Reading · Verbihund Café

One of the frustrations or joys of the English language, depending upon your point of view, is the staggering number of words available, allowing shades of meaning with mere slivers of difference.

For example, the word search can be expressed as hunt, pursue, or chase, depending upon how the writer wants to illustrate the scene—and that is just one sense of the word, which is also a noun. In fact, painting is a good analogy for the minute differences in the art of writing, rather like mixing a hue by starting with a primary color like blue, then adding some yellow, then shading the green result with a bit of black. The artist decides whether the color needs adjusting, is the right addition to the image, and whether the mood and other colors together really communicate what she is trying to convey. It is the same with writing, and why poetry has a well-earned reputation for a degree of difficulty far exceeding prose: each word has to deserve its place in the most spare palette.

English is a massively messy plethora of pulchritudinous pleasure (or pain).

But WHY?

The British linguist, Professor David Crystal, explains:

English, perhaps more than any other language, is an insatiable borrower. Whereas the speakers of some languages take pains to exclude foreign words from their lexicons, English seems always to have welcomed them. Well over 300 languages are on record in the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] as direct sources of its present day vocabulary, and the locations of contact are found all over the world.

This quote sums it up succinctly:

“Yes, English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”

^{(The most likely attribution for this quote is David Burge. Some sources label it as an anonymous quote, and some spell the last name as Burke.)}

Although I personally relish the variety, freedom, adventure, and etymological expeditions of English, I will stipulate that not everyone feels the same way.

In that vein, and because the confusion of similar definitions, spellings, or sounds of words is either frustrating (or fascinating), this week I offer the first part of a Verbihund’s guide to easily confused words, courtesy of vocabulary.com.

Each is linked to explanations and examples, and can be clicked through to pronunciation and more resources. The only thing consistently lacking is etymology, which is a huge part of understanding why the words are spelled the way they are, and how they came to mean what they do today. Regardless, this is a good list with worthy documentation, and any dictionary will offer an etymology for the curious. My favorite source is etymonline.com.

Enjoy!

~Kate