Rarely Confused Words, Sort Of…
Usually Intended | Often Mistaken | |
Disdain – To hold in contempt | Distain – To stain or tarnish | |
Distain is so rarely appropriate these days that it’s almost certainly a mistake, unless you’re still living in the Eighteenth Century, but most so-called ‘spelling checkers’ allow it. | ||
Whose – The possessive of ‘Who’ | Who’s – A contraction for ‘Who is’ | |
There are exactly zero possessives of the common pronouns formed with apostrophe ‘S’ in English, but most so-called ‘spelling checkers’ either allow or encourage the confusion. | ||
Compliment | Complement | |
When one says something nice about another person one ‘compliments’ them. | ||
When things go well together they complement (or complete) each other. | ||
We have a full complement of baseball players. | ||
Our latest acquisition, the Biltmore in New York, complements our chain of hotel properties. | ||
The easiest way to distinguish the two is usually one of agency. |
Feel free to add your own pet peeves…