100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up or Mangles

By Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries

Eliminate mistakes and improve your vocabulary with this engaging guide to the world's most misused words.

 


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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780547506012

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 the content of our publications is as accurate and as up-to-date as possible.

Book preview

title page

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