İngilizce'deki En Sık Yanlışlar 8

TAUGHT/TAUT

Students are taught, ropes are pulled taut.


TAUNT/TAUT/TOUT

I am told that medical personnel often mistakenly refer to a patient’s abdomen as “taunt” rather than the correct “taut.” “Taunt” (“tease” or “mock” ) can be a verb or noun, but never an adjective. “Taut” means “tight, distended,” and is always an adjective.

Don’t confuse “taunt” with “tout,” which means “promote,” as in “Senator Bilgewater has been touted as a Presidential candidate.” You tout somebody you admire and taunt someone that you don’t.


TENANT/TENET

These two words come from the same Latin root, tenere, meaning “to hold” but they have very different meanings. “Tenet” is the rarer of the two, meaning a belief that a person holds: “Avoiding pork is a tenet of the Muslim faith.” In contrast, the person leasing an apartment from you is your tenant. (She holds the lease.)


THAN/THEN

When comparing one thing with another you may find that one is more appealing “than” another. “Than” is the word you want when doing comparisons. But if you are talking about time, choose “then“: “First you separate the eggs; then you beat the whites.” Alexis is smarter than I, not “then I."


THEY’RE/THEIR/THERE

Many people are so spooked by apostrophes that a word like “they’re” seems to them as if it might mean almost anything. In fact, it’s always a contraction of “they are.” If you’ve written “they’re,” ask yourself whether you can substitute “they are.” If not, you’ve made a mistake. “Their” is a possessive pronoun like “her” or “our” “They eat their hotdogs with sauerkraut.” Everything else is “there.” “There goes the ball, out of the park! See it? Right there! There aren’t very many home runs like that.” “Thier” is a common misspelling, but you can avoid it by remembering that “they” and “their” begin with the same three letters. Another hint: “there” has “here” buried inside it to remind you it refers to place, while “their” has “heir” buried in it to remind you that it has to do with possession.


THEREFOR/THEREFORE

The form without a final “E” is an archaic bit of legal terminology meaning “for.” The word most people want is “therefore.”

    
THRONE/THROWN

A throne is that chair a king sits on, at least until he gets thrown out of office.


TO/TOO/TWO

People seldom mix “two” up with the other two; it obviously belongs with words that also begin with TW, like “twice” and “twenty” that involve the number 2. But the other two are confused all the time. Just remember that the only meanings of “too” are “also” (“I want some ice cream too.”) and “in excess” (“Your walkman is playing too loudly.”). Note that extra O. It should remind you that this word has to do with adding more on to something. “To” is the proper spelling for all the other uses.


TOLLED/TOLD

Some people imagine that the expression should be “all tolled” as if items were being ticked off to the tolling of a bell, or involved the paying of a toll; but in fact this goes back to an old meaning of "tell": “to count.” You could “tell over” your beads if you were counting them in a rosary. “All told” means “all counted."


TOWARD/TOWARDS

These two words are interchangeable, but “toward” is more common in the U.S. and “towards” in the U.K.

TROOP/TROUPE

A group of performers is a troupe. Any other group of people, military or otherwise, is a troop. A police officer, member of a mounted military group or similar person is a trooper, but a gung-ho worker is a real trouper.

Troops are always groups, despite the current vogue among journalists of saying things like “two troops were wounded in the battle” when they mean “two soldiers.” “Two troops” would be two groups of soldiers, not two individuals.


UNDO/UNDUE

The verb “undo” is the opposite of “do.” You undo your typing errors on a computer or undo your shoelaces to go wading.

The adjective “undue” is the opposite of “due”; and means “unwarranted” or “improper.” It is used in phrases like “undue influence,” “undue burdens,” and “undue expense.”


USE/USAGE

“Use” and “usage” overlap somewhat, but they are not entirely synonymous. Many people treat “usage” as if it were just a fancier form of “use” in phrases like “make usage of,” where “make use of” is the standard expression. As a rule of thumb, if either “use” or “usage” seems appropriate, go with “use.”

USED TO COULD/ USED TO BE ABLE

“I used to could lift a hay-bale with my teeth,” says Jeb, meaning “I used to be able to.”


VAIN/VANE/VEIN

When you have vanity you are conceited: you are vain. “You’re so vain you probably think this song is about you.” This spelling can also mean “futile,” as in “All my love’s in vain” (fruitless). Note that when Ecclesiastes says that “all is vanity” it doesn’t mean that everything is conceited, but that everything is pointless.

A vane is a blade designed to move or be moved by gases or liquid, like a weathervane.

A vein is a slender thread of something, like blood in a body or gold in a mine. It can also be a line of thought, as in “After describing his dog’s habit of chewing on the sofa, Carlos went on in the same vein for several minutes.”


VARY/VERY

“Vary” means “to change.” Don’t substitute it for “very” in phrases like "very nice” or “very happy."


VERSES/VERSUS

The “vs.” in a law case like “Brown vs. The Board of Education” stands for Latin versus (meaning “against” ). Don’t confuse it with the word for lines of poetry—“verses”—when describing other conflicts, like the upcoming football game featuring Oakesdale versus Pinewood.

Note that in formal legal contexts the usual abbreviation is usually just “v.,” as in “Brown v. The Board of Education.”

VICIOUS/VISCOUS CIRCLE/CYCLE

The term “vicious circle” was invented by logicians to describe a form of fallacious circular argument in which each term of the argument draws on the other: “Democracy is the best form of government because democratic elections produce the best governments.” The phrase has been extended in popular usage to all kinds of self-exacerbating processes such as this: poor people often find themselves borrowing money to pay off their debts, but in the process create even more onerous debts which in their turn will need to be financed by further borrowing. Sensing vaguely that such destructive spirals are not closed loops, people have transmuted “vicious circle” into “vicious cycle.” The problem with this perfectly logical change is that a lot of people know what the original “correct” phrase was and are likely to scorn users of the new one. They go beyond scorn to contempt however toward those poor souls who render the phrase as “viscous cycle.” Don’t use this expression unless you are discussing a Harley-Davidson in dire need of an oil change.


VIOLA/VOILA

A viola is a flower or a musical instrument. The expression which means “behold!” is voila. It comes from a French expression literally meaning “look there!” In French it is spelled with a grave accent over the A, as voilà, but when it was adopted into English, it lost its accent. Such barbarous misspellings as “vwala” are even worse, caused by the reluctance of English speakers to believe that OI can represent the sound “wah,” as it usually does in French.


WAIL/WHALE

One informal meaning of “whale” is “to beat.” Huck Finn says of Pap that “He used to always whale me when he was sober.”

Although the vocalist in a band may wail a song, the drummer whales on the drums; and lead guitarists when they thrash their instruments wildly whale on them.

Although this usage dates back to the 18th century and used to be common in Britain and America, it is now confined mostly to the U.S., and even there people often mistakenly use “wail” for this meaning.



WANDER/WONDER

If you idly travel around, you wander. If you realize you’re lost, you wonder where you are.


WARRANTEE/WARRANTY

Confused by the spelling of “guarantee,” people often misspell the related word “warrantee” rather than the correct “warranty.” “Warrantee” is a rare legal term that means “the person to whom a warrant is made.” Although “guarantee” can be a verb (“we guarantee your satisfaction”), “warranty” is not. The rarely used verb form is “to warrant.”



WARY/WEARY/LEERY

People sometimes write “weary” (tired) when they mean “wary” (cautious) which is a close synonym with “leery” which in the psychedelic era was often misspelled “leary”; but since Timothy Leary faded from public consciousness, the correct spelling has prevailed.


WAS/WERE

In phrases beginning with “there” many people overlook the need to choose a plural or singular form of the verb “to be” depending on what follows. ”There were several good-looking guys at the party” [plural]. “There was one of them who asked for my phone number” [singular].


WEAK/WEEK

People often absentminedly write “last weak” or “next weak.” Less often they write “I feel week.” These mistakes will not be caught by a spelling checker.

“Weak” is the opposite of “strong.” A week is made up of seven days.


WEATHER/WETHER/WHETHER

The climate is made up of “weather”; whether it is nice out depends on whether it is raining or not. A wether is just a castrated sheep.

WERE/WHERE

Sloppy typists frequently leave the H out of “where.” Spelling checkers do not catch this sort of error, of course, so look for it as you proofread.


WE’RE/WERE

“We’re” is a contraction of the phrase “we are”: the apostrophe stands for the omitted letter A. “Were” is simply a plural past-tense form of the verb “are.” To talk about something happening now or in the future, use “we’re”; but to talk about something in the past, use “were.” If you can’t substitute “we are” for the word you’ve written, omit the apostrophe.

“We were going to go to the party as a prince and princess, but Derek cut himself shaving, so we’re going instead as a female werewolf and her victim.”


WHENEVER/WHEN

“Whenever” has two main ********s. It can refer to repeated events: “Whenever I put the baby down for a nap the phone rings and wakes her up.” Or it can refer to events of whose date or time you are uncertain: “Whenever it was that I first wore my new cashmere sweater, I remember the baby spit up on it.” In some dialects (notably in Northern Ireland and Texas) it is common to substitute “whenever” for “when” in statements about specific events occurring only once and whose date is known: “Whenever we got married, John was so nervous he dropped the ring down my décolletage.” This is nonstandard. If an event is unique and its date or time known, use “when.”

WHETHER/WHETHER OR NOT

“Whether” works fine on its own in most contexts: “I wonder whether I forgot to turn off the stove?” But when you mean “regardless of whether” it has to be followed by “or not” somewhere in the sentence: “We need to leave for the airport in five minutes whether you’ve found your teddy bear or not.”

WHILST/WHILE

Although “whilst” is a perfectly good traditional synonym of “while,” in American usage it is considered pretentious and old-fashioned.

WHISKY/WHISKEY

Scots prefer the spelling “whisky”; Americans follow instead the Irish spelling, so Kentucky bourbon is “whiskey.”


WHO’S/WHOSE

This is one of those cases where it is important to remember that possessive pronouns never take apostrophes, even though possessive nouns do (see it’s/its). “Who’s” always and forever means only “who is,” as in “Who’s that guy with the droopy mustache?” or “who has,” as in “Who’s been eating my porridge?” “Whose” is the possessive form of “who” and is used as follows: “Whose dirty socks are these on the breakfast table?”


WITHIN/AMONG

“Within” means literally “inside of,” but when you want to compare similarities or differences between things you may need “among” instead. It’s not “There are some entertaining movies within the current releases,” but “among the current releases.” But you can use “within” by rewriting the sentence to lump the movies together into a single entity: “There are some entertaining movies within the current batch of releases.” A batch is a single thing, and the individual films that make it up are within it.


WOMAN/WOMEN

The singular “woman” probably gets mixed up with the plural “women” because although both are spelled with an O in the first syllable; only the pronunciation of the O really differentiates them. Just remember that this word is treated no differently than “man” (one person) and “men” (more than one person). A woman is a woman—never a women.


YOUR/YOU

“I appreciate your cleaning the toilet” is more formal than “I appreciate you cleaning the toilet.”


YOKE/YOLK

The yellow center of an egg is its yolk. The link that holds two oxen together is a yoke; they are yoked.

YOUR/YOU’RE

“You’re” is always a contraction of “you are.” If you’ve written “you’re,” try substituting “you are.” If it doesn’t work, the word you want is “your.” Your writing will improve if you’re careful about this.

If someone thanks you, write back “you’re welcome” for “you are welcome.”