This is an article that I wrote for
http://www.chicklit.com some years ago. I have the distinction of being the first male author ever to publish a piece on that site. Make of that what you will.
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Infer What You Will From What I Imply
In keeping with the inestimable Deborah’s examination of commonly confused pairs of words, here’s another batch of some of the grammatical gaffes you love to hate.
principle/principal
Principle is a noun. Period. It can never be an adjective. It means “a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption.” If you’re working on your resume and you want a word to place in front of
Engineer that suggests “primary,” you don’t want to be using
principle. A Principle Engineer would theoretically be someone who designs and implements laws, doctrines, and/or assumptions. (Sounds like a fun job, but I bet the benefits would suck.)
Principal means, as an adjective, “most important or influential; chief.” Appropriately, the noun form of the word refers to a person or thing having the quality of being the most important or influential. The principal of a school and the principal denoted on your student loan paperwork aren’t exactly identical items, but their common element is clear: “more important than anything else going.”
How to keep it straight:
Principle has a rather limited scope, so apply that definition first to the use you have in mind and see if it fits. If you’re writing about anything other than a rule, law, or doctrine – or (and this is even easier) if you want an adjective and not a noun – then you know right there that
principal is the word to use. The process of elimination can be a beautiful thing.
envy/jealousy
I’m not sure when this one got so out of hand, but it drives me nuts.
Envy, one of the seven deadly dwarves or something, is “painful or resentful awareness of an advantage possessed by another, combined with a desire to possess the same advantage.” In other words, someone else has what you want, and it pisses you off.
Jealousy, on the other hand, is in many ways the exact opposite of envy. It’s defined as “intolerance of rivalry or unfaithfulness; vigilant in guarding a possession.” So, while envy is about wanting what someone else has, jealousy is about not wanting someone else to take what you already have. It’s desire vs. overprotectiveness, when you get right down to it.
How to keep it straight: The distinction is easily determined by defining who has the coveted item, quality, or advantage. If you have a friend whose spouse is so nifty-keen, well-read, and with you on that whole “Re-elect Gore” thing that you want him/her all for yourself, then you’re envious. If you turn around and notice that this same friend seems to be making cow eyes at your spouse, then that flare of unsavory emotion you’re feeling is you being jealous.
imply/infer
You’d think this one would be easy, but I see it getting mangled all the time.
Imply means “to indicate by association rather than by direct statement; to suggest.”
Infer means “to derive as a conclusion from facts and premises.” These two activities are quite distinct, as they are employed by people on necessarily opposite sides of a communicated message: the speaker implies while the listener infers.
Now, that said, I was annoyed to find that our pal
Merriam-Webster muddies the waters a bit by listing “to suggest or hint” as one of the lesser definitions for infer. I’m gonna go ahead and call ‘bullshit’ on that, since
infer is derived from the Latin
inferre, which means, “to bring into, or carry in.” Suggesting and hinting are, if you will, “outward” activities, things that are done by sending a message, not receiving it…or “carrying it in.” So, a big fat Bronx raspberry to
Merriam-Webster’s definition #4 of
infer.
How to keep it straight: It’s all based on whether you’re sending or receiving. Only the person speaking or writing the message can imply, since the listener/reader has no influence over the content of the message. Only the person hearing or reading the message can infer, since inferring is something that can only happen during the processing of a message delivered by someone else.
nauseated/nauseous
TraceyB in the Words to the Wise forum started a thread on this one, and since it makes me cringe, too (especially the ending – see below), away we go. When you feel as though the contents of your stomach are about to be ejected via your oral cavity, you are
nauseated, which means “to become affected with stomach distress, with distaste for food and an urge to vomit.” Simple enough. Now, definition #1 of
nauseous, Merriam-Webster tells us, is “causing nausea or disgust.” What that should mean is that the
nauseated/nauseous relationship operates very much like the one at work between
poisoned and
poisonous.
Poisoned is the state you’re in when affected by poison, and something poisonous is what got you that way. It should follow that
nauseated is the state you’re in when affected by nausea, and something nauseous is what got you that way. You would never describe yourself as feeling or being poisonous – or rather, in deference to Typhoid Mary, you would not use that word to describe the state of having been poisoned. So why the hell has it become common usage to “feel nauseous”?
And I say “common usage” for a reason: as much as it kills me to admit it, all indications seem to be that the usage of
nauseous to mean “experiencing nausea” (as opposed to causing it) has become acceptable, and is in fact listed almost universally as the #2 definition for the word. Here’s a snippet from the usage section of
Merriam-Webster:
“Those who insist that
nauseous can properly be used only in the first sense, and that in the second sense it is an error for [sic]
nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts:
nauseous is most [sic] frequently used to mean “physically affected with nausea,” usually after a linking verb such as
feel or
become…The use of
nauseous in the first sense is much more often figurative [rather] than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to
nauseating.
Nauseated, while not rare, is less common than the use of the second definition of
nauseous.”
In other words, since the distinction between
nauseous and
nauseated has been getting screwed up for so long by so many people, usage has actually changed to accommodate the error. Now, I understand that language changes over time in many ways for many reasons, but for some reason this development sticks in my craw. It’s like the bad guys won, or something. It’s almost enough to make me…well, you know.
How to keep it straight: Apparently, you don’t have to bother. But if you’re like me -- and I know I am -- the
poisoned/poisonous comparison works quite well, and is easy to explain to others.
fewer/less
Joy from the Words to the Wise forum mentioned this one, and it’s another one of my eye-rollers as well. All together now: if countable items are involved, the word to use is
fewer. If a non-countable quantity is involved, it’s
less. Or, to employ the simple mnemonic device I’ve been using since I was about seven: fewer apples, less milk. And speaking of edibles, my eyes well up with tears of admiration every time I go to my local grocery store and see the “15 items or fewer” placard hanging over the register. “Someone got it right,” I usually whisper through my smile. Sometimes I break into a celebratory Steve Martin-circa-1978-like jig right then and there, or turn a couple of cartwheels. Then the manager asks me to leave, and I don’t, and the police get called…but I digress.
To be fair, there is one situation I can think of where the
fewer/less distinction blurs a bit, and that’s the quantifying of time. If it’s 8:55 PM CST on a Thursday night, do you have
less than five minutes or
fewer than five minutes to get settled with a White Russian and some circus peanuts before
ER starts? The short answer: either word works. Here’s why:
Yes, minutes are items, and thus countable. But when we discuss a specific, “counted-out” chunk of time, we’re almost always (consciously or not) picturing that chunk of time as a whole, as a thing unto itself. When we hear the phrase “five minutes,” we know that that’s five counts of sixty seconds each, or 300 seconds total. But we also think of “five minutes” as a single block of time, just like we do with an hour or a day or a year. And since time is intangible and invisible, we get the sense that, despite the numerous units that we’ve come up with to mark off its passing, time is more like milk than apples. Time
flows, like liquid, and that means that we tend to view its progression as the depletion of a quantity more than the subtraction of items. Or, to put it another way: fewer minutes, less time.
How to keep it straight: Should I invoke the fruit and dairy groups again? Oh, and watch out for time – not only does it keep on slippin’ (slippin’, slippin’) into the future, but it walks the fence between
fewer and
less quite adeptly.
That’ll do for now. (More to come, though!) Come on over and discuss the value, accuracy, geek factor, or worthlessness of the above in the Words to the Wise forum.
). I'll have to read this pretty regularly before the rules sink in, but that's more of a reflection on me than you.
