diminish/minimize
diminish: To reduce, decrease, or lessen (it has been raining heavily but, according to the forecast, it should diminish to just a few showers soon)
minimize: To lessen to the smallest possible amount or degree (you will need to minimize the dosage of medicine you are taking until it is reduced to just half a teaspoon a day)
disinformation/misinformation
disinformation: Misleading information given intentionally (during the Cold War, both the communists and the free world provided disinformation to confuse their opponents and to assist their own cause)
misinformation: Information that is misleading but not intentionally (the misinformation regarding the museum’s opening times was given by the girl at the information desk)
disinterested/uninterested
disinterested: Unbiased, objective, or impartial (as a disinterested witness he was able to give an unbiased view of what had happened)
uninterested: Indifferent; lacking interest (he was uninterested in the conversation between his brother and his girlfriend)
displaced/misplaced
displaced: Shifted from its original place, particularly with regard to people (many survivors of World War II became displaced persons when they could not return to their homes); removed from office and be replaced (he was displaced as the chairman and replaced by his deputy when the profits of the company went into sharp decline)
misplaced: Put in the wrong place (Isabel searched everywhere for her car keys, which she had obviously misplaced, and eventually found them in the jacket she had worn the day before)
distrust/mistrust
distrust: Regard with doubt or suspicion (I distrust the way he handles the accounts for the business)
mistrust: Lack of trust or confidence (her mother and father mistrust the lavish attention given to their daughter by her boyfriend)
elicit/illicit
elicit: To extract or bring out (we need to elicit more information before we decide to pursue this case)
illicit: Illegal or not allowed (illicit drugs have been smuggled into this country on boats and airplanes)
eminent/imminent
eminent: Distinguished: of high repute (the population mourned when the eminent brain surgeon was murdered in an attempted robbery); noteworthy or remarkable (the residents and the government acknowledged the eminent services of the firefighters during the brush fires)
imminent: Likely to occur at any moment (the information coming from all sources indicated that war in the Middle East was imminent)
emigrant/immigrant
emigrant: A person who leaves one country to settle in another (Peter was an emigrant when he left England to migrate to Australia)
immigrant: A person who comes into a country to settle (Peter was an immigrant when he arrived in his new country of Australia)
empathy/sympathy
empathy: Being able to feel and share the emotions that someone else is experiencing (having lost her children in the floods, Sara had empathy for the parents whose children were killed in the bus crash)
sympathy: Feeling compassion and concern but not actually sharing the emotions (Ken expressed his sympathy in a letter to his friend when he read of his father’s death in theobituaries)
eventually/ultimately
eventually: An unspecified time in the future (you will understand eventually why it was necessary for us to leave our country)
ultimately: Finally; at the end (ultimately, you alone are responsible for your actions)
everyday/every day
everyday: An adjective referring to something that happens daily or is commonplace (it is an everyday occurrence for Katie to say she is too sick to go to school)
every day: Each day (you need to check your briefcase every day before you go to work)
Extracts taken from: “The Right Word ~ Correcting Commonly Confused, Misspelled, and Misused Words” by Elizabeth Morrison.
The words posted by Mr. Adrian contains many words that I personally misuse. During my IB Diploma Programme years (Grade 11 and 12), I am expected to make an Extended Essay that needs to be 4,000 words, and an English essay submitted regularly each week. I would usually use thesaurus.com to simply broaden my vocabulary. However, sometimes the thesaurus is not really reliable since they would not understand where do we want to place it in our sentence, they would just check about words that have a similar meaning to the word we enter. I misuse the vocabulary above because I randomly chose words from the thesaurus and put it into a sentence without knowing the words' actual meaning. To point out, I commonly misuse "diminish" and "minimize", "eventually" and "ultimately", and last is "everyday" and "every day". The reason why I commonly misuse "everyday" and "every day" is because sometimes in the word "everyday" is underlined red, which means the spelling is wrong, and they recommend it to change the word into "every day".
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ReplyDeleteThis is a very useful information since I misuse a lot of words. The one where I got confused the most is between every day and everyday. Even after reading the article I still need to process it so many times in my brain to see the difference. The words have similar meaning which confuse me lots of time. The other words that I got confused sometimes are displaced and misplace. Based on the article, displace is something that has been moved whereas misplaced is something that is being put in the wrong place. I barely use these two words but when I see them, I need to think twice. it is great that the articles in the blog are not only news or entertainment but there is also education involved in it. I can learn more from the article and hopefully improve my writing skills. Also, I hope this type of article will be posted again in the future.
This article is very promising. It contains a lot of useful vocabularies that I can memorize for further uses. If I could even memorize them all. So, I learned something to help me memorize them in a way that I could easily remember them. First one is the use of memory techniques, it’s a way to memorize vocabulary is the use of mnemonics, which are mental shortcuts that help you remember more complex concepts or words. Secondly, create an inspiring and study-friendly environment wherever you are, it can help you when you’re studying outside your comfort zone and the new things that can be learn. Third are to learn more words faster is to put them in context, that way, you know how the word is used in real life. And finally, focus on useful words, more practical and popular the words are for your career, hobbies and real-life conversations, the easier they are to learn – and you will be able to use them more often.
ReplyDeleteI really like this article. This article teaches us how to use the true words. We often forget or even ignore something we consider unimportant. However, the thing that we forget does matter. Even one single word, can change the meaning of a word and the meaning a sentence. If this happens, one single word can turn our life into a terrible situation. Imagine we were in an interview. We kept forgetting about the detail. Some people might consider it as a reckless behavior. There could be a possibility to fail at that time. A good communication can be the key of all things. You can clearly deliver your ideas to people, you may have a better relationship with someone, and you surely avoid a misunderstanding. That is why we need to pay close attention to the detail especially on communication. If we start to communicate well, we will gain a positive impact for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteThis article is quiet interesting and also useful because sometime the English language can be very tricky sometimes with many words with similar meaning or sounds and spelling, like I remember I used to struggle a lot with hopefully and thankfully, because the meaning is very similar to me and I think we only have one equivalent word in the French language therefor it was confusing when I was learning English, I would most of the time use the wrong word in the wrong context and when I was speaking with native English speaker they were looking at me quiet confuse many times, until one day someone explain me the difference and now I know better and I don’t do that mistake anymore.
ReplyDeleteBut some confusing words are not that confusing to me as it is the same in French for example immigrant and emigrant are the same words in French.
I actually learnt a few things from this article and just realized that all this time I've been using the words in my sentences with an entirely different meaning than what I thought I would mean. It is quite interesting really how there are so many words which to the foreign speakers sound almost exactly the same but has an entirely different meaning. Even the space between 'Every' and 'Day' make the words meaning different. I was actually tasked on making a Student Research Paper, a sort of shorter version of an undergraduate thesis paper as a prerequisite for taking the final exam, on the subject of chemistry during the last year of my high school and only now did I realize how many times I've wrongly used the words 'Diminish' and 'Minimize' thinking that they had the same exact meaning but that 'Diminish' is just the fancier version of 'Minimize'.
ReplyDeleteThis ‘words often confused’ article is probably one of the most informative and useful articles for EWS students; in my opinion, this type of article lets us know the words that we commonly misused. This is pretty much due to our lack of knowledge about some words, but we often assume the meaning of these words. However, we often forget that when we misuse some of these words, we might actually alter the meaning and the purpose of a sentence. Some examples from the article that I often misuse are the words “disinformation” and “misinformation”, “diminish” and “minimize”, and also “everyday” and “every day”. From these three sets of words, the set of word that I want to point out the reason I often misused is “diminish” and “minimize”. All this time, I assume that diminish has the same meaning as minimize. I never thought that minimize has additional meaning on it; that is “until the smallest possible amount”. But even though these words are often confused, I believe that the use of dictionary would be helpful.
ReplyDeleteThe article is really helpful for people like me who don’t really pay too much attention into the detail meaning of certain words. This confusion towards the proper use and the meaning of a word is often happen because these words, especially english language, is pronounce and look kinda similar with one and another. One of the word from the article that i often misused is the word “everyday/every day”. I always thought that “everyday” and “every day” has the same meaning because they both are using the same words. To be honest, i’d never imagined that removing a space between two words will actually change the meaning of it, so this is new knowledge for me. Basically, what i can conclude from the article is that english language is very complicated and demanding. One simple mistakes you made within a certain word would actually change the whole meaning of that word, which eventually could cause a misinterpretation towards the reader.
ReplyDeleteI always love the ‘Words Often Confused’ section because it really helps me a lot. I always get lots of useful information. Reading the article, I find that all of this time, I have been using the wrong words just because it almost has the same meaning as another word. Looking at the words, I’ll say that I often get confused between ‘everyday’ and ‘every day’. I always thought that ‘ever day’ is the right one. However, after reading the article, I finally realize that both of them are right, but it just has a different use. To be honest, I still don’t understand it completely because for me, understanding English words is easier when you use it. In my opinion, by using the words that you often get confused daily, you’ll get used to it and finally you wouldn’t get confused anymore. I think that each day, we should at least know 1 new English word. Because by using various words when you write, it will avoid you from repetition.
ReplyDeleteIn this list of words which we often use in wrong situation I found two list of words which me personally wants to talk about. The first one is displaced and misplaced it so much confusing for me when I read the definition I need about 10 minutes alone to understand the difference because I often used that two word interchangeably. What I understand from my confusion of this two words are displaced is more like identifying the placement of something or someone by knowing its initial placement and current placement. But misplaced is more like the word to explain something that aren’t supposed to be in a certain place. The other list are sympathy and empathy, sympathy is only more like a feeling of care towards what someone has experienced. In the case of empathy they share some kind of feeling due to the similar feeling that they have experienced, yet this two words closely related to one another.
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