25 May, 2020 by PAUL FANNING

236. Tricky Word Contrasts 9

Some word pairs 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 LIE (= “assume/occupy a horizontal position”) versus LAY ( “put … into a horizontal position” – see 97. Verb-Form Confusions). The problem is that such pairs are very numerous in English, and many are rarely highlighted so that they are likely to remain completely unrecognised, or at least not fully differentiated.

It is these rarely-considered confusion sources, especially ones 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 about vocabulary confusions include 16. Ways of Distinguishing Similar Words, 44. Troublesome Prepositional Verbs, 94. Essay Instruction Words, 196. Saying what is inside Things, and 198. Indicating Importance.

For some grammar contrasts, see 100. What is a Grammar Error?, 133 Confusions of Similar Structures 1 and 217. Tricky Grammar Contrasts 1. For some pronunciation ones, see 144. Words that are Often Heard Wrongly.

LIST OF CONTRASTS

1. “Security” versus “Safety”

A major problem with these uncountable nouns is that safety is similar in meaning to words in some European languages that are spelt like security, so that security is often incorrectly used instead of it in English. For more on this kind of problem, see 284. Words with Surprising Meaning.

Safety is either prevention of physical dangers, such as a hole in the ground or poisoned food, or protection from them. Prevention is often achieved by, for example, careful design and maintenance of products and buildings. Protection is provided by such things as warning notices, helmets for building sites, and insulation of electrical conductors.

Security in English means either a type of feeling or a situation. The feeling is a freedom from worry about suffering harm. It often results from action taken to prevent harm. For example, someone might feel security (or a sense of security) through wearing a seatbelt or having a burglar alarm. On the other hand, the situation that security can mean is prevention of unwanted human behaviour, such as theft, terrorism, espionage or arson. It is often associated with such things as locks, secret codes, passports and identity checks.

2. “Name” versus “Nominate”

The verb NAME may mean giving a new name to someone or something (= naming), or revealing their existing and often familiar name (= identifying), or allocating a role to someone (= decreeing).

As these possibilities suggest, NAME always has or implies two nouns after it, one normally a name. Some names, especially of people and places, will be “proper” nouns (e,g, Caesar: see 47. Article Errors with Proper Nouns); but others will be ordinary (“common”) nouns (e.g. a potato).

Each meaning of NAME is associated with slightly different grammar. Naming needs the name to be the second noun (see 92. Verbs with an Object + “as”, #1):

(a) His father named the boy Caesar.

By contrast, identifying with NAME allows either noun after it to be the name, and needs as between them. The use in (a) would thus become identifying if as was added before Caesar (suggesting that previously people were unsure who the boy was). The name is typically the identifying noun, the other noun the identified one. For a fuller discussion of identifying, see 206. Ways of Conveying a Name.

Decreeing, on the other hand, usually needs the name noun to precede the role noun with as in between, e.g.:

(b) The committee named Smith as (The) President.

This means Smith became The President from the moment the committee made their announcement.

NOMINATE means “propose (someone) for a role or award”, and hence does not indicate whether the role or award is actually realised. As with NAME, two following noun ideas must be visible or implied. One will be a name or description of a person, the other the targeted role/award, typically preceded by (as a candidate) for:

(c) The committee nominated Smith for the Nobel Prize.

Both NOMINATE and the naming and decreeing uses of NAME can follow I or we to actually bring about what they mean (see 238. Using a Verb to Perform its Action).

3. “Occasion” versus “Opportunity”

Occasion is another word that has a similar spelling in some other languages but a different meaning. Opportunity is the word that occasion is sometimes used wrongly instead of.

A major meaning of occasion is “a time of a repeated event”, as in this example:

(d) The last occasion when sports events were cancelled was the hard winter of 2010.

The word last is what here conveys the idea of repetition necessary for using occasion. A common synonym of this use of occasion is the countable form of time (see 43. Substance Locations). However, although time can usually replace occasion, the reverse is not always true, since time can be used without suggestion of multiple occurrences:

(e) The 1980s were a/the time when mobile phones became common.

The association of occasion with multiple occurrences means that the plural occasions is common, often after a number word (six/many occasions). In adverb positions, this use needs a preposition (on) in front (something not possible with times):

(f) The experiment was repeated on many occasions (= many times).

Similar to this is the fixed expression on occasion, which means “occasionally” or “sometimes” (see 85. Preposition Phrases & Corresponding Adverbs, #5).

Two other meanings of an occasion are notable. One is “major event”. Parties, sports competitions, opening ceremonies, carnivals and weddings could all be called occasions. The other is “situation demanding a special response”. There is a countable use after BE (…was an occasion for reflection) and an uncountable one after HAVE (…had occasion to reflect).

An opportunity, by contrast, is a situation (often brief) which allows (without demanding) reward-bringing action. For example, an empty taxi passing by might be an opportunity to reach a destination quickly. The meaning is similar to that of possibility, but more suggestive of a beneficial outcome. A closer but slightly informal synonym is a chance. The possible action after opportunity (and chance) is expressed with a to verb – unlike that after possibility, which needs of -ing (see the end of 239. Noun Phrases Made with a “to” Verb).

4. “Defuse” versus “Diffuse”

The main similarity between these words is their spelling and pronunciation, including the fact that -fuse in both is stressed (strongly pronounced). Yet even here there are important differences. The obvious spelling difference de- versus dif- results from -fuse in the former having the prefix de- meaning “removing” (see 146. Some Important Prefix Types), and in the latter having the Latin preposition dis- meaning “widely”, which has been changed into dif- by the following “f” (see 45. Latin Clues to English Spelling).

There are two pronunciation differences. De- has the long “ee” sound (/i:/), dif- the shorter “i” one (/Ι/). And “s” is always pronounced /z/ in defuse, but /z/ or /s/ in diffuse according to usage as a verb or adjective.

Defuse is a verb. Literally, it means “remove the fuse from”, metaphorically (and probably more commonly) “remove the tension from”. Diffuse as a verb means “distribute widely”. As an adjective it literally means “widely distributed” or “not concentrated”, metaphorically “not concise”.

5. “Wording” versus “Words”

Wording is an uncountable noun (see 240. Nouns that End with “-ing”) meaning choices concerning words in a message. It refers not just to the selection of words but also their combination and ordering. Words are just words, in communication or anywhere else.

Wording is what should be the focus of attention during paraphrasing: the aim is not just to choose different words, but also to combine and order them differently (see 80. How to Paraphrase). Wording is also the more likely concern in literary criticism.

Areas concerned with just words might include spelling quizzes and dictionaries (though the explanations of individual words in the latter need careful wording).

6. “Minimum” versus “Minimal”

Grammatically, minimum can be either a noun or adjective, but here I wish to focus on the latter because minimal is only an adjective.

Both words express the idea of “the smallest possible in the situation”. The difference reflects different meanings of “possible” (see 181. Expressing Possibility”). With minimum the smallest possibility is usually recognised or defined, whereas with minimal it is not. Thus, in baking the minimum temperature would probably refer to the lowest setting allowed by a temperature control, whereas a minimal temperature would mean the lowest that anyone is able to obtain – either the same as the minimum or below it. Neither temperature in this situation would be an absolute low one – baking cannot be cold.

In the same way, a minimum wage refers to a wage level that has been formally established, perhaps by law, usually so as to raise wage levels rather than reduce them, whereas a minimal wage is just a very low, more probably inadequate amount that someone has managed to pay in order to keep costs low. The minimum effort means the smallest amount of effort that is allowed or recognised as necessary to complete a task, whereas minimal effort means the smallest amount that can be achieved. Where the former is fixed, the latter can vary according to the ingenuity of the worker.

Minimum very often has the in front. I think this is a result of fixed lowest quantities tending to be unique in their own context, rather like the sun or the government. As with these other ideas, however, a is also possible, usually where the unique minimum is referred to out of its context. Minimal, by contrast, rarely has the, perhaps because there are many possible levels in a single context.

7. “And” versus “Plus”

The difference here is of both grammar and meaning. Grammatically and is always a conjunction, whereas plus can be a conjunction, adjective, noun or preposition.

The adjective plus has limited mobility: used before certain nouns it means “positive” (e.g. a plus point /factor /argument), but after numbers and letters (e.g. D+) it means “high in the range”. The noun a plus means “an advantage” or “a + sign”.

The preposition and conjunction uses are replaceable by and. The former precede phrases lacking a verb, especially numbers in arithmetic (e.g. 6 plus 2); the latter enable two verb-based statements to occupy one sentence:

(h) Smoking is expensive, plus it threatens health.

In arithmetic, plus is commoner than and, perhaps because it more clearly indicates the need for arithmetical addition. Elsewhere, however, and is probably commoner. Plus is emphatic, telling the addressee to pay special attention to the point after it. Sometimes it occurs in the same list as and:

(i) Smoking is expensive and anti-social, plus it threatens health.

11 May, 2020 by PAUL FANNING

235. Special Uses of “the”

The standard description of “the” leaves many things unsaid about its uses

THE VERSATILITY OF “the”

The fundamental uses of the that are usually presented in elementary English courses are not a reliable guide to its wider, sometimes rather surprising use. Some indications that this is the case are also encountered at a fairly early stage, for example within lessons on comparative adjectives and adverbs (the more… the more…) and on proper nouns – names of nations, mountains, rivers, companies etc. – where no generalization seems capable of clearly showing in all cases where and where not to add the (see 47. Article Errors with Proper Nouns).

Advanced English courses do usually provide a fuller description of the. However, my experience is that even these are rarely complete, and that the different special uses that are mentioned are often scattered in different places and contexts. My aim here is to bring together special uses of the, especially in professional contexts, that I think need to be highlighted. Some of them are also covered elsewhere within these pages but will, I hope, benefit from being collected together here along with some new ones. I cannot claim that I have managed to gather together all of the specialised uses, but I hope that the main ones are here and that their description will prove informative.

SPECIAL USES

As a preliminary, it seems useful to summarise what are usually considered to be the two fundamental uses of the. The first is to suggest to a reader or listener that they are expected to be already familiar with whoever or whatever an accompanying noun stands for. In other words, the establishes a noun as “identified” or “definite” rather than “unidentified”, which is the basic meaning of a(n).

Secondly, learners at elementary level are likely to learn that the marks nouns as “specific” rather than “generic”, sometimes at the expense of the “identified” meaning, sometimes not.

The more specialised uses of the include the following:

1. With Generic Nouns

Generic nouns help to make statements about events and situations that are not tied to any particular point or period in time, like this:

(a) Consumers often seek a bargain price.

Both consumers and price are generic here because they are linked with the action of repeatedly seeking a bargain price in the past, present and future. Reflecting the general tendency of generic nouns not to have the, plural consumers has no article at all, while singular countable price has a (see 110. Nouns without “the” or “a”).

Confusingly, though, the is sometimes found with generic nouns, particularly singular countable ones. We could, indeed, say the consumer above instead of consumers. It tends to be the type of noun that determines whether or not the + countable singular is possible. For a list of common types allowing it, see 89. Using “the” with General Meaning.

Noun type could also explain some of the much rarer use of generic the with plural and uncountable nouns: quite often this use seems to accompany nouns representing something that can normally be seen. For example, the stars, whose exemplars are so often visible, is common in generalizations, but the worms, with mostly invisible exemplars, is not.

One other point about generic nouns is that their typical non-use of the applies even when they are assumed to be already familiar to the addressee: the need to avoid the with generic nouns overrides the need to use it when the noun is “identified”. The is even incorrect with repetitions of generic nouns.

2. With Consecutive Nouns

Nouns placed directly next to each other in order to express a relation between them, such as sun rays or language acquisition experience, are common in professional writing. In order to decide whether to use the, a(n) or nothing at all, you mainly have to consider the last of the nouns. Take sun rays. Since the last noun, rays, is plural, a could not be used at the start. We could use the to indicate that the two nouns together were referring to specific identified sun rays rather than generic ones, and no article at all to indicate generic ones.

Thus, the first of grouped nouns has no influence on the choice of article: the fact that sun by itself nearly always has the is irrelevant when sun starts a noun group (see 38. Nouns Used like Adjectives, #2 and 138. Test your Command of Grammar 1, #2).

3. With Numbers

Most numbers can be used with and without the in the normal way. Thus, three questions refers to a previously unidentified three, while the must be added if the number is already clear from previous words or the context. However, there are two important cases where this rule is not followed.

Is it normally possible to add the before nouns followed by a number, as in page 5, day 2, step B and book one? The answer is no, however illogical that may seem (see 77. Apposition, #2). The only exception that I can think of is with year specifications like the year 2019, which always need the. Care is needed not to confuse these two uses (see 303. Confusions of Similar Structures 4, #2).

The other special use of the with numbers is in introductions to a list, where the number refers forward to a later-detailed quantity rather than back to an earlier one:

(b) The two main languages of South America are Portuguese and Spanish.

The presence of the here indicates that the listed items Portuguese and Spanish are the only ones in the category main languages of South America: there are no unmentioned others. Omitting the, on the other hand, would suggest that unmentioned others do exist (see 55. Sentence Lists 2, #1). Note that this rule only applies when the words before a list cannot stand alone as a complete sentence, usually because they end in a verb. When they can stand alone, for example in sentences beginning there are…, the is never possible before the number.

4. With Public Place Nouns

Public places offer the people of an area a specific activity or service. Many public place nouns, e.g. church, college, court, hospital, jail, market, nursery, prison, school, town and university, have slightly different meanings according to whether or not their singular form has an article before it. Use without one (making them uncountable) highlights participation in the activity. For example How was town? asks about someone’s experience in the nearest town. Go to university means “become a university student”; go to prison means “become a prisoner” (see 176. Ways of Using GO, #5).

By contrast, use of a(n) or the with the above nouns directs attention to their status as places rather than activities. Thus, went to the prison indicates a visit to the building but not what was done there. The is more common than a(n) because public places tend to be the only one in their environment.

Some names of commercial companies have similar variability. For example, the company name London Underground becomes a reference to a place when used after the (see 47. Article Errors with Proper Nouns). On the other hand, not all public place nouns are usable in both of the above ways – they are only countable. Common ones are the cinema, the city, the garage, the mosque, the (doctor’s) surgery and the town hall (see 242. Words with Unexpected Grammar 3, #f).

5. With Lone Adjectives

This use is the topic of two entire Guinlist posts entitled Adjectives with no Noun. The first describes how the + adjective can represent a general group of people (e.g. the elderly), the second how it can represent an abstract idea (e.g. the impossible).

6. With Superlative Adjectives and Adverbs

It is quite a common error for the to be left out before a superlative adjective or adverb. However, it is not true to say that superlatives always need the. A better generalization is that it is necessary in most situations, optional in one, and unlikely in one other.

The optional use of the is before superlative adverbs describing a verb, as in failed (the) most often. The unlikely use is sometimes when the partner noun of a superlative adjective is before it and separated by a link verb like BE, as in bees are (the) busiest…. Here, the is necessary if the meaning of the mentioned noun is being compared with other noun meanings (e.g. bees versus other insects) but unlikely if the mentioned noun meaning is being compared with itself in a different situation (e.g. bees at other times).

For details of both these uses, see 82. Common Errors in Making Comparisons, #9. For other aspects of superlatives, see 305. Wording next to Superlatives.

7. With Someone’s Description before their Name

This aspect is again as much about dropping the as using it. Examples are Doctor Zhivago, President Kennedy and footballer Pele. The first two are official titles, the latter a journalistic identification. All could also have the, but the first two would then cease to be titles and would probably need their first capital letter to be lower case, as in the last. Dropping the in the last case is just stylistic (see 77. Apposition, #2, and 166. Appropriacy in Professional English).

8. After “one of” and “the whole of”

One of usually precedes a noun that is plural and specific (see the introduction to 263. Uses of “One” and “Ones”). If this noun is presented as new information for the addressee, it will probably follow various (e.g. one of various people who...). Otherwise, the or other “definite” word (those, these, their etc.) is necessary. Using the or these suggests “mentioned or visible nearby”, while those suggests “within general knowledge” (see 234. Adjective and Pronoun Uses of “that”).

The whole of the is possible before numerous nouns (e.g. the whole of the day, the whole of the discussions, the whole of the information, the whole of the Pacific). A general alternative, virtually the same meaning-wise, is the whole without of the (see 308. Complexities of “Whole”, #2). A notable kind of noun, however, that allows neither of these possibilities is proper nouns that do not normally have the, such as Paris, China or September. They can only follow the whole of.

9. In Idiomatic Contrasts

English has various expressions whose meaning changes in a quite unexpected way with the addition of the. For example, in first place, meaning “achieving a higher rank than all others” acquires after addition of the before first the rather different meaning of “the first thing to be said” (see 157. Tricky Word Contrasts 5, #4). This and other examples are summarised in the following table (relevant posts shown in footnotes):