16. Ways of Distinguishing Similar Words

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Knowing some general types of small difference between words can help particular word pairs to be distinguished more easily

THE POSSIBILITY OF CLASSIFYING WORD DIFFERENCES

A common problem in learning any foreign language is pairs of words with such similar meanings that the difference between them is hard to see. A number of other posts within this blog attempt to explain pairs like this (see, for example, 44. Troublesome Prepositional Verbs,  61. “Since” versus “Because” and various posts entitled Tricky Word Contrasts). Here, however, I want to concentrate on types of difference, as I believe that knowing some of the most important ones can make it easier to distinguish between many confusingly similar words.

Each of the following pairs illustrates a different type of meaning difference. They do not cover all of the possibilities, but they are quite commonly found. Before reading the explanations below, readers are invited to decide for themselves what each type of difference is.

PAY/REMUNERATION

RECKLESS/DARING

IMPORTANT/ESSENTIAL

WALK/STRIDE

LARGE/GREAT

INSTALL/INSTIL

COOKIE/BISCUIT

EASILY/WITH EASE

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TYPES OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SIMILAR WORDS

1. Words of Different Register

This is the type of difference shown by the first two words in the list above. Registers are different ways of using language according to purposes and contexts. Examples of purposes/contexts that give rise to definite registers are formal academic writing, everyday conversations, newspaper reports, and legal documents. The way of using English in each of these – their registers – can be identified through both vocabulary and grammar that are more common in them than in English as a whole.

The register of academic writing is particularly discussed within this blog in the posts 46. How to Avoid “I”, “We” and “You” and 108. Formal and Informal Words. Examples of non-academic, conversational English words are get, big and a lot. A word found mostly in newspapers is poll meaning “election”, while one typical of legal documents is party meaning “a person who signs an agreement”. The register of remuneration above is legal or business English, while pay is more characteristic of conversation or newspaper writing. For more examples, see 166. Appropriacy in Professional English.

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2. Words of Different Connotation

The second type of word difference illustrated above (reckless/daring) is one of connotation.  This is a kind of addition to the main meaning of a word, indicating how it is or should be judged. The main possibilities are positively (suggesting that the idea behind the word is a good thing), negatively, or neutrally (without any indication). The word reckless has a negative connotation (common with -less words – see 106. Word-Like Suffixes), suggesting criticism of whoever or whatever is so labelled, while daring is positive, suggesting approval.

Similarly, positive-sounding breaks is used by TV companies to describe advertisements when others would negatively call them interruptions. Yet not all words with a positive or negative connotation belong to a pair of opposites. Words that do not belong to a contrasting pair include positive shade (see 218. Tricky Word Contrasts 8, #4) and informative (296. Tricky Word Contrasts 12, #5), plus negative questionable and satisfactory (114. Tricky Word Contrasts 3, #9).

For further examples, see 13. Hidden Negatives,  146. Some Important Prefix Types,  152. Agreeing and Disagreeing in Formal Contexts and 166. Appropriacy in Professional English.

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3. Words of Different Strength

The next pair above (important/essential) have different strengths of meaning. Essential means “very important” (see 198. Indicating Importance). Other pairs of the same kind (the stronger one being the second) include bright/ brilliant, dirty/ filthy, frightened/ terrified, happy/ ecstatic, hungry/ starving, large/ huge, and unusual/ unique.

Because the stronger one in each pair already possesses the idea of “very”, many people think it should not ever be given a strength-showing adverb like slightly, quite or very – it is what linguists call a “non-gradable” adjective (see 194. Adverbs that Say How Much). Nevertheless, some people do use very with some strong adjectives, notably essential, huge and unique.

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4. Words of Different Generality

The possibility of words referring to the same thing in more or less general ways, as illustrated by walk/stride above, is very common but often quite hard to identify. We can prove that walking is more general than striding – that striding is one of many ways of walking – by asking in what other ways than striding it is possible to walk (e.g. STROLL, AMBLE, SHUFFLE, CREEP, MARCH). In the same way, vehicle is more general than car and below is more general than under.

Elsewhere in this blog, the difference between graph and graphic and between behave and behave oneself is explained in depth in 114. Tricky Word Contrasts 3. For an important writing use of synonyms at different levels of generality, see 5. Reading Obstacles 3: Repetition with Synonyms. 

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5. Words with Different Collocations

Words that differ in collocation may have no meaning difference at all, but simply accompany different partner words. The word great in the list above typically partners the abstract nouns importance, difficulty and deal, while large would be preferred with number and payment (see 108. Formal & Informal Words). The difference between MAKE and DO is also often one of collocation: we make a decision, for example, but do research (see 173. “Do Research” or “Make Research”?).

Collocation features heavily within these pages in such other posts as 123. Prepositional Verbs Containing a Noun,  164. Fixed Preposition Phrases,  180. Nouns that Count the Uncountable,  194. Adverbs that Say How Much,  209. Fixed Phrases with “and” and 273. Verb-Object Collocations.

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6. Words that Combine with Different Types of Other Word

The verbs install/instil both mean “establish” or “place”, but they seem to differ in what they establish. We install physical things, especially machinery, and we instil mental ideas, such as attitudes and beliefs. Here, it is the objects of the verbs that determine their choice. With the adjectives priceless and invaluable (both meaning “too valuable to be sold”), it is the nouns they describe that do: priceless tends to describe material nouns like works of art or gold rings, invaluable other things, often abstract, such as friendship or assistance (see 284. Words with a Surprising Meaning, #1 and #3).

This kind of difference might also explain well-known problem pairs like borrow/lend, rob/steal and bring/take. They all have a shared meaning (particular transference types), but in the first pair the subjects are different (receiver versus giver), while in the second and third the objects are (loser versus lost goods; distant versus nearby object). 

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7. Words with Different Geographical Associations

The difference between cookie and biscuit is one of geography: American and British English respectively. This category is like a subcategory of register, but it may be better to separate it because so many important differences are covered by it.

American/ British is not the only contrast possibility. In East Africa, for example, more so is often used instead of British/ American moreover (see the end of 259. Multi-Word Connectors).  More about regional variations is available within this blog in the technical article Should East African university students try to change the way they speak English?.

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8. Words with Different Grammatical Uses

Sometimes there is no meaning difference between different expressions because it is their grammatical form and/or use that is the difference. This seems to be the case, for example, with very and adverbial much. Only the former is possible before adjectives in their base form (e.g. very easy), only the latter before comparative adjectives (much easier – see 98. “Very”, “Much” and “Very Much”).

Further examples of words distinguished more by grammar than meaning are but/however (see 40. Conjunctions versus Connectors), amount/number (81. Tricky Word Contrasts 2, #9), quite/moderately (194. Adverbs that Say How Much) and aspects/respects (196. Saying what is inside Things). See also 250. Synonym Pairs with Contrasting Grammar 1.

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PRACTICE EXERCISE: DISTINGUISHING SIMILAR WORDS

To further illustrate the above categories, here is an exercise where you have to match each one with a pair of similar words. Answers are given below.

CATEGORIES

REGISTER, GRAMMAR, CONNOTATION, STRENGTH OF MEANING, GENERALITY, COLLOCATION, SUBJECT/OBJECT TYPE, GEOGRAPHY, GRAMMATICAL USE.

WORD PAIRS

1.  SAY = Speak/Write (words); TELL = Speak to/write to (someone)

2.  GLARING = Shining so strongly that onlookers feel discomfort; BRILLIANT = Shining so strongly that onlookers are impressed.

3.  ALTHOUGH = notwithstanding the fact that (+ statement); DESPITE = notwithstanding (+ noun phrase)

4. PASTOR = Religious minister in charge of a parish in the USA; PARISH PRIEST = Religious minister in charge of a parish in the UK or Ireland.

5.  STRENUOUS = Forceful (used to describe exercise or a denial); FERVENT = Forceful (used to describe hope).

6.  MATTER = Scientific name for material of which something is composed; STUFF = Informal name for material of which something is composed.

7.  IMMORAL = Breaking ethical or religious rules that make society work better; WICKED = Breaking ethical or religious rules that prevent terrible suffering.

8.  HONEST = Always avoiding untruths; VIRTUOUS = Always avoiding immoral behaviour.

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Answers:  1 = Subject/Object Type (SAY + words; TELL + person); 2 = Connotation;  3 = Grammatical Use (conjunction/preposition);  4 Geography;  5 = Collocation;  6 = Register;  7 = Strength of Meaning;  8 = Generality.

15. Reading Obstacles 8: Half-Read Sentences

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Any word in a sentence can dramatically affect what all the other words say, so no word(s) should ignored during reading

WHY HALF-READ SENTENCES ARE DANGEROUS

Sometimes, when a sentence is long and complicated, we may feel tempted to give up trying to understand all of the words in it, believing that we have understood enough for the basic meaning, or gist, to be known. However, such a temptation should be resisted, because it can often lead to misreading and, by extension, inaccurate paraphrase (see 80. How to Paraphrase). 

The reason why error is likely in such a situation is that the unread words will often contain a meaning that completely changes the message of the whole sentence. Such words are not always present, but the possibility that they are makes it vital to understand sentences in their entirety. 

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WORDS THAT CHANGE SENTENCE MEANINGS

One type of sentence-changing word is discussed in the previous post on reading (13. Hidden Negatives). This first shows the important effect on a sentence of words with a negative meaning and then presents some lesser-known words of this type. 

Negative words are not the only ones that can radically change what the rest of a sentence is saying. Here is a quite long test instruction that was recently misunderstood by the majority of a class because it seemed that they did not read it through to the end:

(a) Explain the procedure by which a reader of an academic essay might discover the title of a book or article containing words quoted in the essay. 

Many of the students explained how to discover the title of any book or article, rather than a specific one from which an essay quotation had been taken. This meant that they wrote about library catalogues instead of essay bibliographies. It seemed they did not appreciate the words at the end of the question: containing words quoted in the essay. These words were the clue that the question was about bibliographies, requiring an answer like this: 

First read the brief reference that should be found next to every quotation in an academic essay, in order to discover the author of the quoted words and their date of publication. Then look for the same author’s name in the bibliography at the end of the essay, where the title of the relevant book or article will be written after it in italics. 

The words at the end of the question are like an adjective describing the noun book or article. They are recognizable as such because of their closeness to this noun, plus the fact that the -ing verb within them (containing) is not combined with any form of the verb BE; it is what grammarians call a “participle” (see 52. Participles Placed Just after their Noun).

Adjectives very often cause their noun to mean less than it would without them (see 283. Lesser-Known Features of Adjectives, #4), and participles do the same. Thus, containing above changes the meaning of book or article from a general one (any book or article) to a particular one (only a book or article which has been quoted from in an essay).

If the question is understood as being about finding the title of any book with a known author, then trying a library catalogue might be a good idea; but when the question is really about books referred to in an essay, using a library catalogue instead of the essay’s bibliography is a decidedly inefficient way of proceeding.

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THE CONCEPT OF MODIFICATION

The traditional grammatical term for words that change the meaning of neighbouring words is “modification”. Modification is everywhere in English, and it can affect other grammar choices (see, for example, 63. Constraints on Using “the one(s)” and 109. Placing an Adjective after its Noun). For a detailed discussion of adjective modification, see 203. Expanding an Adjective with Words after it.

The type of modification illustrated in sentence (a) can be characterized as “words after a noun that describe it like an adjective”. It has at least seven forms. These are discussed in detail in this blog in 252. Descriptive Wording after Nouns, but they can be summarised as follows:

1. Verbs with a “participle” ending, either -ing or -ed, such as containing in (a) above. Bracket-like commas may or may not be present, depending on the reason for using the participle (see 52. Participles Placed Just after their Noun, #4).

2. Verbs in the to (infinitive) form, e.g. a task to perform or the chance to succeed. For details, see 239. Noun Phrases Made with a “to” Verb.

3. Preposition + noun, for example in London after buildings. These words give a very different meaning to the more general single word buildings. For a detailed discussion of modification like this, see 84. Seven Things to Know about Prepositions, #2.

4. Relative clauses (beginning with a word like who or which). Again, commas may or may not be present, and their absence changes the meaning of the noun before (see 34. Relative Pronouns and Commas). The phrase people who are not considerate does not mean the same as the single word people; it means a subgroup of people, not everyone in the world.

5. A second noun that is an alternative name or description of the first one. Commas may again be present or absent (see 77. Apposition).

6. An adjective that is not able to be in the normal pre-noun position because of some special circumstance, such as being itself modified (see 109. Placing an Adjective after its Noun).

7. A statement beginning with the conjunction that (e.g. a possibility that…) or a question word (e.g. the question whether…). That used like this is not a relative pronoun (it cannot be replaced by which), and it can only accompany some nouns. For an indication of which ones, see 153. Conjunction Uses of “that”.

Modification that follows its described noun is easily ignored by rushing readers because reading the noun by itself will often make them feel that they have reached a natural break in the sentence. 

Another kind of noun modification is a preceding noun. For example, in the phrase sports competitions the first noun sports is not the main noun, but a modifier telling the reader what kind of competitions is meant (see 38. Nouns Used like Adjectives). A reader who stops reading after sports – again, as a noun, a seemingly natural break in the sentence – will miss the very important point that the phrase is about competitions and not sports in general. 

This kind of reading error is surprisingly common. An example of a phrase that produced it in a real text was the industrialization/ food security conundrum in China. It is easy, if you are not careful, to think that the goes with the first of the underlined nouns, when in fact it goes with the last (conundrum, meaning “puzzle”). The rule is that using (or not using) an article always depends on the last noun when one or more modifying nouns are in front (see 38. Nouns Used Like Adjectives). A good reader seeing industrialization might think at first that the went with it, but will keep reading and, on recognizing the next word as a noun, will change their understanding of how to interpret the, and will keep doing so until the next word is not a noun.

The moral of this story, then, is to keep reading until you reach a full stop!