10 commonly misunderstood words

I stumbled upon this list recently at grammar.net.  I’m certainly guilty of misusing a few of them.  How about you?  Any other words you repeatedly hear/see being used incorrectly?  Go on, get it off your chest.

~storytelling nomad~

Where did the writing begin?

I believe it all started with being an avid reader.  As soon as I could recognise the letters of the alphabet I was rather enthusiastic about sounding out words wherever I could see them.  My sources tell me that I would sit in the car and gleefully sound out all the words I could see as we drove along.  Just so you know, small things still entertain my small mind.

At the age of 7 I dabbled a bit in the art of telling stories but as you can see it didn’t go quite to plan:

My disappointing start to writing fiction

I didn’t even finish my first sentence.  Sigh.  A flick through this notebook shows that I was thankfully more successful with later attempts. I am, however, happy to see that even at this young age I was not predisposed to telling stories that were all about me, taking a mere four sentences before I got ‘board’ with writing about myself and my day.  Also, my stories may have improved, but I believe my handwriting has unfortunately deteriorated since this time.

So, up until about the age of 10, I concentrated on my love of reading.  I remember during my school years in England having book lists and participating in reading competitions.  I would stay up late and read as many books as I could from the designated lists and ask family members to sponsor my reading challenges.  I should probably note here that I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about the texts they asked us to read in High School.  Shakespeare vs titles such as “I Want My Potty!” There was no contest really.

Success! Young Writer's Award 1st Place - Age 10

Then 1995 came.  The year my family moved to Australia.  A new country, a new school and what seemed like a new language.  The words that I had loved chanting in the car for all those years, suddenly became a point of interest and cause for light hearted jest to my new young Australian comrades.  “Listen to how she says darrrnce! It’s daaance!” I was already quite shy, but I retreated some more, embarrassed by the accent that coincidentally I now wish I still had.

Nonetheless, the words didn’t disappear just because I no longer spoke them so often.  Instead of speaking them I found great pleasure in writing them.  Within my first few months at that primary school I had won my first writing award.  I believe I wrote a riveting piece on dolphins, with a hand drawn illustration to match (N.B. My artistic career was not so successful).  My career as a writer had begun, and that trophy still sits on my bookshelf with pride of place.  Coincidentally, my new best friend was most displeased by my success, as she had won this particular award the previous year.  As young children sometimes are, she became quite cruel with jealousy and not long after, I transferred to a different school where I was not laughed at for my accent, and made a new best friend who is still my best friend today.  Happy endings all round.

Meanwhile, I continued to pursue my budding career as a writer and just before my 11th birthday became a member of the Starfish Young Writers Club.  Their motto: “The very next starfish star could be you!” I was quite determined to become a starfish star.  Today I found a few things they sent me when I joined.  One being a welcome note from the publisher, and another a poster to put on my wall.  I find that the advice they gave me as an 11 year old, still applies at 25 and probably will for a very long time to come:

Granted, these days the boxes are more along the lines of folders on our computers, and instead of ‘terrible stories’ and ‘great stories’ they’re called ‘absolute crap’ and ‘not so crap’.  But the message remains the same.  Practice and just keep writing.  It all keeps coming back to those relatively straightforward words of wisdom.  The manner in which we write may have changed with the speedy evolution of desktop computers and the internet, mostly to our benefit as writers, but the way we write, the way that we become better writers, is still the same.  Practice.

Over a decade later and here I am, still happily writing away and enjoying the process of telling stories and sharing them with others.

My ‘terrible stories’ box, however, remains quite a bit fuller than my ‘great stories’ box, but as far as I can tell, even the most successful writers have this problem.  As the poster says, “You need to do lots of terrible writing, too.  And in between, you’ll write something great.”

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the English Language

I’m a fan of words…good ones that is.  Sometimes I will see a word written or hear a word spoken, and I’ll make a point of memorising it so that I can casually drop it into conversations (I’m cool like that).  It might be the way it sounds, the way it looks, or the imagery it evokes.  Then, there are those words that make me shudder.  Literally shudder with contempt, and wonder that anyone uses them at all.

Here is just a very small collection of the few words that I think could do with a bit more exposure, and those that, were they to crawl into a cave and die, would undoubtedly be doing the world a favour and likely improve the chances of world peace.

The good

Discombobulate – I wish I could use this word more often.  It just sounds, well, cool!

Magnanimous – This one makes me think of minions talking to their master.  And I do like minions.

Alohamora – I wave a wand in my head every time I say this aloud.

Skullduggery – Arrrrrrgh matey!

Racecar – ‘Cause everybody loves a good palindrome.

Gypsy – What’s this? No vowels!

Wednesday – Because I like how I sound it out in my head every time I write it.

The bad and the ugly

Chagrin – Twilight anyone? This word, sounds ugly, looks ugly…and what the hell does it mean?!

Moist – Last year it was concurred amongst friends (and some random people at the pub) that this is one of the ugliest sounding words, ever.

Grimace – Makes you want to do it as you say it.

Colonel – I sound somewhat challenged every time I stumble over this word when reading aloud.  I want to sound it out as it’s spelt…which apparently is not allowed.

Phlegm – Look at it!

Vacuum – Who’s idea was this, really?

Bookkeeper – Double letter overload.

I’m sure I’m not the only one having a love/hate relationship with the English language.  Are there any words that make you want to thank a supreme deity and sacrifice a virgin goat for the gift of language? Or those that similarly make you want to jump off a cliff so that your ears never have to bleed at the sound of them again?

~storytelling nomad~

Hello! I’m a word snob.

Ok, so I admit, I’m a word snob.  I don’t know how it happened really, but happened it did.  Perhaps it was the years of learning foreign languages, discovering that the slightest error in spelling or structure could completely change the intended meaning of a sentence.  Perhaps it was my mum (hi mum!) encouraging me as a little girl to read as many books as possible to improve my vocabulary, resulting in my paying particular attention to all the “big” words I didn’t recognise.  It’s just as possible that my early days winning spelling bees in English class gave me an irrational sense of authority over my other illiterate 5 year old class mates.  Whatever the reason, here I am today, a word snob.

But what is a word snob? I hear you ask.  Well, I’m pretty much that really annoying person that can’t help but point out when it should be their not they’re, or your not you’re.  I’m the one sing-songing “i before e, except after c!” and explaining the difference between than and then, too and to.  On the occasion that I read over my own work and notice one of these errors I find I am disgusted with myself.  How could you Katy?  Go sit in the naughty corner and think about your actions.  There really is no stopping my word snob ways.

Some people have told me to get a life, that “what does it matter as long as you get my meaning?” Well sir, I beg to differ! Our ancestors spent the time and energy transforming speech to text and I like to show some respect by at least getting it right.  I find nothing more irritating when I’m reading than seeing a to where there should be a too.  Yes, I get the meaning and know what it should be, but just by being there it has distracted me from the story.  It has me wondering, “how much were they paying this editor? Surely in all the proofreads and edits somebody should have picked this up?!” And then I reproach myself for making such an assumption and move on to; “well maybe it was a kazilion times worse before and the author doesn’t really know her to‘s from her too‘s and in actual fact the editor has done a brilliant job making it as good as it is.”  Whatever the case may be, when I’m thinking about this sort of stuff it means I’m not paying attention to actually reading and getting lost in my book…and that makes Katy a sad girl.

So, to avoid being the absolute nazi word snob that I have, on occasion, been known to be around my friends, I have found a means to vent my frustration amongst like-minded people.  I’m currently studying a Diploma of Book Editing, Proofreading and Publishing, and I swear to God it’s like the Where’s Wally for word snobs such as myself.  I get to use my trusty red pen, hunt down and assassinate those oversights and misprints like the trigger happy cowgirl that I am.  And then I get congratulated and given a mark for how many I take out. Pow Pow!

In my most recent tutorial, however, I came across a discussion that turned into a bit of a dilemma for me.  The rules were vague and I didn’t know what was right or wrong. Wordsmith ancestors! How could you let me down like this!? The matter in question was the use of further vs farther*, with the discussion question:

It has become common usage in Australia (and around the world) to use ‘further’ in place of ‘farther’.  Do you think you should correct this usage in proofreading jobs for all texts?  What do you think is appropriate?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I understand that the change and evolution of language is inevitable and often necessary, but am also a great advocate for preserving language for the benefit of future generations.  Just because a word is perhaps easier voiced, written or remembered than its original (the current trend in acronyms comes to mind: lol, omg) I don’t believe it should supersede it, as the origins of words can be lost this way and with them pieces of the history of language.  In researching the origins of further and farther, I found that they are simply variants of the same word, later distinguished as having slightly different meanings, so if either were to ultimately replace the other, it would probably make little difference to the history or future of language.  And yet, I am still inclined to differentiate between the two while a vague rule still exists.  Is this irrational behaviour, I ask myself?  Surely if the two are becoming more widely interchangeable then it wouldn’t really matter.  But then again, isn’t that just laziness?

We have so many words for each of the colours in the rainbow; the colour blue can be aqua, midnight, turquoise, baby blue, kingfisher blue…each offering a variation of the same colour.  Surely it’s the same for all words in language, with each slight variation offering a deeper understanding of the intended meaning within the text.  I mean, we could just stick with blue after all, but how boring would that be?  When I see words such as quite and quiet used interchangeably, despite their difference in meaning being greater than further/farther, I would not ignore the misspelling simply because it is common and their differences misunderstood or ignored.  Surely if there is some confusion over the use of a word, the more practice people are given, the more they will understand the differences within their appropriate contexts.  One thing I’m almost certain of is that negligence is not the answer to ignorance.

So when is it okay for language to evolve? For OMG to replace Oh my God? For further to vanquish farther? How long do we hold on to the doeth’s, the thou art’s of our ancestors? When does it become necessary to let the younger generations make language their own? And how important is it to preserve what we already have?

*farther is used for physical distance (How much farther?) and further for metaphorical, or figurative distance (I need to look further into this).

~storytelling nomad~