An Incomplete Education

by Judy Jones

  The central word here is “ecclesiastical,” which means pertaining to the church or its clergy. “Canonical” means pertaining to church law, binding on all its members. “Evangelical” means pertaining to the teachings of Christ, especially the Four Gospels; easy to get from there to hitting the road for Jesus. “Liturgical” means pertaining to the liturgy, the whole ritual of public worship. (The litany is a form of prayer in which the clergyman and the congregation alternate responses.) “Catholic” and “ecumenical” are the hard ones: They both mean universal. “Ecumenical” derives from a Greek word meaning “of the inhabited earth,” and most often refers to councils or regulations that govern the entire church, or all of any one branch of it, or the spirit behind such councils and regulations. “Catholic,” from a Greek phrase meaning “in general,” “in respect of the whole,” has an additional sense of inclusiveness, of tastes, sympathies, interests that are all-embracing. (That’s with a lowercase c, though; uppercase, and it’s the old Popes and Hail Marys business.) Both “ecumenical,” a term Protestants seem understandably to prefer, and “catholic” are the opposite of parochial, “of the parish.”

  compleat and complete

  The first form is simply archaic; in a just world, no one would ever have to deal with it again. Unfortunately, the world’s not just, and for a few centuries now, editors, publishers, and copywriters have found “compleat” to be a word that jazzed up titles and boosted sales. Isaak Walton did it first and best, back in 1653, with his The Compleat Angler (subtitled Or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation), a discourse on fishing liberally laced with rural wisdom and unshakable Christian faith. Now look for, at your corner bookstore, the likes of The Compleat Werewolf, The Compleat Belly Dancer, and The Compleat Nevada Traveler. Used to describe a person, as in any of the foregoing examples, the word—however you spell it—is best defined as “perfectly skilled or equipped; consummate, accomplished.”

  compose and comprise

  The wolves compose the pack; the pack comprises the wolves. (If you want to get passive about it, the pack is composed of the wolves, and the wolves are comprised by the pack.) In short, “comprise” is sort of an uptown synonym for “include”—except that a pack that comprises wolves is all-wolf, while one that merely includes them may have two hyenas and a German shepherd in it, too.

  continual and continuous

  “Continuous” is uncompromising: A continuous slope or vigil or downpour is steady, unbroken, invariable, without even a temporary reversal or a tiny interruption. “Continual,” on the other hand, allows for gaps, and suggests, in fact, that something recurs at regular intervals, with time out in between: Continual showings are what you get at the movies, and continual setbacks may crop up at the rate of only half a dozen a year. Now, try to remember that “continuous” is, in general, more serious—not to mention scientific, as in the mathematicians continuous function, the physicist’s continuous wave, the astronomer’s theory of continuous creation. Continual is what you usually mean; it’s more figurative, describes how things seem, feel, strike an onlooker, as in Swift’s “These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minute’s peace of mind.”

  converse and inverse

  “Converse” is a matter of simple transposition: “He hit me” is the converse of “I hit him”; “He had glamour but no money” is the converse of “He had money but no glamour.” “Inverse” is a more extreme—and a more ambiguous—business; it entails turning something inside out or standing it on its head. Thus, when two quantities vary inversely, one gets bigger as the other gets smaller; the inverse of a mathematical operation is the one that will nullify it (e.g., division is the inverse of multiplication). In logic, the inverse of a statement is attained by negating both its hypothesis and its conclusion: The inverse of “If Alice is drinking J&B, then she’s drinking scotch” would be “If Alice isn’t drinking J&B, then she’s not drinking scotch”—as it happens, a logically defective, or “false,” statement. (So is the converse: “If Alice is drinking scotch, then she’s drinking J&B.” Don’t feel bad, though; the woods are full of defective inverses and converses.)

  deprecate and depreciate

  In terms of etymology, “deprecate” is the opposite of “pray for”; “depreciate” is the opposite of “praise.” If you put yourself down a little, you make a self-depreciating remark; if you really let yourself have it (and you know how bad you’ve been being lately), the remark might then, but only then, be self-deprecating. Don’t expect anybody to applaud, though—either the flagellation or the preciseness of your language; this is a distinction almost nobody knows he’s even supposed to be making.

  discreet and discrete

  “Discreet”—prudent, circumspect, just this side of walking on eggs—is what you should be when you’re having an illicit love affair. “Discrete” (which, for what it’s worth, comes from the same Latin word, discretus, “sifted through”) means distinct, discontinuous, separate, as in “discrete entities,” “discrete particles,” “discrete elements,” and should probably be reserved for dress-up occasions.

  dock and pier

  Don’t try to walk on a dock: It’s the space where a ship comes to rest and it’s full of water. (“Drydock” makes the point nicely: Picture the space with all the water drained out of it so that the repairs can start.) The pier is what you can walk on; it’s the structure on which the passengers stand and onto which the cargo is unloaded. Assuming, that is, the structure runs out into the water, away from the shore, preferably at a right angle to it. If it runs along the shore, it’s technically not a pier but a wharf. P.S.: Don’t mention any of this to Otis Redding.

  egotist, egoist, solipsist, and narcissist

  They’re all stuck on themselves, but only two of them could tell you why. The egotist (from the Latin word for “I”) couldn’t: He just wants to fill you in on the details of his life, even if you have heard them all several times before. (Think of that t as standing for “talk.”) The egoist, by contrast, might explain that self-interest is the foundation of all morality, and that it’s therefore not just silly but downright antisocial not to put oneself first. The solipsist (from the Latin word for “alone”), who took even more philosophy courses as an undergraduate than the egoist did, would maintain that no person has any proof that anything exists outside his own mind, that each of us, like him, is totally alone with our own thoughts, and not just on rainy April afternoons, either. (As it happens, while no major philosopher has ever accepted solipsism, neither has any ever been able to refute it; Schopenhauer for his part dubbed it “theoretical egoism” and hoped we wouldn’t worry about it too much.) The “narcissist,” a term of Freud’s devising, after the Greek youth who couldn’t stop looking at his reflection in a pool of water, is basically going steady with himself and may not want to talk to you at all. If he does, his goal will not be to expound on the nature of his belief system, but to charm you into joining his fan club.

  enormity and enormousness

  Straightforward enough. “Enormousness” is the one that’s a synonym for immensity: the enormousness of the cosmos. “Enormity” refers to something so far outside the moral norm (the root in both words) that it’s monstrously wicked, unthinkable, the lowest of the low: the enormity of his crimes. Of course you can talk about the enormousness of somebody’s crimes, too, if all you mean is they’re big. But do try not to refer to the enormity of the cosmos—unless you know something we don’t.

  epidemic and endemic

  An epidemic disease breaks out somewhere and eventually goes away again; an endemic disease breaks out and is still there centuries later. Cholera is endemic in parts of Asia; when it broke out in Europe, it was epidemic. (Think of it as the difference between epi-, “over,” and en-, “in.”) Which means that the AIDS epidemic is looking more and more like the AIDS endemic. Make that pandemic, given that it’s shaping up to be in residence pretty much everywhere at once.

  epigram and epigraph
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  Both words derive from the Greek preposition epi, meaning “upon” or “over,” plus the familiar Greek word for “write,” and both began by designating the kind of inscription you find on a monument or statue. “Epigraph” still does mean that—sometimes. More often, it refers to a motto or quotation set at the beginning, or “over,” the body of a book, chapter, or poem, intended to set the tone for or provide an entrée to the work to come (for instance, the snatch from Dante at the head of Eliot’s “Prufrock,” the “If I thought I were talking to anybody but a dead man” business). “Epigram” never refers to an inscription anymore; it occasionally is used of a super-short poem expressing a single acidulous thought, but usually it refers to a concise, cleverly worded, essentially antithetical statement, with a sting or twist at the end (e.g., Dorothy Parker’s “If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised”).

  To complete the picture, an epitaph is an inscription, always on a tombstone; an epilogue the little speech or poem that concludes a play, or the short section at the end of a book sketching the future of its characters—in short, the structural opposite of the epigraph.

  ethics and morals

  In early English scholarship, the two words were treated as synonyms, deriving from Greek ethos (“nature or disposition”) and Latin mos (genitive form, moris; “custom”), respectively. Gradually, though, ethics came to be viewed as the science or philosophy of morals, morals as the practice or enactment of ethics; as often happened in those days, the Latin-derived word was used for the real, tangible, everyday doing of something, the Greek-derived one reserved for the idealized, theoretical understanding of that doing. Today some people say “ethics” even when they mean “morals,” simply because the word is that much less common. Don’t pay any attention to them. Instead, save your strength to make the distinction between the adjective forms, “ethical” and “moral.” Here, “moral” has been tainted by the association of its opposite, “immoral,” with sexual misconduct, and as a result lost much of its range. “Ethical” has been left to describe all kinds of recognizable, day-to-day behavior that is, for whatever reason, proper, admirable, or just plain honest.

  farther and further

  The deal is this: “Farther,” etymologically, means “more far; further, more to the fore, more forth.” So, it’s farther from Miami to Palm Beach than it is from Miami to Fort Lauderdale; plus, if you hate Florida’s Gold Coast, you’ll want to move farther away still—Daytona, maybe. Once you’re settled in Daytona, no further steps (note the shift from literal to figurative) should be necessary. A couple of additional qualifications here. First, “farther” can apply as easily to time as to space: you may have packed up and left Miami farther back than you can remember. Second, there are so many cases where trying to decide which is right— farther to go or further? more far (in terms of sheer distance) or more forth (in terms of effort or visibility or prominence)?—that thinking too hard about the distinction, while it may help you get a grip on what you really mean, will also slow you down to the point that you never make it out the front door.

  flaunt and flout

  Don’t try to tell us you were appalled—or, for that matter, listening—back when President Carter declaimed at the height of crisis, “The Government of Iran must realize that it cannot flaunt, with impunity, the expressed will and law of the world community.” After all, using “flaunt” (of unknown origin; meaning to parade oneself ostentatiously, to be gaudily in evidence, to wave proudly, and to generally show off) when what you mean is “flout” (probably akin to the Old French word for flute, an instrument whose whistling noises can sometimes sound derisive; meaning to be scornful of, to show contempt for, to fly in the face of) is a problem for everybody. The confusion is understandable: Both words bespeak behavior that’s excessive, inappropriate, and potentially disruptive. But remember that flaunting and flouting are, when push comes to shove, virtual opposites—acts typical of the chauvinist and the seditionist, respectively.

  heathen and pagan

  Neither’s partaking in the great Judeo-Christian tradition—yet. “Pagan,” though, with its classical background (from a Latin word meaning “country district”), often refers specifically to the ancient Greeks and Romans, whom it was hard even for nineteenth-century Christians to hold in total contempt; “heathen” is simply a slam term, directed at some poor benighted creature not yet one of us. Thus Christian missionaries go out to convert the heathens, all loincloths and pulsating jungle rhythms, while the pagans hold orgies and debate the relative merits of red and white wine and the connection between pain and pleasure. The infidel, unlike the pagan or the heathen, had a religion the European at least felt threatened by, most often Muhammadanism, well supplied with scimitars and minarets. Today, it denotes, among Roman Catholics, any unbaptized person, from heathen to Protestant.

  infer and imply

  It’s a matter of where you stand, of whether you’re transmitting or receiving. You imply something in a remark to a friend, who infers something from that remark. Anybody who goes around saying “What are you inferring?” is, unless he’s addressing a philosopher, almost certain to be pretentious, and not all that smart.

  insidious and invidious

  The thing that’s insidious (from the Latin word for “ambush”) sneaks up on you; it’s not only undesirable, it’s stealthy and it’s treacherous, like cancer. The thing that’s invidious (from the Latin word for “envy”) isn’t subtle or sneaky, just repugnant and certain to cause trouble, in the form of ill will, resentment, or envy itself, generally directed against whoever said or did it. When Jesse Jackson called New York “Hymietown,” in the mid-Eighties, he made an invidious (and a politically not very savvy) remark.

  jealousy and envy

  Envy is the simple one, and—along with wrath, gluttony, and the rest—one of the seven deadly and absolutely unmistakable sins. Implying both resentment and greed, it’s when you first begrudge your neighbor the possession of something (ox, ass, VCR), then covet it for yourself. Jealousy is much subtler and less materialistic. At its classiest, it implies principled protectiveness, as when a father is “jealous for” his daughter’s welfare, or principled intolerance, as in “a jealous God.” More often, it has to do with ongoing personal rivalry, known or suspected, frequently of a sexual nature, coupled with a fear of loss or supplantation. Envy may make us behave badly, even turn us green, but it doesn’t necessarily cloud our minds; jealousy always does.

  mean, median, mode, and average

  The umbrella term here is “average”; all the others are types of it, employed mainly by schoolchildren, sportswriters, and statisticians. Take the following numbers: 2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 13. What you think of as the average (add them all up, divide by the number of terms you added) is, technically speaking, the arithmetic mean, here 63 divided by 9, or 7. The median is also 7, but for a different reason: 7 is the center term in the sequence, with four terms to either side of it. Statistically, the median can sometimes give a more reliable picture than the mean, for instance, when three people get a 60 on a test and one gets 100: Here, the mean—70—might make you think a successful learning experience had been going on, when in fact three-quarters of the class hadn’t learned much of anything, as revealed by the median—60. The mode is the least used of the three kinds of average: It’s simply the term that crops up more frequently than any other, in the sequence given not 7, but 8.

  mutual and common

  Just remember that Our Mutual Friend, the Dickens title, is a famous solecism, that is, a language-use blunder of a particularly blatant sort. More precisely, “mutual” implies exchange, interaction, reciprocity, none of which occurs when you simply share a friend with somebody else—when you have a friend in common. “Mutual admirers,” on the other hand, makes perfect sense: I admire you and you admire me. We’re reciprocating, we’re interacting. We’re provided for. We’re happy. Note, though, that if some
body admires both of us, he is our common admirer—unless, of course, each of us is willing to admire him back, thereby making the admiration mutual. Careful here: Some people think they can tell how educated you are on the basis of how you handle the one word “mutual.”

  objective and subjective

  If you’re objective, you sacrifice your personality, your mood, and your need for attention to some higher (or at least bigger) goal: You become, say, a reporter for the Washington Post and you vow just to give the facts. If you’re subjective, it’s how you feel, where you’re coming from, and what you make of the situation in Beirut, not to mention the fact that you’re getting older, that your wallet was stolen last week, and that country music is big, that counts: So you angle to take over Andy Rooney’s spot on 60 Minutes. Simple enough, we grant you, but you should know that “objective” and “subjective” are fighting words for (a) literary critics, who can’t decide which of them good criticism, or, since you ask, good literature should be, let alone how to tell the difference; and (b) philosophers, who’ve been arguing about the subject (the active mind, the thinking agent) and the object (everything else, further analyzable into several dozen categories), the seer and the seen, the thought and the thing, ever since Aristotle.

  oral and verbal

  Quick: How do you describe a contract that two people strike over the phone? Well, sure, it’s verbal. But so’s any contract that uses words. The right answer is oral—spoken, as opposed to written. And don’t confuse “oral” (from the Latin word for “mouth”) with “aural” (from the Latin word for “ear”) even if they are almost always pronounced alike.