100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles
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Do you know your delegate from your relegate, your cachet from your cache?
At one time or another we’ve all suffered the embarrassment of having our remarks corrected by a family member, colleague, or stranger. 100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles presents fifty pairs of words that people have trouble getting right and keeping straight—words that tend to get corrected when we’re least expecting it.
These words include near-synonyms—words with subtle but important distinctions in meaning—like baleful vs. baneful, and effectual vs. efficacious. Other pairings bring together notorious sound-alikes, like faze (bother) vs. phase (stage), pour (put in fluid) vs. pore (read closely), and waive (forgo) vs. wave (say hello). The book also addresses some classic spelling blunders and “nonwords,” like beyond the pail, full reign, injust, and inobstrusive.
Each word has a definition and a pronunciation, and most have etymologies explaining the word’s origin. The mix-ups themselves are described in fun-to-read notes that provide clear solutions to help readers avoid making needless, uncomfortable gaffes.
100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles gives readers the chance to improve their command of words that are often heard but just as often misused.
Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries
THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARIES are a team of professional lexicographers with advanced degrees in various scholarly fields. The editors familiarize themselves with the vocabulary in specific subject areas, collect materials on new developments and usage, and work with expert consultants to ensure that their publications are accurate and up-to-date.
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100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles - Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries
Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Preface
Guide to the Entries
Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation Key
100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles
adherence
adhesion
adopted
adoptive
amend
baleful
baneful
beyond the pale
cache
cachet
condemn
congenital
contemn
contemptible
contemptuous
delegate
deprecate
depreciate
distinct
distinctive
emend
energize
enervate
exceptionable
exceptional
expedient
expeditious
faze
flounder
founder
free rein
gambit
gamut
gibe
gotten
gybe
historic
historical
hoard
horde
injustice
jibe¹
jibe²
jibe³
jive
lend
load
loan
lode
majority
masterful
masterly
militate
mitigate
no holds barred
old
older
ordinance
ordnance
passed
past
peace
peremptory
phase
piece
plurality
pore
pour
practicable
practical
preemptive
rationale
rationalization
relegate
repress
restive
restless
shined
shone
sleight of hand
slew¹
slew²
slew³
slough¹
slough²
slue
suppress
tenant
tenet
throe
toe the line
unexceptionable
unexceptional
unjust
venal
venial
waive
wangle
wave
wrangle
The 100 Words
EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE
American Heritage® Dictionaries
BRUCE NICHOLS, Senior Vice President, Publisher, General Interest Group
STEVEN R. KLEINEDLER, Executive Editor
PETER CHIPMAN, Senior Editor
EMILY A. SNYDER, Associate Editor
CHRISTOPHER J. GRANNISS, Database Production Supervisor
MARGARET ANNE MILES, Art and Production Supervisor
The staff wishes to acknowledge former Executive Editor Joseph Pickett along with Elizabeth Kassab, Catherine T. Pratt, Louise E. Robbins, Susan I. Spitz, and Patrick Taylor for their contributions to the 2010 edition of this title.
THE 100 WORDS ® is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Copyright © 2017, 2010 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address inquiries to Reference Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
Visit our websites: hmhco.com and ahdictionary.com
ISBN: 978-1-328-71032-1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE.
Cover design by Christopher Moisan © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
eISBN 978-0-547-50601-2
v1.0118
Preface
Effective writers command a sophisticated vocabulary. They know a lot of words, and they know a lot about words. They know which words work in a given situation and which words don’t. Conversely, ineffective writers quite often use words incorrectly. They use words in ways that puzzle readers rather than convince them. They mix up and mangle distinct items of vocabulary.
This book will help you learn the differences between many often-confused words. Several of these words are members of troublesome sound-alike pairs like faze and phase, gibe and jibe, and hoard and horde. There are also pairs that sound somewhat alike but have crucial differences in sound and meaning, like cache and cachet, delegate and relegate, and venal and venial. And there are classic misspellings of well-worn phrases, like beyond the pail, in the throws of, and tow the line. These misspellings arise from erroneous interpretations of the origins of these phrases.
100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles was originally published nearly a decade ago. In this reissue, you’ll find updated etymologies and revised definitions based on changes made to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition. Most notably, you’ll find an updated quotation program featuring a wide range of writers, both contemporary and classic. This is a book about using words well, after all, and the quotations that accompany each entry provide examples that are distinctive, exceptional, and even masterful.
The editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries hope to help you avoid some of the most embarrassing pitfalls of the English language and develop a more subtle and effective vocabulary. These words are there just waiting to be used. All you have to do is get to know them.
—Emily A. Snyder,
Associate Editor
Guide to the Entries
ENTRY WORDS The 100 words in this book are listed alphabetically. Each boldface entry word is followed by its pronunciation (see page ix for a pronunciation key) and at least one part of speech. One or more definitions are given for each part of speech with the central and most commonly sought sense first.
PART OF SPEECH At least one part of speech follows each entry word. The part of speech tells you the grammatical category that the word belongs to. Parts of speech include noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition. Some entries are idioms, phrases whose meaning is different from the assembled meanings of their individual words.
ORDER OF SENSES Entries having more than one sense are arranged with the central and often the most commonly sought meanings first. In an entry with more than one part of speech, the senses are numbered in separate sequences after each part of speech, as at cache.
QUOTATIONS Most words in this book have quotations from books, articles, essays, plays, and speeches that show how the word is used in context. The order of the quotations generally corresponds to the order of senses presented.
ETYMOLOGIES (WORD HISTORIES) Etymologies appear in square brackets following the quotations. An etymology traces the history of a word as far back in time as can be determined with reasonable certainty. The stage most closely preceding Modern English is given first, with each earlier stage following in sequence. A language name, linguistic form (in italics), and brief definition of the form are given for each stage of the derivation presented. For reasons of space, the etymologies sometimes omit certain stages in the derivation of words with long and complex histories, whenever this omission does not significantly detract from a broad understanding of the word’s history. To avoid redundancy, a language, form, or definition is not repeated if it is identical to the corresponding item in the immediately preceding stage. The word from is used to indicate origin of any kind: by inheritance, borrowing, abbreviation, the addition of affixes, or any other linguistic process. When an etymology splits a compound word into parts, a colon comes after the compound word, and the parts (along with their histories in parentheses) follow in sequence linked by plus signs (+). Occasionally, a form will be given that is not actually preserved in written documents, but that scholars are confident did exist—such a form will be marked by an asterisk (*).
Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciations appear in parentheses after boldface entry words. If a word has more than one pronunciation, the first pronunciation is usually more common than the other, but often they are equally common. Pronunciations are shown after inflections and related words where necessary.
Stress is the relative degree of emphasis that a word’s syllables are spoken with. An unmarked syllable has the weakest stress in the word. The strongest, or primary, stress is indicated with a bold mark (′). A lighter mark (′) indicates a secondary level of stress. The stress mark follows the syllable it applies to. Words of one syllable have no stress mark because there is no other stress level that the syllable can be compared to.
The key on page ix shows the pronunciation symbols used in this book. To the right of the symbols are words that show how the symbols are pronounced. The letters whose sound corresponds to the symbols are shown in boldface.
The symbol (ǝ) is called schwa. It represents a vowel with the weakest level of stress in a word. The schwa sound varies slightly according to the vowel it represents or the sounds around it:
"So unlike what a man should be!—None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life."
—Jane Austen, Emma
1
adherence
(ăd-hîr′əns)
noun
1. The process or condition of adhering. 2. Faithful attachment; devotion: "rigid adherence to . . . the teachings of a single man" (Janet Reitman).
[From French adhérence, from Latin