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As we’ve seen in earlier columns, close doesn’t count when it comes to word choices. Here are a few more of those word pairs that frequently trip speakers and writers up in their efforts to use today’s standard English.
Reek/wreak. To reek typically means to smell bad, either literally or _meta_phorically: “The week-old garbage in the kitchen reeked.” To wreak means to inflict: “The hurricane will wreak havoc along the exposed parts of the coast.” So when a study guide declares that “God is reeking havoc on the city of Nineveh”...well, wrong word, folks.
Undue/undo. Undue is an adjective that typically means inordinate or excessive, and is often seen in the phrase “undue influence.” Undo, on the other hand, is a verb that means to return something to a previous state (“undo the damage” or “undo the package”).
Perspective/prospective. Perspective is a noun that essentially means point of view: “From his perspective, the changes in the law were bad.” Prospective is an adjective referring to a future condition: “Prospective students visited the campus.”
Parody/parity. A parody is a literary form that mimics the _style_ of some other work for satiric or comic purposes. The Onion (online and print editions) is a skillful parody of journalistic writing, often done so well that readers mistakenly take its “news stories” to be the real thing. Parity, which sounds much the same as parody when spoken, is a noun usually used to mean equality or equivalence.
Feint/faint. A feint is a move designed to fool an opponent; it’s often seen in a boxing, fencing, or military context. Faint can be an adjective meaning weak (“a faint aroma of cigar smoke”), a verb meaning to black out briefly (“I think I’m going to faint”), or a noun meaning the blackout itself (“Her faint alarmed the family”).
Naughts/knots. Naughts are zeroes (“The amount on the check ended in a heartwarming number of naughts”), although you don’t see that usage very much anymore. In the singular, naught means “nothing”: “It was all for naught.” One of the several meanings of knot is “a unit of speed”; knots are used instead of miles per hour to express the speed of boats and planes. So when a big-city daily’s online story of a plane crash says, “The plane hit the house at an estimated 200 naughts,” someone is sure to e-mail the reporter to say “Um...the word you’re after is knots.” And when naughts gets changed to knots on the newspaper’s web page less than half an hour later, you can be sure there’s a reader out there somewhere doing a fist pump. [Do not ask me how I know this to be true.] At least the reporter was responsive—and maybe also grateful that the misuse didn’t make it into the print edition.
Regrettably, some bizarre usages do make it into print. Here’s one I saw recently that’s not so much a matter of word choice as it is a garbled conflation of sayings. You may be familiar with various _expression_s used to indicate that life is great and the future looks rosy; for example, “I’ve got the world on a string” or “I’ve got the world by the tail.” Another one is “The world is my oyster.”
So what do you get if you put all those in a blender and push the Scramble button? You get—I swear I am not making this up—“I’ve got the world by the oyster.”
Oh dear. I don’t think that’s what they mean by “creative writing.”
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