Dreyer's English

by Benjamin Dreyer

  Note, please: “a historic event,” not “an historic event.” Unless you’re in the habit of saying or writing “an helicopter” you’ve got no cause to say or write “an historic.”

  HOARD/HORDE

  To hoard is to amass, often with an eye toward secrecy; that which one hoards is one’s hoard. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smaug is a hoarder of gold. New York’s legendary Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, were hoarders of just about anything they could cram into their Fifth Avenue townhouse. Their hoarding ultimately led to their grisly deaths, Langley crushed by a would-be defensive booby trap and poor blind, helpless Homer subsequently starving to death. The More You Know.

  “Horde” is most often used as an uncomplimentary term for a teeming crowd of something or other: Mongol invaders, say, or sidewalk-blocking tourists in Times Square, or zombies.

  HOME/HONE

  Birds of prey and missiles home in on their targets.

  To hone is to sharpen.

  The phrase “hone in on” is one of those so-many-people-use-it-that-it-has-its-own-dictionary-entry-and-can-scarcely-anymore-be-called-an-error things, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  HUMMUS/HUMUS

  Hummus is a Middle Eastern dip made from mashed chickpeas.

  Humus is decaying organic matter in soil.

  You will find fifty-seven varieties of the former at your local Whole Foods. Be careful never to eat the latter.

  IMPLY/INFER

  To imply is to suggest, to say something without saying it.

  To infer is to draw a conclusion from information perhaps obliquely offered, to figure out, to deduce.

  Think of “imply” as an outward action and “infer” as an inward one. Or: Speakers imply; listeners infer.

  INTERNMENT/INTERMENT

  Internment is imprisoning or confining, particularly during wartime—as Japanese Americans were interned during World War II.

  Interment is ritual burial, as a child might laboriously and with great ceremony inter a deceased pet. (To put something into an urn—particularly ashes after a cremation, which I hope you don’t call cremains—is to inurn it.)

  IT’S/ITS

  “It’s” is “it is,” as in “It’s a lovely day today.”

  “Its” is the possessive of “it,” as in “It rubs the lotion on its skin.”

  No matter the perspicacity of any statement you may ever present publicly in print or, especially, online, an inability to discern between “its” and “it’s” (and, see below, “your” and “you’re”) will make you a target for thunderous belittling. It’s not fair, I suppose, but neither is life generally, I find.

  KIBITZ/KIBBUTZ

  To kibitz is to chitchat. Used with a bit more shade, it’s to offer meddlesome advice from the sidelines, particularly at a card game.*20 Note that it’s spelled with a single b.

  A kibbutz, with two b’s, is an Israeli socialistic farming collective.

  LAMA/LLAMA

  The South American domesticated ungulate, cousin to the alpaca and the vicuña, is a llama.

  A Buddhist priest or monk of Tibet or Mongolia is a lama. Lamas live in lamaseries.

  LAY, LIE, LAID, LAIN, AND THE REST OF THE CLAN

  Loath as I am to haul out the grammatical jargon, we’re not going to get through the lay/lie thing without it.

  So, then: One notes that “lay” is a transitive verb, which means that it demands an object. A transitive verb doesn’t merely do; it must do to something. One does not merely lay; one lays a thing.*21 I lay my hands on a long-sought volume of poetry. I lay blame on a convenient stooge. I lay (if I am a hen) an egg.*22

  What does this mean to you? Well, for a start: If you’re hesitating between “lie” and “lay” and (a) your sentence has a thing to act upon and (b) you can replace the verb you’re in a quandary about with a less confusingly transitive verb like “place,” you need a “lay.”

  “Lie,” on the other hand, is an intransitive verb. I lie, period. Works for both recumbence and fibbing. No object needed. “Lie” can handle an adverb (I lie down, I lie badly) or a place on which to do it (I lie on the couch); it just doesn’t need a thing, a what, attached to it.

  Unfortunately, both verbs can and must be conjugated, and this is where the trouble kicks in.

  Let’s run through them, tensely.

  to lay

  present

  lay

  I lay the bowl on the table.

  present participle

  laying

  I am laying the bowl on the table.

  past

  laid

  Earlier, I laid the bowl on the table.

  past participle

  laid

  I have laid the bowl on the table.

  to lie (in the sense of to recline)*23

  present

  lie

  I lie down.

  present participle

  lying

  Look at me: I am lying down.

  past

  lay

  Yesterday, I lay down.

  past participle

  lain

  Look at me: I have lain down.

  That the past participle of “lie” is “lain,” which never looks right to anyone, is bad enough. That the past tense of “lie” is “lay,” the very word we are trying so hard not to misuse in the first place, is maddening. I know. I’m sorry.

  With practice, you may be able to commit all of these to memory. Or you may dog-ear this page and keep it handy. I know I would.

  Bonus Lay/Lie Facts

  The action of lying down does not require that one be a person, as some people mistakenly (and, I think, oddly) believe. I lie down. Fiona the hippopotamus lies down. Pat the bunny lies down.

  One doesn’t, in present-tense hiding, lay low or, in ambush, lay in wait. It’s “lie” all the way: I lie low; I lie in wait.

  That said, one does lay a trap for one’s enemy, and given the chance, one will lay that enemy low.

  To lay a ghost is to exorcise it.

  You’re not going to like this: Up until the late eighteenth century or so, no one particularly cared whether you chose to lie down or lay down, so long as you got horizontal. Then some word busybodies got wrought up on the subject, a rule was born, and schoolchildren (and writers) have been tortured on the subject ever since.

  LEACH/LEECH

  To leach is to drain one substance out of another by means of a percolating*24 liquid, as rainwater may leach nutrients out of soil.

  To leech, literally, is to apply leeches, those nasty-looking bloodsucking worms, to a patient in order to advance healing.

  To leech, figuratively, is to make a habit of exploiting another person—to suck that person dry in a leechlike manner or, to mix invertebrates, to sponge.

  LEAD/LED

  The past tense of the verb “lead” is not “lead” but “led.” Today I will lead my troops into battle; yesterday I led them.

  I wouldn’t point out something that seems so elementary but for the vast number of times I’ve seen, published, “lead” where “led” was called for. The error is not mysterious—for one thing, they sound the same; for another, compare “read,” which is the past tense of “read”—but error it is.
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  LIGHTENING/LIGHTNING

  If you’re carrying your mother’s suitcase to the train station, you are nobly lightening her load.

  If on your way to the train station a thunderstorm descends, you should seek shelter, not only to stay dry but to avoid being struck by lightning.

  LOATH/LOATHE

  I am loath—that is, reluctant—to make comments, snide or otherwise, about people I loathe—that is, detest.

  Use “loath” as an adjective; use “loathe” as a verb.

  LOSE/LOOSE

  To mislay something is to lose it.

  Something that is not tight or severe—a dress, one’s morals—is loose.

  To loose something is to set it free. Oddly, to unloose something is also to set it free.

  LUXURIANT/LUXURIOUS

  Something lush or plentiful is luxuriant: Rapunzel’s hair, say, or kudzu.

  Something luxurious is lavish and elegant and expensive, like a Lamborghini or a stateroom on the Titanic.

  MANTEL/MANTLE

  A mantel is a shelf above a fireplace.

  A mantle is a sleeveless, capelike garment. Metaphorically, it’s the thing you don when you’re assuming some responsibility.

  MARITAL/MARTIAL

  The former refers to marriage, the latter to the military. Unless your marriage is militaristic, in which case word choice probably isn’t your biggest problem.

  MASTERFUL/MASTERLY

  Somewhere along the path you may have been taught, as I was, that “masterful” is an adjective meaning bossy or domineering and that “masterly” is an adjective that means adept or virtuosic. Experience has shown me, though, that writers tend to use “masterful” to mean accomplished—gushing book blurbs are forever calling out “masterful prose”—and do not take kindly to having it changed to “masterly,” which they tend not to use at all. (I suppose that part of the discomfort with “masterly” is that, with that -ly finale, it looks like an adverb.)

  Reading up on the subject to write up this pair, I learned this: Both words have carried both meanings for centuries, and only in the early twentieth century did one particularly influential wordsmith take it upon himself to neaten things up by segregating them into the separate roles I’ve mentioned above. Which is to say: The distinction is sort of kind of utterly insupportable.

  So feel free to maintain the division if you’re so inclined—you won’t be wrong if you do—but feel free not to.

  MILITATE/MITIGATE

  To militate is to prevent or to counteraffect, as the presence of heavily armed soldiers will militate against public unrest.

  To mitigate is to alleviate, as the presence of the Red Cross will mitigate the suffering of hurricane victims.

  No matter how many times you see “mitigate against,” which is all the time, it is never correct.

  MILLENNIUM/MILLENNIA

  One millennium, two or more millennia. Be careful with the spelling as well: two l’s, two n’s.

  In downtown Manhattan, there’s a Millenium Hilton. I would never stay there.*25

  MINER/MINOR

  Miners labor underground.

  Minors are children.

  An inconsequential detail is minor. So, musically, is a chord, scale, or key that the ear tends to associate with melancholy.

  MUCOUS/MUCUS

  Re “mucous,” I couldn’t possibly improve upon this elegant dictionary definition: “relating to, covered with, or of the nature of mucus.”

  That is, “mucous” is an adjective, “mucus” a noun. Mucous membranes produce mucus.

  NAVAL/NAVEL

  People rarely err when they mean to type “naval” in the seafaring sense, but when the talk turns to belly buttons, many forget to switch from a to e. Your innie or your outie is a navel.

  ONBOARD/ON BOARD

  Remember “everyday” and “every day”? Well, here we are again.

  “Onboard” is an adjective (onboard refueling, for instance, or an onboard navigation system); “on board” is an adverb, literally denoting presence on a vessel (“The crew was on board the ship”) or figuratively denoting agreement (“This department is on board with the new regulations”).

  The use of “onboard” as a verb was, you may recall, covered on this page, and let’s not encourage it via repetition.

  ORDINANCE/ORDNANCE

  An ordinance is a decree or a piece of legislation.

  “Ordnance” refers to military supplies—not only artillery but ammunition, armor, vehicles, all the practical stuff of warfare.

  PALATE/PALETTE/PALLET

  Your palate is the roof of your mouth or your sense of taste.

  A palette is an array of color or the board onto which artists lay their paint.

  A pallet is a platform onto which items are loaded, as in a warehouse; “pallet” is also a somewhat outmoded term for a small bed.

  PASS/PASSED/PAST

  As a verb, “passed” is the past tense of “pass.”

  “Past” is both noun and adjective, as in William Faulkner’s “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” It’s also a preposition, and an adverb, and just about anything else you can think of except a verb.

  “Passed” is never an adjective, and “past” is never a verb.

  PEAK/PEEK/PIQUE

  Mixing these up is direly easy. A peak is a summit; a peek is a glance. The ea in “sneak” inspires many an erroneous “sneak peak.” No, please: It’s “sneak peek.” (Unless you find yourself jetting through a cloud and suddenly about to collide with a mountain, in which case, sure, that’s a sneak peak.)

  A fit of pique is a peeved little tantrum; to pique one’s interest is to stimulate and excite it.

  PEAL/PEEL

  You probably don’t need to be reminded that bells peal and potatoes are peeled. You might need to be reminded that what you’re doing when you’re being watchful is keeping your eyes peeled—wide open and lids up.

  The thing itself—of a potato, a banana, a lemon, an orange—is a peel. Plus—and this is why we have the verb “peel”—one removes it before eating. As opposed to a skin—an apple’s, say—which outside of cooking one is apt to eat.

  PEDAL, PEDDLE, PEDDLER, ET AL.

  A pedal is something you operate with your foot. If you are operating something with your foot, you are a pedaling pedaler. Those cropped calf-length trousers you’re wearing, whether you’re riding a bicycle or not, are pedal pushers.*26

  To peddle is to go from place to place selling things—often, small things: gewgaws, doodads, trinkets, the odd tchotchke. Peddlers peddle. (In Great Britain, sometimes it’s pedlars who peddle.) Perhaps because itinerant merchants might be seen as untrustworthy—otherwise, why don’t they own a proper store?—to peddle is also to promote a shaky or shady notion. (“Go peddle your nonsense elsewhere.”)

  When you attempt to distance yourself from an action or (mis)statement, you are backpedaling. When you’re trying to fudge a fact or minimize the unpleasantness of a situation, you’re soft-pedaling. The former derives from bicycling, the latter from playing the piano. Why is “backpedaling” closed up and “soft-pedaling” hyphenated? Because dictionaries are whimsical.

  The segment of a flower—likely you’ve got this down already, but better safe than sorry—is a petal.

  PHENOMENON/PHENOMENA

  As with “criterion” and “criteria” or “millennium” and “millennia” above, this is simply a matter of singular and plural: one phenomenon, two or more phenomena.

  PIXILATED/PIXELATED

  To be pixilated is to be confusedly crazy; it’s a silly-sounding word (derived from “pixie”) so perhaps best reserved for silly sorts of craziness. “Pixilated” was famously used in Frank Capra’s 1936 screwball comedy Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, in which it was applied to Gary Cooper’s tuba-playin
g character, Longfellow Deeds.

  A pixelated image, on a computer or television screen, is one whose tiniest individual elements (often dots or squares; the term “pixel” is a portmanteau of “picture” and “element”) are expanded to the point where one can no longer make sense of the bigger picture.

  I like to think that “pixelated” derived specifically and intentionally from “pixilated”; otherwise we’d just call it “pixeled.” I have no evidence to support that perhaps pixilated notion.

  PLUM/PLUMB/PLUMMY

  The adjective “plum,” deriving from the name of the summer-enhancing fruit, means choice and desirable. One speaks of, say, securing a plum role in a play or a plum political appointment.

  To plumb is to determine depth, as of a body of water, and, by extension, to deeply explore or examine, as in, say, plumbing the horrors of modern warfare.

  As an adverb, “plumb” means utterly or squarely, as in plumb loco or landing plumb in the middle of a ghastly situation.