Monthly Archives: August 2011

As well as being asked to post about this by a number of people, I’ve also seen these two used incorrectly a number of times.  I think negative versions of words do get people confused – and why not, when you have odd things like “flammable” and “inflammable” knocking around …

These two don’t mean the opposite of one another, but they do have distinct, separate and different meanings.

Uninterested means not interested.  “I was uninterested in his plans for world domination”; “the cat remained uninterested in my new party dress”

Disinterested means impartial.  I think this must be connected with the idea of “declaring an interest”; the disinterested person has no interest or investment in either side of an argument. “Amid all the disucssions, the chair remained a disinterested party, keeping order between the warring sides.”

If you aren’t keen on sitting on the fence and want to get involved, you could quite easily be uninterested in being disinterested …

You can find more troublesome pairs here.

I’ve had so many suggestions of troublesome pairs from people – but please keep them coming!  With some of the pairs, I know the distinction immediately (but I still look it up, just to make sure); with a few, I really don’t know the difference (and sometimes there isn’t one!); and with others, like this one, I know the difference and will happily write one or the other, or exchange one for the other in someone else’s text, but I need the might of the dictionary to help me define them.  So I’m never setting myself up as the expert here; I’m just trying to guide us all to simple distinctions to help with our writing and/or comprehension.  I’ve even changed a few posts as a result of readers’ comments!

Anyway, here we go with comparative vs. comparable.

Comparable – able to be likened to another, similar, of equivalent quality i.e. the same.  “Smith’s skills on the cricket pitch are comparable to those of the previous captain, Robinson.”

Comparative – measured or judged by comparison, relative i.e. different. “Joe’s performance is poor comparative to Bill’s, and Bill is likely to beat Joe in the next race if he doesn’t improve his time.”  You can replace “comparative to” with “in comparison with” and still get the same sense out of the sentence.

Comparative to other posts, this one has been fairly easy.  It’s comparable to, say, “disinterested or uninterested”, rather than one of the trickier ones.

You can find more troublesome pairs here.

This is a slightly tricky one – before I looked it up, I wasn’t sure what the difference was, and I would probably have used either of them in a sentence without thinking about it too much.  And it turns out that one is preferable to the other, not that they mean different things. It’s nice that we all get to learn something from these posts!

Due to, used for “because of” (as opposed to “timed to” – “the train is due to arrive at eight”), is usually seen as being incorrect, according to my OUP reference books, which prefer “on account of”.  I’m going to quote the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors here: “Due to: traditionally condemned as incorrect in the sense ‘because of’; on account of is a better alternative.”  I don’t feel that we use on account of very much in common written or spoken English. So, maybe it’s best to stick to …

Owing to, which is defined as meaning “because of” or “on account of”.

So: use “because of” or “owing to” if you don’t want the good people of the OUP to think you’re incorrect!

“Owing to leaves on the line, and because of other issues with the track, this train, which is due to leave at eight, will not be departing on time.”

For more troublesome pairs, have a look on the category cloud or click here.