Tag: language

Here’s yet another in the endless parade of homophones (or heterographs, if you prefer) that spellcheck happily ignores. This time we’ll cover the distance between carrying a heavy load and taking off your clothes, and we’ll throw in a big scary animal while we’re at it. We’ll look at bear and bare.

Today’s Word Nerd is one of those cases where two very similar phrases exist, and because of being misheard, the wrong one gets used. Yes, it’s a mondegreen. Like “for all intensive purposes” or “all the sudden” (and please don’t ever say either of those), “flush out” crops up where it makes no sense, due to people having misheard “flesh out.”

Today’s Word Nerd starts with an abbreviation. Just for the sake of symmetry, we’ll also end with one. We’ll look at the difference between cue and queue, and we’ll throw in que and kew for good measure.

Today’s Word Nerd is an exercise in specificity. All three of these words are closely related, with the same root. At some point they separated into distinct but similar meanings. We’ll look at the difference between insure, ensure and assure.

Here’s another pair of words where the mix-up seems to only go one way. I constantly see people write ‘boarder’ when they mean ‘border,’ but never the other way around.

Friday is National Gorilla Suit Day, a holiday invented by MAD‘s Maddest Artist, Don Martin. In honor of such an auspicious day, we’ll look at a problematic misuse of the word gorilla and its homophone, guerrilla.

Today we come to the one word that was the cause of the Word Nerd feature coming into existence in the first place. A friend on Facebook had posted a comment about a comic book story plot-point and said “that’s not cannon.” I responded “people who talk about the Marvel cannon should be fired out of one.”

Today’s Word Nerd is a common error compounded by a common dispute about the actual meaning of one of the terms: moot and mute.

Today’s Word Nerd was a gift from Fox News, via Facebook. One of my friends posted an article about a Fox story on homeless panhandlers, and it included a screenshot. There for all the world to see was a laughably bungled word choice: “Donors should be weary of who they give money.” The word they are looking for is wary. This is one of those rare cases where two similar words have nearly opposite meanings.

It’s surprising that a simple little single-syllable word can be so daunting; maybe it’s simply the wide variety of spellings and meanings. We’ll take a look at all the permutations of do.

Two of today’s words are homophones (or heterographs if you prefer); the third is a common contribution from stupid autocorrect. The fourth is only barely a word. Through, threw, thorough, thru…

For today’s Word Nerd, we’ll look at two words that fit nicely together, if you happen to be a pirate or visigoth; hoard and horde.

Since today is “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” I decided to build this whole installment around America’s Favorite Pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow, AKA Johnny Depp. I’ll use him in all of my example sentences. Roll and role.

Today’s Word Nerd is a one-way error; a lot of people make the same mistake, they will substitute one word for another, but never the other way around. Personally, I suspect that bane of our existence, autocorrect. Definitely and defiantly

One of the main sources of confusion in common phrases is the prevalence of archaic and obsolete words, some of which only linger on because of their presence in these phrases. That’s the case with one of today’s words, a word that, apart from a few cliche terms, you’ll most likely never encounter outside of a church. It’s therefore completely reasonable that people would substitute the more modern word. Lo and low.

Today’s Word Nerd is a little tricky, since the two words are related and the difference between them is fairly subtle. Both words have a noun and verb form, multiple shades of meaning and usage, and are sometimes almost synonymous. Affect and effect.

Today’s Word Nerd was suggested by one of my friends, but I can’t remember exactly whom. These words actually started out as the same word, but now they have different meanings. We’ll look at lightning and lightening.

Facebook has turned out to be a godsend for this little feature; at least three or four different examples of word abuse pop up in my feed every week. This is one such example. We’ll look at weather and whether.

This week’s Word Nerd is one that seems rather obvious, but I’ve seen it pop up a few times, probably the result of intrusive autocorrect systems, which really represent the point of this feature; it’s possible for a word to be spelled correctly and still be wrong. Allowed and aloud.

It sounds like a sequel to Bedknobs & Broomsticks, but malaprops and mondegreens are our stock in trade at Word Nerd, so I thought I’d talk about what they are and how they differ and how you can have fun with them.

Today’s Word Nerd was suggested by my brother, Don Hughes. He stumbled upon this troublesome pair of words when his wife rescued him from the error.

Today’s Word Nerd was inspired by recent news events. The social media world went crazy over this story, and more than a few have voiced concerns about censorship. There’s another word that sounds very similar, and its meaning is related, but expresses a different concept. There are also two other completely unrelated words to dispense with first.

Today’s Word Nerd will look at three words that have almost nothing in common except pronunciation, and yet they get mixed up all the time. Just for fun, we’ll throw in a suffix that you’ll probably never use. Site, cite, sight and -cyte.