{"id":1375,"date":"2003-08-13T21:40:23","date_gmt":"2003-08-14T04:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2003\/08\/13\/1375.html"},"modified":"2003-08-13T21:40:23","modified_gmt":"2003-08-14T04:40:23","slug":"words-easily-confused-that-hav","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2003\/08\/13\/words-easily-confused-that-hav\/","title":{"rendered":"Words easily confused (that have become synonyms) #9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>And then there are the words that I think are different but turn out to be acceptable variants of each other.<\/p>\n<p>For example, I always thought <span class=\"word-as-word\">loath<\/span> was the correct spelling of the adjective (\"She was loath to admit it\"), and that <span class=\"word-as-word\">loathe<\/span> could only be used as a verb.  Not so; MW10 lists <span class=\"word-as-word\">loathe<\/span> as a variant on <span class=\"word-as-word\">loath.<\/span> (Though <span class=\"word-as-word\">loath<\/span> can't be used as a verb, so the two aren't entirely interchangeable.)<\/p>\n<p>See my entry on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/logos\/journal\/show-entry.php?Entry_ID=526\">forgo<\/a> for another example of me being pickier than the dictionary considers necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Another example: I always used to be in the camp that believed that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.m-w.com\/cgi-bin\/dictionary?enormity\">enormity<\/a> should be reserved for monstrous evil, rather than referring simply to great size (<span class=\"word-as-word\">enormousness<\/span> or, better, <span class=\"word-as-word\">immensity<\/span>).  Sadly, MW10 doesn't back me up on this; my prescriptivist tendencies are once again hung out to dry.<\/p>\n<p>And really, that's probably the eventual fate of all of these words-easily-confused.  Dictionaries are intended to be descriptivist; they serve a prescriptivist role, but y'know, if everyone starts to spell <span class=\"word-as-word\">lightning<\/span> as <span class=\"word-as-word\">lightening,<\/span> the dictionary should start to list that as an alternative.<\/p>\n<p>But I do still note, when editing, that a certain class of intellectual snobs like me will wince at what they believe to be misuses of words, even if they\/we are just behind the times.  So if you're loath to see prescriptivists sneering at you, forgo the traditionally frowned-upon uses of <span class=\"word-as-word\">enormity<\/span> and other such words.<\/p>\n<p>(Entry edited shortly after posting to correct misspelling of <span class=\"word-as-word\">prescriptivists.<\/span>  Life is all ironical 'n' stuff.)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And then there are the words that I think are different but turn out to be acceptable variants of each&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-words-easily-confused"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}