Tag Archives: learning

Another troublesome pair that I’ve seen a few times recently: another of these homonyms, or words that sound the same, which I suppose is where the problem arises. Because we all know the difference, don’t we?

A waste occurs when you have something left over that has to be thrown away, or you don’t use something and it goes off, or you spend too much – it’s all about using something carelessly or extravagantly, or not accounting for what you need. So you can waste a bag of apples if you don’t eat them in time and they go rotten and have to be thrown away, or you waste money if you pay for a gym membership and don’t ever go to the gym.

A waist is the middle of something, where it’s nipped in, particularly in the human body, where it’s the big between the ribs and the hips, but also in other creatures, and inanimate objects, like a violin.

“I wasted a lot of satin making her wedding dress, because I didn’t measure the size of her waist so I had to trim lots of pieces off the original pattern.”

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

I’ve seen a few blog posts and articles mentioning something being “packed to the gunnels” and I’ve been getting all steamed up about the mistake, knowing it should be “packed to the gunwales”. So, I decided to write up one of my Troublesome Pairs to differentiate them.

A gunwale is the upper edge or planking of the side of a boat. By extension, we tend to use “packed to the gunwales” as a metaphor for something being full up, as if a boat is literally packed to its gunwales, it will be completely full up to the brim.

A gunnel is … an alternative spelling for gunwale. So I apologise to the writers against whom I have fulminated. Luckily, I didn’t mention it to anyone before I checked! And I still prefer gunwales, myself.

Note: they are pronounced the same: “gunnel(s)”.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

These three words are very close in form and have related but not identical meanings. There is also a British English / American English aspect, something I don’t often cover in these Troublesome Pairs, but one that needs addressing here.

Alternative means available as another possibility, or mutually exclusive, said of one of more things (originally, it could only be used of two entities, but matters have freed up and more than two alternatives are now allowed). So you could use the services of one typist or an alternative typist if the first one is busy, or you could choose between the alternative answers “yes” or “no” when answering a question. Alternatives are the two or more available possibilities.

Alternative can also mean activities that depart from and/or challenge traditional norms – like alternative health and alternative lifestyles – the same meaning is there, in that they are offering an available possibility other than the “main” one.

The adjective alternate (with the stress on the middle syllable: alTERnate) means every other – “We hold the event in alternate months” means the event is held in, for example, January, March, May, etc. In biology, leaves alternating on a stem will appear on each side in turn, rather than being in matched pairs, two leaves together. But it’s worth noting that the American English usage of alternate carries the same meaning as the British English alternative defined above. To alternate, the verb (with the stress on the first syllable: ALternate) means to swap between two contrasting options repeatedly – “I alternated between watching the diving and hiding behind a cushion”. If two things are alternating then they are doing the swapping – “Mary and Sue were alternating as the front runners in the race”.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

There have been a few odd things in the news recently, and seeing people’s comments on them has highlighted a common difficulty distinguishing between bizarre and bazaar. They’re odd words, and tricky to spell, with those difficult decisions on the double letters, so bookmark this blog post if you’re not sure about this pair!

Bizarre is the word you’re groping for when you want to describe something odd. It means something VERY odd or unusual, so a woman with a hat on her head might be less bizarre than a woman with three hats, or a parrot, on her head. How you remember the double r as opposed to the double z you might be tempted to include, is anybody’s guess. Maybe think of rolling your rrrrrrs in emphasis of the oddity of it all.

And here’s a lovely bonus word: A bizarrerie (plural: bizarreries) is a strange and unusual thing. Go on, work that into a sentence today.

Now we’ve got the odd one clear, a bazaar is a market in a Middle Eastern country (think souk, and the word comes from Persian, via Turkish and Italian) and also, more commonly, I suspect, a fund-raising sale of some kind, beloved of Church and charity fund-raising attempts. There’s a nice double a in this one, not a spelling you find often. If you watch Strictly Come Dancing, you can imagine Craig saying it in that voice of his: “I bought it at a bazaaaaaaar, dahling”.

Of course, you could find many bizarre items at a bazaar; in fact you’re pretty well certain to. Maybe that’s a good way to remember it.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

This one was suggested by my friend, Sian, who does technical translation, which is how she came to know the meaning of these two rather lovely words. Or one of them, anyway. I’m not sure where mandrills come in to technical translations! I am kind of betting that I never get a search through for these … let’s see if I’m proved wrong!

This is a matter of knowing your spellings, in essence.

A mandrel (only one el, mind, and yes, I did have to look it up. But it is in my fairly standard Oxford Concise English dictionary, so it is a real word of some kind of common usage!) is a shaft or spindle in a lathe, which you use to fix wood (etc.) while it’s being turned. It’s also a rod, cylindrical, around which metal (etc.) is forged. And, it’s a word for a miner’s pick, too!

A mandrill (two ells), is a large type of baboon, found in West Africa, with a red and blue face and, if male, a blue bottom.

Um … “The mandrill, being a blue-bottomed monkey, was not hugely keen on using the mandrel to help it turn the wooden banisters, but it was a helpful sort of baboon, so did its best”.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

This is a tricky one to do with spellings, and even raises the spectre of the US English / British English divide.

Judgement is a person’s or organisation’s ability to form sensible opinions or make considered decisions, and a judgement is that opinion or decision. In the UK.

And judgment or a judgment is the same thing in US English.

But here’s where the confusion comes in. In the UK, we use judgment solely for a decision made by a judge or a court of law. No e in the courtroom!

“She married him against her better judgement, and it was a mistake she soon regretted.”

*The court made its judgment and he was accompanied to the prison cells.”

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

I saw the word coruscating and its misuse being discussed on a forum to which I belong, and I suddenly realised that the word people had been confusing it with was excoriating. Cue a Troublesome Pair!  Two quite difficult words, but we’re up for them, aren’t we!

To coruscate means to flash or sparkle, so coruscating wit is sparkling wit. Because people only have a vague idea that it has something to do with wit, they seem to have changed its meaning to be something harsher, almost a flaying kind of idea, and I’ve heard this a few times myself, but, for example, criticism can’t be coruscating – it means sparkling, nothing to do with harshness, ripping to shreds, etc.

To excoriate, however, does mean to criticise severely, so although it’s a bit of a tautology (saying the same thing twice in one phrase), you can have excoriating criticism. And, excitingly for my half-remembered meaning of difficult words, it has a medical sense meaning to damage or remove part of the skin!

So, now you know. Go on: use one of them in your conversation today!

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

I have seen several instances of weather being used for whether recently, so it’s worth setting these down just in case.

Weather as a noun is the state of the atmosphere at a certain time and place – sunny, windy, snowing, hot, cold, etc. To weather (the verb) is to change in appearance or form through long exposure to the weather (more commonly: to be weathered).

Under the weather means unwell or depressed – you’re metaphorically under a cloud of unwellness, I suppose!

Whether is a conjunction expressing …

• a choice between two alternatives – “I can’t decide whether to go to the cinema or the park”
• a doubt, either expressing a question or investigation – “I don’t know whether keeping this hat I’ve found is the right thing to do” / “He will check whether she lost a hat”
• an indication that a statement is true, whichever of the alternatives mentioned is the case “I will go to the cinema whether they’re showing a western or a thriller”

Of course, the two can always be found together: “I’ll go out, whether the weather is sunny or wet”, but hopefully you know the difference now!

Edited to add – my friend, Ian Braisby, just reminded me that a wether is a castrated sheep! So now you know …

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

I come across site and sight being mixed up quite a lot, and citing is on my mind as it’s dissertation editing season at the moment … so here goes with this troublesome trio!

Let’s get the easy one out of the way first. To cite is to refer to – you might cite a reference in a document, or use the word to refer to something that has come before, usually a precedent: “to cite precedent, we have let a man into our women’s tennis club before, and so we will have to do so again”.

A site is the place where something is located, whether that’s the piece of land where something is built or the location where something happens. To site something is to place it in the location where it is going to stay or take place.

Sight is the power or faculty of seeing, as well as the more metaphorical extensions like foresight, where you are not physically seeing something, but perceiving something in the future. A sight is something that you see.

When you see the sights, you are, literally, seeing them with your sight. Therefore they are sights, not sites.

But sites can also be sights that a sightseer would view! “The main sights of the trip are the sites of the Pyramids and army encampments”. We see the touristic sights, but they are all sited somewhere.

If it’s a feature, phenomenon or building, etc.,  that you see, it’s a sight. If it’s the place where that thing is situated, it’s the site of that thing. And if you refer to an essay about the phenomenon, you might cite it!

“Jeremy cited the newspaper article about the argument over the site for the new ‘see the sights of the world’ exhibition in his report on the controversy”.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

This is one that came up in something I was editing a few days ago. And, I admit, one that I had to check in the dictionary. I was pretty sure the writer wanted unmeasurable (I was right), and I wasn’t sure that immeasurable was a word (I learned something, notably that SpellChecker doesn’t think it’s a word, which is why we still use dictionaries!).

Unmeasurable means, specifically not able to be measured objectively. We use this one in the literal sense: “the immense lizard was unmeasurable with the tiny ruler in the standard lizard measuring kit”; “the sea trench in which the angler fish lived was of an unmeasurable depth”.

Immeasurable means, a bit less specifically, I suppose, too large, extensive or extreme to measure. We should reserve this one for the more figurative sense (otherwise there’s no point in having two different words, is there, and where would THAT leave us?): ” the immeasurable mercy of their god”; “he had immeasurable ambition”.

“I experienced immeasurable relief when I discovered that the width of the lake, filling and evaporating as it did, was actually unmeasurable.”

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.