Also, a noun meaning a sports competition, or an old-fashioned adjective meaning fitting and proper.
Epidemic: the disease/condition is wide spread across a wide area or across multiple populations
Endemic: The disease/condition is concentrated in a specific area or within a specific population.
I suppose some people may deserve nothing but hot vast tracts of sand, but I’ve been a good boy and deserve just desserts.
Plead or Pled - I see this here a lot - yesterday, in fact. Plead is always pronounced “pleed”. It is not pronounced like pled and it is not the past tense of Plead. The past tense of Plead is Pleaded or Pled. And Pleaded is the preferred form.
opioid: a substance that is similar to or has effects similar to opium
opiate: derived from opium
Here’s a good list, which includes some that I don’t think have been mentioned yet in this thread:
When George Steinbrenner called Hideki Irabu a “pussy toad”, at least one newspaper here in New York, whether from ignorance or lack of faith in its readers, chose to spell it “pus-ie”. Of course, had Steinbrenner chosen “purulent” in the first place the problem might have been avoided.
I don’t know how widespread this is, but I recently had to explain that some new quarter-dollar coins feature “Anna May” Wong and not “Anime” Wong.
insensed: instructed
incensed: pissed off
Hearty: vigorous, energetic; or genial, cordial
Hardy: robust, healthy, able to endure harsh conditions
There is some slight overlap in meaning which makes a lot of people confuse these.
I was assigned a post in the desert so I decided to desert it.
I keep seeing people get this one wrong.
tenant = someone who occupies a rental property
tenet = a principle [not “principal”] or belief
‘Rein’ and ‘reign’. The thing that controls a horse can be confused with the idea of controlling a kingdom. Some people might confuse ‘rain’ with those words but that’s just poor spelling which is probably the most common reason ‘rein’ is written instead of ‘reign’ with it’s tricky useless ‘g’.
Only love can make it rain.
Hey, it isn’t our fault that the ‘g’ is silent in a word originally derived from ‘regnum’. I blame the French, whose chronic hatred of consonants has ruined the entire Latin alphabet.
Stationary: and adjective that means “not moving.”
Stationery: items used for writing. This includes but is not limited to pens, ink, and paper.
Multiply : increasing a numerical value by adding that value to itself a specified number of times. (as in multiply 2 x 2 = 4)
Multiply : the action of propagating some thing by replicating or increasing the number of instances of that thing. (as in multiply the number of animals, plants or problems)
(These two definitions are closely related, and pronounced in the same way, at least in my dialect).
Multiply- : something which has had the same action performed upon it several times. (as in multiply-amended, multiply-rejected, multiply-augmented, and so on).
(This definition has a significantly different pronunciation).
It would help if the accepted spelling for that second one was “multipally”.
In non-mathematical contexts, “multiply” does always (?) involve increasing. But mathematically, it need not (which can be a source of confusion when students learn about multiplying fractions).
The 90s NBA star Sean Kemp’s moniker “Reign Man” played on this — evoking his team’s rainy locale (Seattle).
(Sean is back in the news this week, and not in a good way).
Bummer 
and WTF?