Words & Stuff

Time for another installment in my Words easily confused series. (For more recent installments, see the errors category of this blog.)

As usual, an asterisk indicates an incorrect-usage example. I made up all the examples; they’re not quotes from anyone in particular.

This time around, for all the items that are on the Common Errors in English page or in the Eggcorns database, I've just provided links rather than comments.

bellow for below

Just a typo, but a spellchecker won't catch it.

conscience for conscious

Amazed I haven't mentioned this one before; very common error.

envelop for envelope

Common error.

hair-brained for hare-brained

Common error; also eggcorn.

lumpen for lumpy

The definition of "lumpen" is a little complicated, but in essence the term refers to lower-class people. It has nothing to do with being lumpy.

moral for morale

Common error.

nuptual for nuptial

This is one that I often get wrong, embarrassingly. Common error.

palette cleanser for palate cleanser

I saw this twice in an hour, in two different places, back in May. Common error.

palm

Writers often say "she palmed the pill" to mean "she shook the pill out of the bottle and into her palm," not realizing that the verb "palm" has specific connotations of stealth. It's what magicians do, for example: they palm items to make them seem to disappear.

peddle for pedal

Common error; also eggcorn.

queue for cue

As in * "That's my queue to say..." Common error; also eggcorn.

sometimes for sometime

This one's a little tricky. "Sometime" can mean either "former" ("my sometime occupation") or "at some point" ("come see me sometime"). "Sometimes" has a similar meaning to the latter, but not, in my usage, to the former; I can't say * "my sometimes occupation." However, MW11 has an entry for "sometimes" as an adjective meaning "sometime," dating back to the 16th century or so, so apparently I'm wrong about this. Still, I don't recommend this usage.

wail (or wale) for whale

Most commonly in "wail away" or "wail on"; to "whale" or "whale on" something is to strike, hit, or thrash it. "Wail away on the guitar" might be correct in some contexts, but most of the time it's a mistake. Common error; also eggcorn.

wile away for while away

Common error.

wiz kid for whiz kid

Clearly an eggcorn, but not listed yet in the eggcorn database. A whiz kid is someone who is a whiz at something; the word "whiz" may ultimately derive from "wizard" (MW11 is uncertain), but "wiz kid" is incorrect. I imagine part of the confusion here might derive from the line from The Wizard of Oz: "You'll find he is a whiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was!"

woebegotten for woebegone? or maybe for misbegotten?

Is this a regionalism of some sort? I've seen it a couple of times now, and I'm always a little mystified.

ya'll for y'all

This is just a misspelling, or maybe I mean mispunctuation. Apostrophes go where letters are missing; in this case, the apostrophe marks the missing "ou". There wouldn't be any reason for the apostrophe to appear after the "a." A remarkable number of well-educated people were never taught that apostrophes denote missing letters (or numbers), and thus ended up with some odd ideas about apostrophe use in certain contexts. (Yes, there are other correct uses for apostrophes too. But there's always a reason for their presence in any given context; they're not just flavoring to be sprinkled over a word.)