Educate Your Fellow Dopers: Explain Words That Are Easily Confused

Lend is a verb. Loan is a noun. You lend someone money. That money is a loan.

BTW, Disneyland is not in Los Angeles. It is in Anaheim, Ca. :slight_smile:

**Brake: **A device for stopping something from moving, or slowing it down
**Break: **(v)To divide into pieces, (n)a gap or crack in an object, or an interruption in a period of time

And a third one:
Tortious: having the nature of a civil tort. E.g. “His acts in restraint of trade are so tortious!”

Emigrate: (v) To leave a country indefinitely in order to settle in another.
Immigrate: (v) To enter and settle in a country indefinitely.

E.g.:

“My ancestor, Olaf Jansen, emigrated from Sweden in 1885 with intent to immigrate to Canada. He didn’t like it there so he decided to immigrate to the United States instead, settling in Key West.”

A lot: many

Alot: fracture of the skull caused by me beating you over the head with a space bar.

Cannot: It is impossible for a thing to happen (Penguins cannot fly)
May not: Something in prohibited (Customers may not consume their own food on these premises)

Enormity can also be a noun referring to the scale or size of a perceived bad thing. So I can see the confusion.

You could use “dais” for the raised platform and “lectern” for the stand. There, much less ambiguity.

Ask: (v) To make an inquiry
Ax: (n) What you’re going to get hit with if you don’t stop “axing” questions.

Compliment: An expression of admiration or praise
Complement: Something which goes well with another thing (often so as to make it complete)

Pain (or other sensory) threshold: the amount of a given stimulus that someone can detect reliably (often 50% of the time in psychological experiments). That usually only takes a very low amount of input.

Tolerance: The ability to withstand (tolerate) such a stimulus well beyond the point where it is first noticed.

These terms are commonly confused even among educated people. Claiming that you have a high ‘pain threshold’ doesn’t mean much and is almost never an accurate expression for the desired idea. Most people can feel pain well before they submit to it. The real term that people are aiming for is ‘I have a high pain tolerance’. That means that you recognize pain but override the desire to react to it through willpower longer than most people.

Obligatory “Hyperbole and a Half” link (which, I was glad to see, was the first thing that came up when I googled “alot”).

To be fair, HeyHomie said, “outside of Los Angeles.”

[QUOTE=HeyHomie]
HINT: Here’s a little mnemonic to help you: The word “World” has an O, an R, an L and a D, just like “Florida.”
[/QUOTE]

Or even more like “Orlando” :wink:

New England = the totality of six states - Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. It is no more and no less than that and never has been. No part of New York state is part of New England nor is any other U.S. state or Canadian province even though parts of some of them may share some characteristics with it.

The Ivy League = exactly 8 private, northeastern universities that are all prestigious but not necessarily the best in all or even most fields. It is fundamentally a sports league. The total list is Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. That is all there ever has been and all there will ever be. There are no colleges or universities that were offered admission and declined it nor are there any schools in the West, Midwest, South or Southwest that are considered honorary members. There are schools at least as prestigious as the Ivy League schools that are not in the conference (MIT and Stanford are just two examples).

NO. Both injuries and fatalities are casualties. That’s one I find very aggravating because misusing that can completely change the meaning of a casualty count.

State Capital: The city wherein has been designated the seat of a state government.

State Capitol: A building in that city, where the legislative branch of that government meets.

cavalry: a branch of the military, was horses now tanks
Calvary: hill where Jesus was crucified

Pet peeve: S a way to make a noun plural boy, boys
Z last letter of the alphabet boy, boyz (no such thing)

Cleave - To cling to
Cleave - To break from

:wink:

Cars: Plural form of car
Car’s: Belongs to the car or a contraction of “Car is”. Not the plural form of car.

Lose: To not win, as in Michigan will lose to Nebraska
Loose: Not tight, as in my pants are loose

Principal: leader of a school or as an adjective to describe something as primary
Principle: a belief or code

Yes, but the mnemonic works because it references each resort’s home state. Throwing cities into the mix just confuses things. For one, ORLANDO has an O,R,L and D like “World,” it also has an L,A,N and D, like, uh, “Land.” For another, Anaheim doesn’t really work for this mnemonic.