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Some pairs of words are easily confused because of close similarities in spelling and/or meaning
THE PROBLEM OF TRICKY WORD CONTRASTS
Most users of English have encountered vocabulary items that are easily confused because they resemble each other in spelling and/or meaning. A well-known example – often explained in English language coursebooks – is AVOID SOMETHING (= escape from its path) versus PREVENT SOMETHING (= cause it not to happen). The problem is that many of these expressions are never highlighted and can remain completely unrecognised, or at least not fully differentiated.
It is vocabulary pairs like this, especially ones that are likely to occur in professional writing, that are the focus of the present post, just as they are of various others with a similar title (see the “Posts on Specific Words” page for a complete list). Other Guinlist posts that deal with vocabulary confusions include 16. Ways of Distinguishing Similar Words, 44. Troublesome Prepositional Verbs, 94. Essay Instruction Words and 211. General Words for People.
For some grammar confusions, see 129. Differences between Necessity Verbs, 133. Confusions of Similar Structures and 217. Tricky Grammar Contrasts. For some pronunciation ones, see 144. Words that are Often Heard Wrongly.
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LIST OF CONTRASTS
1. Youth/ Youths/ The Youth/ Young People
Youth has both countable and uncountable meanings. Countable a youth means a youngish person (in their teens or early twenties), while uncountable youth means a phase of life contrasting with middle age and old age. This is a kind of contrast considered in depth in the Guinlist post 43. Substance Locations.
The difference between the countable and uncountable meanings is not a great problem. It is the use of the countable form that can be confusing. The main difficulty is that the plural of this form (youths) rarely refers to a general group – all youngish people – in the way that most plurals can. English mainly uses it for smaller, specific groups, like this:
(a) Youths were observed near the accident scene.
One way to express the more general plural meaning is with the slightly old-fashioned term the youth. With this meaning it has special grammar: as the subject of a sentence it needs a plural verb, like the police, the clergy and the press (see 12. Singular and Plural Verb Choices). Typical uses might be:
(b) The youth of today deserve less criticism.
(c) More opportunities are needed for the youth to be trained.
Another, more frequent use of youth for the group as a whole is before another noun in such phrases as youth club, youth training, youth groups and youth department. Here youth is being used like an adjective (see 38. Nouns Used like Adjectives).
A much more common alternative to the youth for talking about all youngish people is young people. It is used without the, just like most other countable plural nouns with general meaning (see 110. Nouns without “the” or “a”). Note that the young (the + general adjective, the topic of 6. Adjectives with no Noun 1) is not an exact equivalent as it includes younger people than youths.
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2. Elites/ Members of the Elite
Elites is the plural of the noun an elite, which in Standard English means not an elite person (a possibility in some English varieties) but a group of such people within one particular situation (often a country). Elites therefore means multiple “groups of elite people”. It might be used when comparing such groups in different countries, or different groups in the same country (e.g. the educated elite versus the wealthy elite). For more on Standard English, see the article within these pages entitled Should East African university students try to change the way they speak English?
Members of the elite is a common means of referring to some of the individuals within a particular wider elite. The singular a member… thus refers an individual elite person. Using an elite with this meaning is a similar error to using a bibliography to mean a bibliography entry (see 197. Typical Language of Bibliographies) and a vocabulary to mean a vocabulary item (see 180. Nouns that Count the Uncountable).
To refer to all elite people in the world, it is probably easiest to use the adjective elite rather than the noun (see 255. Nouns Made from Adjectives, #13). As with any adjective you can just place it after the (see 6. Adjectives with no Noun 1), or you can use it without the before people (elite people).
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3. Far/ Far Away
Like near (see 254. Tricky Word Contrasts 10, #4), far can be an adverb or adjective. As an adverb, it typically refers to a long distance in space or time. Its use depends on its partner verb. With motion verbs like TRAVEL, far is usable by itself. With position verbs like BE LOCATED, however, it needs a following adverb or preposition phrase, such as …away, …off, …above, …in the past or …to the right. With a following comparative adjective or adverb, adverbial far is used by itself to mean “much” (see 194. Adverbs that Say How Much).
The use of the adjective far depends on whether it precedes the noun it is describing or follows it with a link verb like BE in between. In the latter case, the usage is normally the same as that of the adverb far with a position verb: it expresses distance in either space or time, and it needs a following adverb or preposition phrase.
An apparent exception is in exchanges like the following:
(d) – “Jakarta is that way.”
……– “Is it far?”
The probable reason why far is possible here instead of far away is that it does not represent Jakarta, but is probably a “dummy” it representing an unmentioned later verb phrase like to go (see 103. Representing a Later Statement with “it”). Far therefore cannot be an adjective describing it, and must instead be an adverb describing to go. It is this adverb status alongside the motion verb go that makes far usable by itself.
The adjective far used before instead of after its noun differs in meaning with different types of noun. It means “distant” only with time nouns (e.g. the far past/future) or the nouns right/left. Before place nouns, far mostly refers to a part or side of somewhere that is furthest from one being focussed on. For example, the far side of the village probably means the side opposite one that the speaker is next to or is looking at or has recently described. The far distance means “the furthest part of the visible distance”.
To express the idea of “distant” before a place noun, the adjectives distant or faraway are usually more suitable than far (e.g. a faraway place).
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4. Classified into/ as
The verb BE CLASSIFIED needs to be used with a class name, such as vertebrates, and one or more names of members of the class, such as mammals. Putting the class name first as subject requires the verb to be followed by into plus the names of all the class members (Vertebrates are classified into mammals, birds…). However, it is also possible to start by naming one or more of the class members as subject, in which case the verb must be followed by as plus the class name (Mammals are classified as vertebrates). For more, see 162. Writing about Classifications.
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5. Afraid of Doing/ Afraid to Do
To make the right choice here, you must first decide whether or not the fearing person has any choice about the feared event. Where there is no choice, of is always necessary after afraid:
(e) People abandoned plague victims because they were afraid of being infected.
(f) Language learners will not speak if they are afraid of making a mistake.
In (e), of being has to be used – not to be – because being infected is obviously an event that people close to plague victims have no choice about. In (f), although making is an active verb, it probably still has passive-like meaning (see 21. Active Verbs with Non-Active Meanings), suggesting absence of choice and hence once again a need for of.
On the other hand, if the fearing person has a choice regarding what they fear, both of and to are possible. Afraid of suggests fear at all times – something permanent. At the same time, though, it does not imply that the feared action is always avoided: someone can be afraid of something yet still do it.
Afraid to, on the other hand, refers to an action at one specific time. It not only says that someone is experiencing fear about performing that action, but also suggests that as a result the action is not going to be carried out. It is afraid to that is the more likely meaning in the picture above, since the speaker’s swimming costume suggests she has no general fear of swimming.
For a more general discussion of this contrast, see 203. Expanding an Adjective with Words after it, under “Expansion with to and -ing Verbs”.
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6. Adverse/ Averse
These are both adjectives. Adverse means “unfavourable”, averse “not liking”. Normally, it is events or situations that can be described as adverse, common ones being circumstances, comments, conditions, consequences, criticism, effects, events, publicity, reaction and situations.
On the other hand, averse, in expressing a feeling, normally describes living things. It must usually be followed by to and a noun (or noun equivalent, such as an -ing verb) naming what is not liked (see 111. Words with a Typical Preposition). One might, for example, use averse to with smoking or aeroplanes. One would not, however, use it to express opposition: if you oppose smoking, you would be an adversary of it. Quite often, not is used before averse to create a double negative meaning “accepting” (see 9. Double Negatives).
An important grammatical difference between the two adjectives is their position relative to the noun they describe: adverse usually precedes it, averse follows with a link verb in between (e.g. Dogs are not averse to chocolate). For more on this kind of limitation, see 184. Adjectives with Limited Mobility.
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