Adjectives

“Jealous” vs. “Envious”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Versus

I often hear one adjective used when the other adjective is the appropriate one.

Problem:
The adjectives “jealous” and “envious” are not exactly synonyms.

Explanation:
The adjective “jealous” means feeling uneasiness toward another person because of resentment of that person’s success or from suspicion or fear of rivalry.

The adjective “envious” means feeling covetous toward another person’s possessions.

I often hear American English speakers use “jealous” when they mean “envious” instead.

I believe that the use of “jealous” when “envious” is the right adjective is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It’s simpler to say the two-syllable “jealous” than to say the three-syllable “envious”.

Solution:
Use “jealous” when talking about one person’s attitude toward another person. Use “envious” when talking about one person’s attitude toward another person’s possessions.

“LOW CALORIE HYDRATOR”

Adjectives, Hyphens, Nouns

I saw this during a Gatorade G2 television commercial.

Problem:
A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
When an adjective plus a noun modify another noun, the adjective and first noun must be joined with a hyphen to form the modifier of the second noun.

So the adjective “LOW” plus the first noun “CALORIE” must be joined with a hyphen to form the modifier of the second noun “HYDRATOR”.

Unfortunately, many advertising copywriters believe that it is appropriate to drop required hyphens in their advertising copy. I disagree.

Although this is not the best example, there are many examples where the absence of a required hyphen leads to confusion and double- or triple-pass reading of copy to understand what the copywriter meant.

Solution:
“LOW-CALORIE HYDRATOR”

“This is the exact same thing.”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Common English Blunders

I saw this in a PowerPoint slide yesterday.

Problem:
The writer used an adjective where an adverb was required.

Explanation:
An adjective such as “exact” must be converted to an adverb so that it can modify another adjective.

For example, it’s incorrect to say or write “the definite green blouse”; the correct form is “the definitely green blouse”. We must convert the adjective “definite” to the adverb “definitely” to modify correctly the adjective “green” in this example.

Similarly, it’s incorrect to say or write “the exact same thing”. The correct but rarely used form is “the exactly same thing”; the correct and more commonly used form is “exactly the same thing”.

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

  • “the exact same thing” — 555,000 matches
  • “the exactly same thing” — 762 matches
  • “exactly the same thing” — 527,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase incorrectly by a ratio of 1.05:1, which is not good!

Solution:
“This is exactly the same thing.”