More words easily confused:<\/p>\n
rein<\/i> and reign.<\/i> I see these confused so often that I've sometimes gotten confused about them myself, thinking there's a misuse where there isn't. A rein<\/i> is a cord used to control an animal; a reign<\/i> is the period in which a ruler rules. Thus, when terror rules the streets, it's a reign<\/i> of terror, and when someone is in charge of a government they reign<\/i> but they hold the reins<\/i> of power.
\n
wangle<\/i> and wrangle.<\/i> To wangle<\/i> something is to acquire it (same as finagle<\/i>); to wrangle<\/i> is to argue or fight, or to herd (as a wrangler<\/i> does). Though the dictionary now says that wrangle<\/i> can also mean wangle.<\/i> <prescriptivist>Wimps. Giving in to the forces of linguistic change. Hmph. <\/prescriptivist><\/p>\n
dangle<\/i> and dandle.<\/i> To dandle<\/i> someone is, basically, to bounce them on your knee. There's no such thing as dangling<\/i> someone on your knee. You can dangle someone from<\/em> your knee, but only if your knee is horizontal and well off the ground; someone who is dangling is below the thing they're dangling from.<\/p>\n vanquish<\/i> and banish.<\/i> To vanquish<\/i> is to defeat; it doesn't have connotations of pushing someone out of an area.<\/p>\n There was another one I ran into recently, but I'm blanking.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More words easily confused: rein and reign. I see these confused so often that I’ve sometimes gotten confused about them…<\/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-684","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\/684","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=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}