{"id":874,"date":"2003-02-08T10:30:13","date_gmt":"2003-02-08T18:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2003\/02\/08\/874.html"},"modified":"2003-02-08T10:30:13","modified_gmt":"2003-02-08T18:30:13","slug":"words-easily-confused-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2003\/02\/08\/words-easily-confused-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Words easily confused #5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Another entry in an irregular series.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"word-as-word\">past<\/span> and <span class=\"word-as-word\">passed.<\/span> In the context in which they're often confused, <span class=\"word-as-word\">past<\/span> means &quot;beyond&quot; (&quot;He looked past her&quot;); <span class=\"word-as-word\">passed<\/span> is the past tense of the verb <span class=\"word-as-word\">pass.<\/span> &quot;He looked passed her&quot; is incorrect. (I sympathize with people who get this wrong; in recent years I've found myself accidentally typing homonyms (and not noticing I've done so) more and more often. I never used to do that. My brain is making cross-connections where it shouldn't. I know the difference between <span class=\"word-as-word\">their,<\/span> <span class=\"word-as-word\">they're,<\/span> and <span class=\"word-as-word\">there,<\/span> but my fingers sometimes type the wrong word. Embarrassing, especially when it happens while I'm typing a query or suggestion as part of editing a story.)<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"word-as-word\">taut<\/span> and <span class=\"word-as-word\">taught.<\/span> In several stories recently, I've seen phrases like &quot;She held the rope taught.&quot; <span class=\"word-as-word\">Taut<\/span> means &quot;stretched tight&quot;; <span class=\"word-as-word\">taught<\/span> is always a verb, the past tense of <span class=\"word-as-word\">teach.<\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class=\"word-as-word\">pored<\/span> and <span class=\"word-as-word\">poured.<\/span> To <span class=\"word-as-word\">pore over<\/span> a book is to read it carefully. Whenever I read &quot;She poured over the book&quot; I think of maple syrup being poured over pancakes.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"word-as-word\">nock<\/span> and <span class=\"word-as-word\">knock.<\/span> To <span class=\"word-as-word\">nock<\/span> an arrow is to fit it to a bowstring. (Derives from the same root as <span class=\"word-as-word\">notch.<\/span>) You don't <span class=\"word-as-word\">knock<\/span> an arrow under normal circumstances.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another entry in an irregular series. past and passed. In the context in which they&#8217;re often confused, past means &quot;beyond&quot;&#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-874","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\/874","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=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}