this post even though I know my readers are not the sorts to ever mix up words and use the wrong form of to/too/two or your/you're, because these things are pet peeves and I have to do something to make myself feel better about them.
I'm not going to go into the differences between the homonyms listed above, because everyone knows them if they just stop to think. But there are a bunch of other words that seem to cause a lot of trouble, and drive me nuts. Here's a partial list, with the correct uses attached.
Roll/role. The former is something you have with dinner, or a means of locomotion. The later is a part in a play, or a part to play. At the moment, my role is that of teacher (properly, role has an accent circumflex--a pointy hat-thing--over the "o" but that's pretty well gone out in English, partly because our keyboards don't have one, at least not without some effort).
Affect/effect. Affect is a verb, meaning to influence (there is a noun form but ignore that. You don't need it unless you are writing literary criticism). Effect is a noun, meaning a result. That which affects me (like bad grammar) has an effect on me (it turns me into a cranky old lady).
Accept/except. The only reason I can see for ever confusing these is that no one bothers to enunciate nowadays. I would love to accept the award, except for the part about being perfect.
Critic/critique. I'm sure this was just a typo where I saw it. The critic (a person) writes the critique (an analysis of the good and bad of something). Critique can also be a verb: when I write my critique, I am critiquing the work. Critic, on the other hand, can never be a verb. The critic remains a force for evil in the writer's universe. I mean, a source of helpful input.
You don't have any trouble with there/their/they're, right?
I will also refer my readers to this wonderful discussion of the non-word "alot." It's not new, but it's wonderful.
Oh, yeah: and you don't form plurals with an apostrophe. Ever. Possessives, yes. Contractions, yes. Plurals, no. And, just to keep you on your toes: the possessive form of "it" is "its" rather than the more logically consistent "it's", which is a contraction of "it is." Got it?
Now, for the more controversial side of what I want to say. If you are a writer, you want to get these and more right every time you write in public. That means that when you post in a forum, or on your blog, or even Tweet (I don't follow Twitter, but if grammar and spelling are ignored there, I'm unlikely ever to start), you look it over before you hit "send" and you fix the spelling, put in the capitals and punctuation, and double-check that you're used the words you really meant to. Because if your posts are poorly written, I'm going to make some assumptions about your book. Maybe that's not fair, but it's the way I am. And I'm not alone.
I'm not going to go into the differences between the homonyms listed above, because everyone knows them if they just stop to think. But there are a bunch of other words that seem to cause a lot of trouble, and drive me nuts. Here's a partial list, with the correct uses attached.
Roll/role. The former is something you have with dinner, or a means of locomotion. The later is a part in a play, or a part to play. At the moment, my role is that of teacher (properly, role has an accent circumflex--a pointy hat-thing--over the "o" but that's pretty well gone out in English, partly because our keyboards don't have one, at least not without some effort).
Affect/effect. Affect is a verb, meaning to influence (there is a noun form but ignore that. You don't need it unless you are writing literary criticism). Effect is a noun, meaning a result. That which affects me (like bad grammar) has an effect on me (it turns me into a cranky old lady).
Accept/except. The only reason I can see for ever confusing these is that no one bothers to enunciate nowadays. I would love to accept the award, except for the part about being perfect.
Critic/critique. I'm sure this was just a typo where I saw it. The critic (a person) writes the critique (an analysis of the good and bad of something). Critique can also be a verb: when I write my critique, I am critiquing the work. Critic, on the other hand, can never be a verb. The critic remains a force for evil in the writer's universe. I mean, a source of helpful input.
You don't have any trouble with there/their/they're, right?
I will also refer my readers to this wonderful discussion of the non-word "alot." It's not new, but it's wonderful.
Oh, yeah: and you don't form plurals with an apostrophe. Ever. Possessives, yes. Contractions, yes. Plurals, no. And, just to keep you on your toes: the possessive form of "it" is "its" rather than the more logically consistent "it's", which is a contraction of "it is." Got it?
Now, for the more controversial side of what I want to say. If you are a writer, you want to get these and more right every time you write in public. That means that when you post in a forum, or on your blog, or even Tweet (I don't follow Twitter, but if grammar and spelling are ignored there, I'm unlikely ever to start), you look it over before you hit "send" and you fix the spelling, put in the capitals and punctuation, and double-check that you're used the words you really meant to. Because if your posts are poorly written, I'm going to make some assumptions about your book. Maybe that's not fair, but it's the way I am. And I'm not alone.
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