An allusion is such an indirect, or allusive, reference.
To elude is to escape, as a bank robber eludes a dragnet.
A dream one half-recalls on waking that then slips entirely from one’s consciousness might be called elusive. That is, it’s difficult to hold on to.
ALTAR/ALTER
An altar is a raised structure on which, in religious ceremonies, sacrifices are made or gifts are left.
To alter is to change.
ALTERNATE/ALTERNATIVE
The Strictly Speaking Club, of which I’m an on-again, off-again member, will tell you that, strictly speaking, an alternate is a thing that replaces a thing, and alternatives—which travel in packs, or at least pairs—are options, any one of which might be viable. That is, if, owing to an accident, I’m forced off the road in Connecticut and must find my way to Boston via Pawtucket, I’m mandated to travel an alternate route, but on another day, should I opt to make my way to Boston on local streets rather than highways, I am simply choosing an alternative route.
As well, to do something every other Wednesday is to do that thing on alternate Wednesdays, to blow hot and cold in one’s feelings is to alternately like and dislike something, and constructing a lasagna with tiers of noodles, sauce, and cheese is to build it with alternate layers. “Succeeding by turns,” as the dictionary helpfully phrases it.
Also as well, an option beyond normalcy*5 is an alternative: alternative music, alternative medicine, alternative lifestyle, etc. (This use can carry a whiff of disapproval, so be careful how you apply it.)
One’s alternate identity (Percy Blakeney’s Scarlet Pimpernel, Bruce Wayne’s Batman, Paul Reubens’s Pee-wee Herman) is one’s alter ego.*6
AMBIGUOUS/AMBIVALENT
To be ambiguous is to lack clarity, to be murkily open to misinterpretation.
To be ambivalent is to have mixed feelings.
One’s meaning may be ambiguous, but one’s attitude is ambivalent.
AMOK/AMUCK
To run amok is, in its original sense, to launch, after a bout of brooding, into a murderous frenzy—a phenomenon, I find in my encyclopedia, particularly observed in Malaysia, whence the word “amok” derives. In its current, less homicidal context, the word evokes, for instance, what occurs when a mob of six-year-olds sugar themselves into howling agitation.
“Amuck” is simply a variant spelling of “amok,” and for quite some time it was the more popular English-language spelling. “Amok” overtook it in the 1940s, and I’d like to think that the 1953 Merrie Melodies classic Duck Amuck, featuring the eponymous Daffy, finished off “amuck” in any other but comical contexts.
AMUSE/BEMUSE/BEMUSED
To amuse is to entertain, delight, divert.
To bemuse is to perplex, befuddle, preoccupy, nonplus.
The rising use of “bemused” to describe, as I noted earlier, a sort of wry, unflappable, tuxedo-wearing, cocktail-sipping amusement may be unstoppable, but unstopped it will certainly kill off the usefulness of the word entirely—just as the redefinition of “nonplus,” which properly means to confuse-startle-unnerve, to mean its precise opposite (“I wasn’t frightened at all; I was completely nonplussed”), will, unchecked, render that word unusable in any fashion. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
ANYMORE/ANY MORE
“Anymore” = any longer or at this time, as in “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“Any more” = an additional amount, as in “I don’t want any more pie, thank you.”
You don’t have to search back too many decades to find frequent use of “any more” where we’d now, at least in America, write “anymore.” (The Brits remain less keen on the fused version.)
APPRAISE/APPRISE
To appraise is to assess or evaluate, as one has a gem appraised to determine its worth.
To apprise is to inform, as one apprises one’s boss of one’s vacation plans.
ASSURE/ENSURE/INSURE
One assures another person so as to relieve doubt: “I assure you we’ll leave on time.”
To ensure is to make something certain—something, not someone: “The proctor is here to ensure that there is no talking during the test.”
“Insure” is best reserved for discussions of compensation in the event of death or dismemberment, monthly premiums, and everything else involved in our betting that something terrible is going to happen to us.
BAITED/BATED
A trap is baited—that is, outfitted with bait.
“Bated,” which you are unlikely to chance upon disattached from the word “breath,” means reduced or moderated or suspended. To await something with bated breath is to await it with thrilled tension, to be on (to use a grand old word) tenterhooks.
BAKLAVA/BALACLAVA
Baklava is a Middle Eastern pastry made of filo dough, chopped or ground nuts, and an awful lot of honey.
A balaclava is a hood that covers the entire head (except, for the sakes of practicality and respiration, the eyes and the mouth). A ski mask, more or less.
Neither “baklava” nor “balaclava” should be confused with baccalà, which is dried, salted cod; a balalaika, which is a stringed instrument; or Olga Baclanova, the actress best known for being turned into a human duck in the 1932 horror film Freaks.
BAWL/BALL
To bawl one’s eyes out is to weep profusely.
To ball one’s eyes out would be some sort of sporting or teabagging mishap.
BERG/BURG
A berg is an iceberg.
“Burg” is a slangish, old-fashioned, often uncomplimentary term for a town or a city. If a town or a city is particularly dreary and puny and backward, it’s not merely a burg but a podunk burg.
BESIDE/BESIDES
“Beside” means “next to” (as in “Come sit beside me”).
“Besides” means “other than” (as in “There’s no one left besides Granny who remembers those old days”).
I’ve found that “beside” is frequently used when “besides” is meant, and I wonder whether people who have had it drilled into their heads to use “toward” rather than “towards,” “backward” rather than “backwards,” etc., view “besides” as a Briticism-to-be-avoided. Or, thinking it a relative of “anyways,” view it as an outright error.
BLACK OUT/BLACKOUT
The verb is “black out,” as one may black out after binge drinking.
The noun is “blackout,” meaning a loss of consciousness, an electrical power failure, or a suppression of information (as in a news blackout).
BLOND/BLONDE
“Blond” is an adjective: He has blond hair; she has blond hair.
“Blond” and “blonde” are also nouns: A man with blond hair is a blond; a woman with blond hair is a blonde. “Blonde” carries some heavy cultural baggage by way of the moldy pejorative “dumb blonde,” so use it thoughtfully and carefully, if at all.
I won’t pretend that “blonde” is unknown as an adjective. Here, plucked, via a random Internet search, from Emma Embury’s “The Interesting Stranger,” c. 1841: “the blonde hair, rosy cheeks and somewhat dumpy person of her merry sister.”*7 If you insist on using “blonde” as an adjective, I must insist that you apply it only to women, as the concluding e, via the French, marks the word as feminine.
BOARDER/BORDER
A boarder is a person who rents a room in a boardinghouse.
A border divides one geographical entity from another.
(My editor, looking over my shoulder, which is his job, suggested that this differentiation was obvious and thus deletable from this admittedly lengthy list. I wish.)
BORN/BORNE
The word you want for discussions of birth, actual or metaphorical, is “born,” whether one was born yesterday, born in a trunk or out of wedlock, or New York–born.
Otherwise, things that are carried or produced are borne. Diseases are insect-borne. A tree that bears fruit has, then, borne fruit. The right to bear arms is the right to have borne them.
And though triumph may be born out of tragedy, one’s grand schemes may not be borne out in reality.
BREACH/BREECH/BROACH/BROOCH
To breach is to break open or pierce.
A breach is a rupture or violation, as in a breach in a dam or a breach of etiquette. When Shakespeare’s Henry V cries, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” he’s literally referring to the gap his English troops have opened in the walls of a French city under siege. Note, please, that it’s “unto the breach,” not, as it’s often misquoted, “into” it.
A breach is also the leaping of a whale out of the ocean; the whale is thus said to be breaching.
“Breech” is an outmoded term for buttocks; thus trousers were once breeches. A breech birth is one in which the baby emerges buttocks (or feet) first.
To broach a subject is to raise it.
A brooch is a piece of decorative jewelry.
BREATH/BREATHE/BREADTH
“Breath” is a noun; “breathe” is a verb. One loses one’s breath. One breathes one’s last breath. Et cetera.
“Breath” is often written when “breathe” is called for. This is an especially easy error to commit and, once committed, difficult to catch, so I urge you to be on your guard about it.
No one ever seems to get “breadth” wrong—though it comes up every now and then in “Hey, how come it’s ‘length’ and ‘breadth’ and ‘width’ but not ‘heighth’?” conversations*8—so I simply note its existence.
BULLION/BOUILLON
The former is metal, the latter broth (which you may sometimes encounter dehydrated into little cubes).
CACHE/CACHET
A cache is a place for hiding one’s valuables or a collection of things so hidden. As a verb, then, to cache means to hide. One might, I suppose, cache one’s cache of cash in an underground cache.
Cachet is the quality of prestige and distinction, as Edith Wharton’s avaricious, ambitious Undine Spragg, in The Custom of the Country, marries for social cachet. And for cash.
Though the pronunciation of words, as opposed to their spelling and use, is, as I’ve mentioned, outside my bailiwick, I’m happy to point out that “cache” is pronounced exactly like “cash,” whereas “cachet” has two syllables: “ka-shay.”
CALLOUS/CALLUS
To be callous is to be hard-hearted.
A callus is a thickening of the skin.
Many, many, many people get this wrong, so if you can get it right you’ll earn a slew of brownie points.*9
CANVAS/CANVASS
Canvas is cloth, of the sort used to make sails or to paint on.
To canvass is to secure votes or opinions.
CAPITAL/CAPITOL
A capital is an important city, or a large letter as one would find at the beginning of a sentence or a proper noun, or one’s accumulated funds, or, architecturally, the crown of the shaft of a column. It is also an adjective describing a serious crime (often, though not invariably, punishable by death) and something that approving British people used to exclaim—“Capital!”—before they all started exclaiming “Brilliant!”
A capitol is a building housing a legislature, like the great domed Capitol (capitalized in this case, as that is its name) in our nation’s capital.
CARAT/KARAT/CARET/CARROT
A carat is a unit of weight applied to gemstones.
The proportion of gold in an alloy is measured in karats, the purest gold being 24-karat.
A caret is a copyediting and proofreading symbol (it looks like this: ^) showing where new text is to be inserted into an already set line.
Carrots are what Bugs Bunny eats.
CASUAL/CAUSAL
Be careful with these, as one doesn’t want to write of a causal relationship (in which one thing causes another thing or is caused by it) when one means to write of a casual—easygoing, informal—relationship, and vice versa. The words are visually almost indistinguishable, their meanings anything but.
CHORD/CORD
In music, a chord is a number of notes played simultaneously; “chord” is also used to refer to an emotional response, as a plaintive melody may be said to strike a chord.
A cord is a woven string of threads.
To strike a blow against an exceptionally popular error: One has vocal cords, not (no matter how musical one is) “vocal chords.”
CITE/SIGHT/SITE
The confusion between “cite” and “site” seems to be on the rise. To cite something is to quote or attribute it, as one cites a reference book or a website. And, aha, there’s the potential for confusion: In citing a fact one’s found on a (web)site, the desire to “site” it is increasingly compelling (but still incorrect).
Further confusion arises between “site”—as a noun, the property on which a structure is constructed; as a verb, the action of placing that structure—and “sight,” a thing one goes to see, e.g., the sights of Paris one views while sightseeing.
A sight is also the dojigger on a firearm that helps you aim, thus “I’ve got you in my sights.”
CLASSIC/CLASSICAL
A classic is an excellent or defining version of something, as “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is a classic pop song by the Beach Boys and the classic (if inadvisable) cure for a hangover is to recommence to drink.
“Classical” is best reserved for descriptions of things like the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome or the orchestral music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
CLIMACTIC/CLIMATIC
The former relates to narrative thrills, spills, and chills on the way to a denouement; the latter concerns, perhaps (and hopefully) less thrillingly, meteorological phenomena.
COME/CUM
Sexually speaking, there are no hard-and-fast*10 rules about this, but I think that “come” works nicely as a verb in the sense of “to climax.” If one is then going to use the common term for the product of male orgasm, “cum” is your man.*11
As a staid conjunction, “cum” suggests dual use, as one might speak of a desk-cum-bureau. It’s best set between the things it’s conjoining with hyphens.*12 After centuries of use, the Latin-derived “cum” is surely a proper English word, so set it in roman rather than italicizing it. It also tends to inspire, in the chronically immature,*13 the giggles, so give it a good thought before you choose to use it at all.
COMPLEMENT/COMPLEMENTARY/COMPLIMENT/COMPLIMENTARY
To complement something is to go nicely with it, the way a diagonally striped tie may complement a vertically striped shirt.
If I am telling you how natty you look in your spiffily complementing shirt and tie, I am paying you a compliment.
An ability to spell and an ability to type rapidly and accurately might be thought of as complementary skills in secretarial work—that is, each serves the other.
If I am offering you my spelling and typing skills free of charge, I am giving you access to a complimentary service.
CONFIDANT/CONFIDANTE
If you’re not a fan of gendered nouns, you can certainly apply “confidant” to anyone with whom you share confidences. Don’t, though, refer to a man as a confidante; confidantes are, solely, women.
(Most people discern correctly between “fiancé” and “fiancée,” but most is not all.)
CONSCIENCE/CONSCIOUS
Your conscience is the little voice within that helps you differentiate between right and wrong. If you are Pinocchio in the Disney version, you possess an externalized conscience in the person—well, in the insect—of Jiminy Cricket, whose name derives from the euphemistic oath that is a polite alternative to bellowing “Jesus Christ!”
&
nbsp; To be conscious is to be awake and alert, also to be particularly aware and mindful.
CONTINUAL/CONTINUOUS
“Continual” means ongoing but with pause or interruption, starting and stopping, as, say, continual thunderstorms (with patches of sunlight) or continual bickering (with patches of amity).
“Continuous” means ceaseless, as in a Noah-and-the-Flood-like forty days and forty nights of unrelenting rain.
CORONET/CORNET
A coronet is a small crown; a cornet is a trumpetlike musical instrument.
CRITERION/CRITERIA
“Criterion” is singular: a standard upon which one can make a decision. A number of criterions (it’s a word, really, though I can’t think of the last time I saw it used) are criteria.
I frequently encounter the plural “criteria” where the singular “criterion” is meant. Perhaps people think it’s fancier.
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