{"id":2805,"date":"2005-04-24T13:22:22","date_gmt":"2005-04-24T20:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2005\/04\/24\/2805.html"},"modified":"2005-04-24T13:22:22","modified_gmt":"2005-04-24T20:22:22","slug":"words-easily-confused-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2005\/04\/24\/words-easily-confused-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Words easily confused #15"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Time for another installment. (To see previous editions, search my journal for the phrase \"words easily\" (no quotes)&#8212;that'll show the whole series.)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Easy typo to make: <span class=\"word-as-word\">alter<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">altar<\/span>. (And of course a spellchecker won't catch this, as is often true for common typos.)<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"word-as-word\">adverse<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">averse<\/span>.  Both are words, of course, but they're not synonyms.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"word-as-word\">ostensively<\/span>&#8212;I'm not sure what this was a typo for, but at least two authors have used it in the past few months.  From context, I'm vaguely guessing it was meant to be either <span class=\"word-as-word\">ostensibly<\/span> or <span class=\"word-as-word\">ostentatiously<\/span>, though neither of those quite fit the contexts either. (Ha, joke's on me: MW11 sez <span class=\"word-as-word\">ostensive<\/span> has been around since 1782 as a synonym for <span class=\"word-as-word\">ostensible<\/span> (and it has another meaning as well).  I don't care; it still looks like a typo to me, and almost nobody ever uses it, and in any case the people who I saw using it were misusing it.)<\/li>\n<li>It's often easy to type <span class=\"word-as-word\">then<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">than<\/span> or vice versa.<\/li>\n<li>Very common misspelling: <span class=\"word-as-word\">beautific<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">beatific<\/span>.  Though I don't think I've seen <span class=\"word-as-word\">beautified<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">beatified<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>Also fairly common: <span class=\"word-as-word\">pentultimate<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">penultimate<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li><span class=\"word-as-word\">puss<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">pus<\/span>.\n<li>Very common, and I'm surprised I haven't mentioned it before: <span class=\"word-as-word\">diety<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">deity<\/span>.  Many years ago I started pronouncing it \"DAY-it-ee\" instead of \"DEE-it-ee\" to remind myself of the spelling.<\/li>\n<li>Seen this a couple times lately: <span class=\"word-as-word\">exasperated<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">exacerbated<\/span>. (MW11 does list this meaning for <span class=\"word-as-word\">exasperated<\/span>, but lists it as obsolete.)<\/li>\n<li>Also saw this a couple times recently: <span class=\"word-as-word\">malinger<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">linger<\/span>.  To <span class=\"word-as-word\">malinger<\/span> is to fake illness (as one might do in order to avoid work).<\/li>\n<li>Last time I posted a set of these, Merrie mentioned one in comments that I should've noted, because it's a mistake I make all the time now: <span class=\"word-as-word\">hoard<\/span> for <span class=\"word-as-word\">horde<\/span>, and vice versa.  As with <span class=\"word-as-word\">reign<\/span>\/<span class=\"word-as-word\">rein<\/span>, I see this confusion so often that it's infected me; I have to stop and think through it two or three times to make sure I'm using the right one (I almost typed \"the write one\"), and I still get it wrong sometimes.  My confusion may've started back when I decided I wanted to put together an organization for wordplay enthusiasts, to be known as the \"Word Horde.\" (If you don't know what I'm talking about, cf <a href=\"http:\/\/www.m-w.com\/cgi-bin\/dictionary?word-hoard\">word-hoard<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One more thing, along related lines: I keep seeing authors using the verb <span class=\"word-as-word\">quipped<\/span> in stories, connected to lines of dialogue that aren't quips.  A quip is usually a clever or witty or funny comment, often impromptu, usually brief.  If a remark is longwinded, serious, or even just not funny, it's probably not a quip.  I suspect a better word in many cases would be <span class=\"word-as-word\">rejoined<\/span>, but in most of these cases <span class=\"word-as-word\">said<\/span> would probably be best of all.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time for another installment. (To see previous editions, search my journal for the phrase &#8220;words easily&#8221; (no quotes)\u2014that&#8217;ll show the&#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-2805","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\/2805","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=2805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}