Tag Archive - synonyms and homonyms

No, Your Spell-Checker Probably Won’t Catch These

April 26, 2013 in Say What? with 5 Comments

Here’s another list of some confusables I come across regularly in my editing work. I admit, I will often look words up just to make sure I’m not confused and using the wrong spelling. Two of the biggest offenders, to me are pallet/palette/palate and hoard/horde. A pallet is a shaping tool used by a potter, or it can be a platform used as a bed, or a movable structure on which bricks and bags of soil (you’ve seen them at the nursery) can be stacked and lifted with a forklift. A palette is the board artists use to mix paints, and a palate is either the roof of your mouth or your “taste” (“this food is too spicy for my palate”). A horde of people may want to hoard food if they are afraid of running out.

Here are a few more confusables for your consideration:

  • permissible (allowable)/permissive (giving permission)
  • slight (scant or many other various meanings)/sleight (only used with the expression “sleight of hand”–adeptness in a magic trick or some other deception)
  • imply (express indirectly)/infer (deduce)
  • blond (adjective to describe the hair color)/blonde (only used as a noun for a female with blond hair.)
  • elude (avoid or evade)/allude (refer to, as in “he alluded to my story”)
  • imminent (impending)/eminent (distinguished)/immanent (inherent or indwelling)
The last list item is a particular tricky one and I almost always see the wrong word used. It helps me to keep them straight by remembering that imminent begins the same as immediate (imm) and those those other two words–well, I end up looking them up to check–for good measure.