Do You Make These 3 Mistakes in Expression?

We always intend to say what we mean, but do we always actually say what we mean?

‘She strode straight through the door.’ So, is ‘she’ a superhero, a ghost, or blind? She might well have walked straight through the open doorway. But it’s doubtful she ploughed through the barrier itself. A small adjustment, but one that’s vital to the correct understanding of your words.

‘Your not getting you’re wicked way with me.’ I know; you wouldn’t dream of doing this. But you’d be surprised how many times the possessive is mixed up with the contraction. And it’s easily corrected. Just spell out the contraction ‘you are’ in full and the sense becomes immediately obvious. So, perhaps, now you are getting your wicked way with me, after all. I look forward to the encounter.

‘More then anything else, this confusion drives me up the wall, than I go into a rage.’  Once again, you never do this, do you? One letter different, but such variation in meaning.

‘Then’ is an adverb, conjunction, noun and adjective we use to express an aspect of time. Examples?

Adverb – ‘Carelessly, in her infatuation for Bob, she caught what was then known as a social disease.’ Conjunction – ‘He went swimming, then he put on his trunks.’

Noun – ‘That was then, this is now.’

Adjective – ‘She approached the then Prime Minister and punched him on the nose.’

‘Than’ is a conjunction and a preposition that introduces comparison.

Conjunction – ‘It is better to have done that, than never to have done this at all.’

Preposition – ‘Jenny was bigger in all her proportions than was Jane.’

So, ‘then’ for time and ‘than’ for comparison. Easy isn’t it?  

The picture? I like to give a little colour to my posts, and Zemanta, my usual source for these, revealed nothing relevant, so enjoy the French countryside.

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Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Abandon/retain

I thought I might try a few antonyms for a bit of variety, as synonyms are well catered for in the many thesauruses available, but antonyms are often difficult to track down.

Abandon/retain:

Abandon: verb - Give up control to, surrender to; cease to hold, use, or practise; give up, renounce; desert, leave behind; banish or expel

'In the sweltering heat, Anna felt compelled to abandon her clothes.'

'Seeing her as if for the first time, Ronald felt he could do nothing better than abandon Polly and leave her to the vagaries of the job market.'

Retain: verb - keep attached to yourself or engaged in your service; keep hold or possession of; continue to have, keep, or possess; continue to use, practise, or recognize; allow to remain or prevail; preserve.

'Despite the overbearing heat, Anna felt it was sensible to retain her clothes, as public nudity might expose her to more than mere ridicule.'

'Really seeing Polly for the first time, Ronald felt compelled to retain her as his personal assistant.'

Pic: Venetian Fort in Crete. 

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Verbal or oral?

Image via Wikipedia

Verbal or oral?

Verbal: adjective - of someone - dealing with or using words, especially in contrast to things or realities; using a lot of words; talkative, verbose; articulate; of or pertaining to words; consisting or composed of words; of the nature of a word; in Grammar -  derived from a verb, of the nature of a verb.

Oral: adjective - performed with or by the mouth as the organ of eating and drinking; in Medication - taken by mouth; involving such administration; uttered or communicated in spoken words; conducted by word of mouth; spoken, verbal; delivered or transmitted verbally; of or pertaining to the mouth, as a body part; sexual activity where the genitals of one partner are stimulated by the mouth of the other, cunnilingus and fellatio; in Psychoanalysis – relating to a supposed stage of infantile psychosexual development, where the mouth is the main focus of energy and feeling.

As you can see, Verbal can refer to both written and spoken communication, but oral is more useful for distinguishing the spoken word from the written.

'The press secretary produced a verbal statement from the politician, in which he attempted to explain, in as many polysyllabic words as he could devise, the steps that had led to his fraudulent expenses claims.'

'Standing on the steps of the cathedral, the bishop made an oral declaration of his intent to root out child abuse by priests, which had been endemic in the parish prior to his appointment.'

'Stanley and Joyce were so committed to oral sex that they rarely achieved orgasm any other way and therefore found it impossible to become parents.' 

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Nauseous or nauseated?

Nauseous or nauseated?

Nauseous: adjective - sick, nauseated; offensive to taste or smell; loathsome, disgusting, repulsive.

Nauseate: verb - become affected with nausea, feel disgusted or sick; reject food with loathing; loathe or abhor; cause nausea or aversion, create loathing.

Basically; if you’re feeling ‘nauseous’ (adjective), you’re feeling sick. However, if some substance or event is ‘nauseous’, it is something that causes sickness and disgust.

To be nauseated (verb) is to feel sick, to be affected by disgust or loathing. However, if YOU cause the disgust, etc., you are being nauseating; i.e. you are the cause of the sickness or aversion of others.

As is so often the case in English, the distinction is nice and therefore not always readily seen.

‘The pervading stink of raw sewage following the flooding caused many people to feel nauseous.’ (adjective)

‘Fred was nauseated by the reports of child molestation amongst the Catholic clergy.’ (verb)

‘For much of the crossing, Johnson was nauseated; his sea-sickness lasting until the vessel docked in calm waters.’ (verb)

Pic: Across the Bay to Bridlington, East Yorkshire.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Irritate or aggravate?

Irritate or aggravate?

Very frequently used as though they are interchangeable, these two words do have different meanings. Though it’s true that ‘irritate’ can also mean ‘aggravate’, aggravate cannot generally mean ‘irritate’ in proper usage.

Irritate: verb - excite, rouse or provoke a person; aggravate, excite or provoke an action or emotion; excite to impatience or anger, annoy, exasperate; in medicine, to excite an organ to abnormal action or condition; produce an unpleasant sensation or inflammation; in biology, to produce a response in an organ by some form of stimulus.

Aggravate: verb - load someone or something with; bring as a charge against; strengthen, increase, or magnify; colloquial only - exasperate or annoy someone.

‘Caffeine can irritate the bladder in certain people, causing them to urinate more frequently.’

‘Brian would frequently irritate Margaret with his obsessive checking whether he had locked the doors before leaving the house.’

‘The political extremists brought in Rent-a-Mob to aggravate the situation on the protest, creating violence where there had previously been a peaceful protest.’

‘Charlie would often aggravate Donna’s insecurity by declaring she was fat and lazy.’

Pic: The rocky coast near Sissi, Crete.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Bought or brought

Bought or brought:

Bought: past tense and past participle of verb to buy - Gain possession of by giving money; obtain by payment; purchase; obtain in exchange for something else, or by making a sacrifice; win over, hire or engage (usually in a bad sense as in: winning favour by using money, influence, bribing; suffer, be wounded, killed, or destroyed; believe; accept; approve.

Brought: past tense and participle of verb to bring - Cause to come with, or to convey by carrying, leading, impelling or attracting; to prefer a charge, initiate legal action. 

There should be little difficulty with this one if you keep in mind the relationship between ‘bought’ and ‘buy’. Something that has been bought is a thing that has been purchased.

When you use ‘brought’, it is describing the action of bringing something from one place to another. I don’t know, but perhaps if you remember that the ‘r’ in ‘brought’ stands for ‘retrieve’, it might help as a mnemonic.  

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Amend or emend

 'Little Driffield Pond'

Amend or emend: ‘To amend is to change; to emend is to correct’ is sometimes considered the difference between these two words, but the reality is that, in some cases, they are interchangeable.

Amend: verb – to correct, reform or convert;  to free something from fault; to correct errors in the text of a document etc.; repair or make good something broken or damaged, restore; heal or cure a sick person or a disease; make better, improve; reform yourself; abandon faults and evil ways.

Emend: verb – to alter a text to remove errors and corruptions; to make free from faults, correct, rectify.

Generally speaking, ‘amend’ is the catchall word and ‘emend’ is used in reference to the correction of a manuscript or spoken statement.

‘Failure to amend you bad habits will result in disaster for you and those who count themselves your friends.’

‘Andrew took pains to be accurate as he used his journalistic skills to emend the statement due to be released by the head of the Party.’