Words one can get confused

In Wales it’s swipe right, swipe left, swipe right.

Those poor sheep!

My mama no raise no dummies. I dug her rap! :slight_smile:

ETA: A serious response to this thread that I don’t think has been covered:

Emigrate - To leave a place to settle somewhere else.
Immigrate - To come to a place from somewhere else.

In other words, you immigrate to a place. You emigrate from a place.

hanged vs. hung
aisle vs. isle
silicone vs. silicon
Celsius vs. Centigrade

I did not know that and admit I am having some problem seeing how that is so. I looked it up just now and don’t see it listed as an adjective but I miss things in the fine print sometimes.

Through and though.

I often forget the r.

I’m pretty sure “adverb” was meant there.

This may be the case. However, the post listed “there” being used as an adjective, as a noun, and as an adverb which suggests the author might indeed believe “there” can be an adjective.

ETA: I see that this case was already adjudicated further down in the thread

Had to look this one up. Very technically, Celsius is defined using the triple point of water as a reference while Centigrade uses the standard freezing point of water. Also, “centigrade” both is used refer to other measures and in nomenclature could refer to any temperature scale divided into 100 parts. Purists use Celsius.

Ah. Missed all that.

Capital - a city which is a/the seat of government of a nation, state or province.

Capitol - a building which may be in the above city, where the legislature sit.

Founder: “to sink” or “to collapse” or “to fail.”

Flounder: “to struggle to move” or “to proceed clumsily.”

Spelling desert and dessert correctly was a big fetish of my junior high teachers. I’d pester them with “Doesn’t a cowardly soldier desert?”

If they’re with the French Foreign Legion, they desert from the desert.

I once read a book review in the New York Post that snarkily quoted the reviewed book thus-- ‘“just deserts” (sic)’. I was tempted to write in in ridicule but decided it was pointless.

“Jibe” and “gibe” are another pair.

“Defuse” and “diffuse”.

GHW Bush contributed to the spread of “honing in”, just as GW advanced “nucular” proliferation (off topic, but I couldn’t resist).

Sorry, but this is a nitpick thread: yan, tan, tethera and simular sheep counting systems are from Northern England, mainly around Cumbria, not Scotland.

We can do this all day (and then wonder which pairs do get confused IRL)

vs gybe vs gyve…

lie vs lay

abduct vs obduct

observe vs obverse

wake vs awake vs awaken…

Discrete vs. discreet

Tenet vs. tenant

@Filbert good to know, thanks!!

I would bet that these two are never confused, since the world is partitioned into a majority who have never heard of the word obduct, and a minority who know the difference.