Kirk Mahoney . com

I sometimes see or hear these verbs used interchangeably.

Problem:
The verbs “defuse” and “diffuse” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The verb “defuse” — spelled D-E-F-U-S-E — was coined in the early 1940s and means to remove the fuse from, where the “de” prefix in this verb indicates negation and the “fuse” suffix refers to a cord of readily combustible material and comes from the Italian word “fuso”, which literally means spindle.

Unless you are a terrorist or sadist, you want the police to defuse a bomb.

The verb “diffuse” — spelled D-I-F-F-U-S-E — dates back to the late 1300s and means to spread or disseminate, where the “dif” prefix means apart or away and the “fuse” suffix comes from a form of the Latin word “fundere”, which literally means to melt.

Once the police have defused a bomb, they often will diffuse a message to the public about their success.

I believe that the oral/auditory confusion comes from mispronunciations of these two verbs.

I believe that the written confusion comes from ignorance about the roots of these two verbs and from misspellings originating from that ignorance or the mispronunciations.

Solution:
Remember that the “de” in “defuse” indicates negation, and remember that the “dif” in “diffuse” means apart or away.

I heard about this expression last Saturday at a party.

Problem:
The fourth word is incorrect.

Explanation:
My friend Nickie F. sent me more information about this expression.

She said that a friend was describing her daughter’s solution to a bath-time dilemma when the friend said (quote) “She had gotten so tired of getting shampoo in her eyes that the next night, I walked into the bathroom and found her in the tub wearing her pool gargles to keep the shampoo out.” (unquote).

As all readers should recognize, the word after “pool” should be “goggles” instead.

The speaker apparently was accustomed to mispronouncing “goggles” as “gargles”.

Sometimes one must “squint one’s ears” at what is being heard to identify what the speaker intended to say.

In this case, though, no ear squinting is required.

Solution:
“… wearing her pool goggles …”

I heard about this phrase yesterday at a party.

Problem:
The modifier of “dress” is incorrect.

Explanation:
My friends Erik and Nickie F. told me yesterday about this phrase.

It seems that someone was trying to refer to a dress made of sewn-together sequins.

Apparently the originator of the phrase (quote) “sequenced dress” (unquote) heard the plural noun “sequins” — spelled S-E-Q-U-I-N-S — perhaps mispronounced as the verb “sequence” — spelled S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-E — and then added a “d” to make it an adjective to modify the noun “dress”.

The potential for things to go astray in the English language never ceases to amaze me.

Solution:
“sequined dress”

The notorious Hugo Chávez has been president of Venezuela, a Spanish-speaking country, since 1999.

I believe that many Americans ten years later still pronounce the “H” in his first name, even though the letter “h” in Spanish is silent, because of their ignorance about this aspect of the Spanish language.

Aggravating that ignorance, perhaps, is the fact that the name “Hugo” in American speech is often pronounced with a hard “H” — as when meteorologists repeatedly referred in 1989 to Hurricane Hugo.

What puzzles me more is the pronunciation of the C-H in his surname as if it were spelled S-H instead.

Many Americans know that they should pronounce the C-H in the Spanish words “chico” and “chihuahua” just as they pronounce the C-H in “church” and “chapel” and other English words.

But somehow they get thrown by the C-H in Chávez and end up pronouncing the name as if it were Shávez — with an S-H — instead.

Maybe the confusion comes from the S-H pronunciation of the beginnings of the surnames of such French personalities as Marc Chagall and Maurice Chevalier.

Given the strong influence of French on the English language, this could explain the mispronunciation of Chávez as Shávez.

Another explanation is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis: It is simpler to pronounce the “soft” S-H found in words such as “shoot” and “shout” than it is to pronounce the “hard” C-H found in words such as “chore” and “chow”.

What do you think? Let me know!

I saw this last week on an order form.

Problem:
This word is misspelled.

Explanation:
The order form had an area at the bottom where the customer was supposed to sign his or her name.

The order-form creator misspelled “Signatures” as “Signitures” — with an “i” in the middle — perhaps because of confusion from words such as “signify” — spelled S-I-G-N-I-F-Y — or perhaps because of mispronunciation of the letter “a” in the word “signatures”.

“Signify” dates back to the early 1200s and comes from the Latin word “significare”, which means to make a sign.

In contrast, “signature” dates back to around 1530 and comes from the Latin word “signare”, which means to mark.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “signature” — with the letter “a” in the middle — 185,000,000 matches
• “signatures” — with the letter “a” in the middle — 34,700,000 matches
• “signiture” — with the letter “i” in the middle — 384,000 matches
• “signitures” — with the letter “i” in the middle — 57,700 matches

Combining the singular and plural results, this tells me that Web authors have used the correct letter “a” over the incorrect letter “i” by a ratio of 497-to-1, which is excellent. However, over 400 thousand misspellings is a bit troubling.

Solution:
“Signatures”

My wife saw this a week ago in an email message.

Problem:
The modifier of “picnic” is incorrect.

Explanation:
My wife got what appeared to be an often-forwarded email message about being safe with mayonnaise, which has a reputation for spoiling quickly when not refrigerated.

The message referred to the popularity of mayonnaise in meal items that are commonly found on picnics.

The message included the phrase (quote) “quaint essential picnic” (unquote).

A spelling checker would not have caught the problem in this phrase.

Except perhaps to suggest a comma between the word “quaint” and the word “essential”, a grammar checker would not have caught the real problem, either.

The solution comes from saying (quote) “quaint essential” (unquote) to oneself quickly and appreciating that the email message writer probably was attempting to convert an unrecognized word into two words that he or she already knew.

Solution:
“quintessential picnic”

I overheard a conference call in which someone said this a few days ago.

Problem:
The speaker used the wrong word for the verb after “We need to” in this statement.

Explanation:
The speaker who said (quote) “We need to error on the safe side.” (unquote) was discussing a company policy with others on the conference call.

The word “error” is a noun and not a verb.

What the speaker should have used is the word “err”, which looks like “error” but is a verb that means to be mistaken or incorrect.

Perhaps the speaker simply mispronounced “err” (the verb) as “error” (the noun).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “err on the safe side” — 23,600 matches
• “error on the safe side” — 1,260 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used “err on the safe side” versus “error on the safe side” by a ratio of 18.7-to-1, which is good by not great.

Solution:
“We need to err on the side of caution.”

I got an interesting email message last Sunday from one of your fellow readers of this blog.

I will refer to him simply as “Ian” because I don’t have permission to use his surname.

Ian had read “Perogative” and wanted to share his own perspective from the United Kingdom.

When I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) for my original blog post, I got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,750,000 matches
• “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,610,000 matches

This told me that Web authors had favored the incorrect word over the correct word by a ratio of 1.02-to-1, which is horrible!

When Ian tries to access Google.com in the UK, Google auto-redirects him to Google.co.uk, where he got these statistics:

• “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 244,000 matches
• “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 4,000,000 matches

I could not exactly reproduce Ian’s results, but I searched at Google.co.uk and got nearly the same ratio that he did.

The 16.4-to-1 dominance of the correct spelling at Google.co.uk puzzles Ian and his fiancée, given that they agree that the incorrect pronunciation and spelling of “prerogative” is very common in the UK.

I saw this yesterday in a message about story-related evidence.

Problem:
The adjective “antidotal” has nothing to do with story-related evidence.

Explanation:
The word “antidotal” is the adjectival form of the noun “antidote”, which means a medicine for counteracting a poison.

The word “anecdotal” is the adjectival form of the noun “anecdote”, which means a short account of an incident as an unpublished narrative.

Those who confuse these two adjectives probably are distracted by

1. the fact that both adjectives have “dotal” — spelled D-O-T-A-L — in them because both nouns have “dote” — spelled D-O-T-E — in them,
2. the fact that both adjectives start with A-N, and
3. the fact that both adjectives are nine letters long.

The noun “antidote” is constructed from the prefix “anti-”, which means against, and “dote”, whose origin essentially means given. In other words, the roots of “antidote” when assembled mean given against.

The noun “anecdote” is constructed from the prefix “an-”, which means not, and “ecdote”. The “ecdote” part of “anecdote” is a combination of “ec”, which means out, and “dote”, whose origin, as just noted, means given.

So the “ecdote” part of “anecdote” essentially means published. In other words, the roots of “anecdote” when assembled mean not published.

Solution:
“anecdotal evidence”

This is a bastardization of a phrase.

Problem:
The second “in” is incorrect in this phrase.

Explanation:
The conjunction “and” is often mispronounced by Americans as if it were the preposition “in”.

The correct phrase is “in this day and age” — with the conjunction “and” between the word “day” and the word “age” — because one can write (quote) “in this day” (unquote) or (quote) “in this age” (unquote).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “in this day and age” — with the conjunction “and” — 3,030,000 matches
• “in this day in age” — with the preposition “in” — 113,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “in this day and age” versus the incorrect “in this day in age” by a ratio of 26.8-to-1, which is very good.

Solution:
“in this day and age”