Welcome to
The Vocab List

 

I started collecting malapropisms when I started teaching composition; when I started reading fanfic, the practice just extended itself. Eventually I figured I might as well devote a page to these things, in the (probably vain) hope that browsing writers will read it and amend their usage.

 

Confused Terms

These are words that are similar enough in pronunciation to get mixed up on the page--often with very funny results, actually.

Proscribed: forbidden.

Prescribed: recommended or ordered.

 

Elicit: to call forth.

Illicit: illegal or un-approved.

 

Affect: to have an influence on; also to simulate or pretend to--"an affected British accent"; if the a is stressed, emotion or feeling

Effect: result or to cause to happen; also a particular impression--"lighting effects".

 

Disparate: separate or distinct.

Desperate: nearly hopeless or despairing.

 

Alter: to change.

Altar: often raised area where a religious ritual is celebrated.

 

Canon: approved/accepted principle, rule or body of information.

Cannon: big metal cylinders that go boom.

 

Exalted: raised up or glorified; also elated or sublime feeling.

Exhausted: really, really tired.

 

Sheer: translucent, as in "a sheer curtain"; also completely or without exception, as in "the sheer melodrama of it"; also to swerve or deviate, as in "to sheer off from the confrontation"; also straight up and down, as in "a sheer cliff".

Shear: to cut away, as in "to shear sheep of wool", or as if cut sharply.

 

Born: to be given birth.

Borne: carried or endured.

 

Bear: to carry or endure; also a four-legged, furry animal.

Bare: uncovered.

 

Compliment: to comment upon favorably.

Complement: what completes or makes perfect (complementary colors are blue and orange, opposites on the color wheel); also the amount needed to make a whole (the whole company of a ship or military unit).

 

Discreet: careful to avoid notice, tactful, unobtrusive.

Discrete: separate, distinct--"several discrete parts".

 

Seem: to appear to be, as in "she seems nice" (also part of seemly/unseemly--appropriate or not).

Seam: where two parts are joined, as in "the seam of a shirt".

 

Summary: a brief description of contents.

Summery: related to the season of Summer.

 

Peaked: steeply sloped and pointed at the top, as in "a peaked roof".

Piqued: some particular emotion excited or aroused, especially anger; "he was piqued by her indifference" or "the mystery piqued her curiosity".

Picked: most commonly chosen or selected; also probed, as in "he picked his teeth", and to gather or remove, as in "she picked apples today".

 

Comprehensible: understandable or intelligible.

Comprehensive: covering or including a broad or complete range, as in "comprehensive knowledge of" a subject.

 

Wreak: to inflict, bring about or cause, uniformly negative as in "to wreak havoc" or "wreak my anger upon Soandso".

Reek: to stink.

 

Just Plain Misused

I have no idea why these words are misused so often. But this is how to use them properly.

Complacent. I often see the odd phrase "complacent to". It's a nonsense phrase, though I suppose it could have come out of the marginally acceptable "complacent towards". Most simply, complacent means pleased. The connotation is that the complacent person is satisfied or unconcerned. It is not a directional sort of adjective; one is not complacent to someone the way one might be nice to someone. The most one can be is complacent about someone.

-volve. I have, with increasing frequency, seen the bastard term "involves on" used to mean "centered on" or "revolving around". To revolve around is to turn around, as planets turn around a star. To be involved means to participate in or be taken up with some activity. "Involve on" has no meaning.

Intend on + gerund. This comes in two equally incorrect forms. One adds the -ing to "intend" giving us "intending on". The other gives the -ing to a separate verb, for example "I don't intend on spending the weekend like this". The correct helping word for "intend" is not "on", but rather "to". One "intends to" do something. Alternatively, one can have the intention of doing something. The only form related to "on" occurs when one is "intent on" doing something, which means focused on it.

 

English is Evil

English, as a fellow scholar of mine often says, is a guerilla language; hence it declines to line up in neat rows. Some of the rampant rule-twisting results in downright evil irregularities. Here are a few winners in the evil-ness sweepstakes.

It's: it is

Its: belonging to it

 

Their: belonging to them

They're: they are

There: in that place some distance away

 

Loose: not tight, relaxed (loos)

Lose: not winning or having (looz)

it's the two of these together that make for true evil-ness

Choose: to select (chooz)

Chose: past tense of choose (chohz)

 

Together: more than one thing in a single location

Togather: non-existent word, despite how very much sense it makes to look at (Gathered togather, right? Wrong, suckers!)

 

Then: a particular time--"he was still sleeping then"; indicates next in a sequence--"I ate, then brushed my teeth"

Than: indicates an unequal comparison--"she is a better painter than I am"

 

Nauseated: sickened, feeling sick to one's stomach

Nauseous: sickening, causing nausea

 

Usage

Language is a bugger. It's always changing on you. For example...

Blond/Blonde and Brunet/Brunette. These are words that English borrowed from French, and in French the endings make a difference--specifically, the difference between masculine and feminine. In English it's less cut and dried. "Blond", for example, was borrowed as a gender-neutral word and the feminine form has only recently come into use. Thus, if we (the US-English speaking writers) want to make an issue of light hair as a hyper-feminized gender marker (think Marilyn Monroe, here), we use "blonde", and it only applies to women. As a casual reference to light hair in either sex, we use "blond". "Brunette", on the other hand, was adopted in its specifically feminine form to give women a more interesting term for dark coloring than "dark"; it's a lot like the way women have gotten the bright colors in fashion over the last two hundred years or so. "Brunet" is a term with almost no currency in US English, but, since the feminine form was adopted with its gender distinction intact, if you want to use a term other than "brown" for a man's hair, "brunet" would be the correct form. (source for historical usage: the American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd ed.)

He, She, They: "the person raised their arm". Ah, the problem of a neutral pronoun. See, technically, English doesn't have a singular neutral pronoun these days (though in less linguistically regularized days we did). We either have to pick a gender ("he" or "she") or else specify both ("he or she"). Only when speaking of a group can we use "they" or "their". However, in recent decades, the clear need for a singular neutral pronoun has led to increasing slippage in this rule. While a number of linguists have proposed various borrowed terms from more generously equipped languages, the everyday speaker has been calmly making do with what we already have. Thus, the example cited above. The problem, here, is that while this passes seamlessly in speech, it still looks weird in writing. In another ten or twenty years, I fully expect the linguists to cave in and admit that usage has made "they" and "their" neutral singulars. In the meantime, I recommend sticking with the technically correct usage even it it does get a bit frustrating. One useful tactic: pick whatever gender pronoun the speaker in question is.

 

When in doubt, American Heritage is your friend.

For a particularly entertaining variation of this whole spiel, see Jeanne's article The Editor from Hell's Hit List at Aestheticism. We don't always agree on usage, generally breaking down along the Canadian-US line, but her rendition is both arch and on target.
 

Last modified: 10/11/06
First Posted:  9/29/03