Educate Your Fellow Dopers: Explain Words That Are Easily Confused

[WordMan]

@Ellis_Aponte_Jr

Can’t remember the last time I’ve heard nauseous used in that way. Hasn’t “nauseating” pretty much replaced that sense of the word?

Here’s the relevant “Usage Note” from American Heritage Dictionary:

American Heritage Dictionary Entry: nauseous

Oh yeah, folks screw up. OneCentStamp - oh yeah; I notice that.

How about this?

Comprise means “to contain.” The word is used at the beginning of the sentence. Example: The house comprises ten rooms and three baths.

Compose means “to combine, to put something in order or to make up.” The word is used at the end of the sentence. Example: Ten rooms and three baths composes the house.

[kaylasdad99]

@MaxTheVool

Here’s one I always have to look up…
i.e. means “in other words”
e.g. means “for example”

From here:

Squiggly loves watching old cartoons (e.g., DuckTales and Tugboat Mickey). The words following e.g. are examples, so you know that these are just some of the old cartoons that Squiggly enjoys.

Squiggly loves watching Donald Duck’s nephews (i.e., Huey, Dewey, and Louie). The words following i.e. provide clarification: they tell you the names of Donald Duck’s three nephews.

One suggested mnemonic is that e.g. means for EGgsample.

Another good mnemonic is that i.e. stands for Instant Education.

[Musicat]

Potable: safe to drink

Portable: safe to carry

[Musicat]

Courtesy of my professor in music school, Manus Sasonkin (RIP), who used to improvise 4-bar (sorry, measure) examples on the board for music theory class:

Ultimate: the last bar
Penultimate: the second-to-last bar
Anti-penultimate: the third-to-last bar
Anti-anti-penultimate: the first bar

[Xema]

Oxymoron: the deliberate apposition of contrasting words, e.g. “Parting is such sweet sorrow”. An oxymoron is a special kind of contradiction in terms, but it most definitely does not mean “contradiction in terms”.

Or at least it didn’t until about 15 year ago when a mob of grammatical thugs trampled, besmirched, degraded and pretty well destroyed an elegant word.

(Not that I have any strong feelings about this.)

[Xema]

@Musicat

Ultimate: the last bar
Penultimate: the second-to-last bar
Anti-penultimate: the third-to-last bar
Anti-anti-penultimate: the first bar

I think that prefix should be “Ante-”.

[california_jobcase]

Mitosis- cell replication for growth and repair in multicellular organisms (also for asexual reproduction in unicellular organisms)

Meiosis (pronounced My-Oh-Sis, properly)- Produces gametes for sexual reproduction.

Mnemonic to remember the distinction- meiosis involves sexual reproduction, so it’s mei-oh-oh-oh-sis!

[njtt]

@california_jobcase

Mnemonic to remember the distinction- meiosis involves sexual reproduction, so it’s mei-oh-oh-oh-sis!

Seems a bit incestuous.

[common_good]

@cococ173

common good: Oriented: to become familiarized to some process or locale
Orientated: to be transformed into something Oriental, like, I don’t know…chopsticks, say

I thought so, too, untill I looked it up. Synonyms.

Thanks. I’m lazy.

[Chefguy]

Momentarily: for a moment

In a moment: soon

I always want to scream “We’re all gonna die!” when a flight attendant announces “We’ll be departing momentarily.”

Affect: to produce a change in something. The tornado affected a lot of people.

Effect: the result of something being done or the ability to bring about a result We can effect change by working harder.

[Inner_Stickler]

@MaxTheVool

That may be the historical origin, but it hasn’t been used like that in everyday conversation for ages

Thats true for most of the entries in this thread. Sometimes you just have to let them peeve themselves out and then give em a juicebox and a blankie.

[Geek_Mecha]

Marinade: Noun. A blend of tasty things in which you allow meat or other foods to sit in in order to soak up its yumminess.

Marinate: Verb. The act of putting food into tasty seasonings.

The cannibal chopped up Bobby to marinate in his mango-snakevenom marinade.

[MaxTheVool]

@Inner_Stickler

Thats true for most of the entries in this thread. Sometimes you just have to let them peeve themselves out and then give em a juicebox and a blankie.

Eh, I don’t think all the battles are lost. On the other hand, it’s almost never actually useful to have a word meaning “one tenth of it was destroyed”, so I think we’re better off with the current usage of decimate.

[Ulfreida]

@Itself

pixilated: Confused, seduced, or led astray.
pixelated: Of poor enough resolution that individual pixels are visible as boxes in an image.

.

I thought the first one was “pixy-led” i.e. led astray by fairies. The other one is just pixelated mispelled.

At least, if people stuck to my idea we’d have far less of this nonsense. Humpf.

[Ignatz]

@Johanna

Its: possessive form of the pronoun it.
It’s: contraction of “it is.”

or “it has”

[BigT]

@njtt

People say “the Internet invented it” as though that somehow invalidates whatever “it” may be, but it is common usage that creates semantic distinctions, and the Internet is where a lot of common usage actually happens these days. It is just as valid, in that regard, as what happens in a rustic tavern or an urbane soirée.

It’s not the location, it’s the recency. Rules for what is proper just don’t spring up that quickly. If a distinction was common in 2006, it was likely common for years before that. One would expect there to be other observations of such use.

A pattern first discovered in 2006 is unlikely to be well-formed enough by now to form an actual rule, where not following it would be something that not even a large minority of learned speakers would view as a mistake.

Now, maybe if it were a neologism, it might make sense that there would be new rules. But that’s because new uses of language grow faster than older ones go away. “Use” and “utilize” are old words.

The only way the distinction between use/utilize can make sense is if you can find people making such a distinction rather earlier than 2006 and probably earlier than the Internet.

I hope that all made sense. I find it hard to articulate, as it seems so obvious to me. It’s just how descriptivism and prescriptivism interact. Something must be described before it can be prescribed.

[BigT]

My contribution to the thread

cue: A signal to do something or a stick that forces a white ball to hit other balls.
queue: a line or other ordered waiting group

I didn’t know the difference between these two words for a lot longer that I like to admit. I think it may have been since I joined this message board. :eek:

[OneCentStamp]

Can anyone explain to me how the word sanction seems to have two meanings that are almost exact opposites?

There’s sanction, verb, in the sense of give official approval to something. (“This heavyweight bout is sanctioned by the Nevada State Athletic Commission…”)

Then there’s sanction, noun, in the sense of official condemnation or punishment for something. (“The United States is considering further sanctions against Russia…”)

[Kenm]

That speedboat can move! It’s very fast.
That speedboat can’t move! It’s tied fast.

Preventive medicine is wise.
Preventative medicine is self-inflationary hot air.