Advice and advise are closely related—they’re used in the same contexts and they’re separated by only one letter. But they’re pronounced differently. The challenge is really remembering which spelling to use for the noun and which spelling to use for the verb. Take our advice: after we advise you on the difference, you’ll never get them mixed up again. Advice is a noun that means …
Though we commonly use the word average in everyday life when discussing the number that’s the most “typical” or that’s “in the middle” of a group of values, more precise terms are used in math and statistics. Namely, the words mean, median, and mode each represent a different calculation or interpretation of which value in a data set is the most common or most representative …
Have you been feeling wanderlust lately? If so, you are not alone. Lots of people are looking to hit the road and travel as pandemic restrictions slowly lessen across the world. All of this vacationing and globetrotting is likely to lead to a whole bunch of trendy new travel jargon—either organically or as marketing pushes by a travel industry hungry for all those new travelers. …
If you’ve recently seen pronoun sets like she/her/ella, he/him/él, or they/them/elle, you may be wondering what the third word in each set means. In familiar pronoun sets like he/him/his, the third word indicates the possessive form. But that’s not the case with él, ella, and elle. Instead, these terms are used by people who speak both English and Spanish as a way to indicate their …
English is absolutely full of words that sound or look the same but have different meanings. And we have words for these kinds of words: homophones, homographs, and homonyms. But remembering the difference can be its own challenge. In this article, we’ll break down the differences and the overlap and provide examples of all three. There is a helpful way to tell the difference between …
Every day, without thinking about it, we all refer to quantities without specifying a number. Most commonly, we do this by using terms like a few, a couple, and several. A lot of people have strong opinions about what each of these terms means—and what it doesn’t. In this article, we’ll discuss the differences, the overlap, and dig into these questions and a few (or …
Sanskrit is an ancient language that dates back to the Bronze Age. It is the language at the root of many languages of the Indian subcontinent, including Hindi, and it is used in ancient literary texts and sacred texts of the Hindu and Buddhist religions, particularly the Vedas. The holy and poetic nature of the language is hinted at in the meaning and origin of …
Where were you the first time you learned you could spell words on a calculator? For most of us, the answer is an elementary or middle school math class. Maybe you had a friend who taught you the numbers to push to spell hello. Or, perhaps you were busy with homework and noticed the upside down numbers on your calculator looked like LOL. Before long …
Your brain! Your nerves! The torment! The destruction! Is it rack or wrack?! And how does wreck fit into all this? Take a breath. In this article, everything will be explained, including: What’s the difference between rack and wrack? Is it racking my brain or wracking my brain? Is it nerve-racking or nerve-wracking? Is nerve-wrecking a word? Where do these phrases come from? The noun …
Legally, to trademark something means to make it so that only one company can make money off of something with that name. You might not realize it, but many of the seemingly generic words we use all of the time are or were registered trademarks. This is often a problem for companies who want to avoid their lucrative trademarks being killed by “genericide,” meaning they …
One recipe says to roast the chicken breasts in the oven at 400° F. Another recipe calls for the chicken breasts to be baked … in the oven… at 400°. What’s going on here? Are roast and bake really interchangeable, or are there subtle differences? The answer is both. In this article, we’ll break down the multiple meanings of both roast and bake, what the …
Both crevasse and crevice refer to cracks in things, but their meanings are not exactly the same. And neither are their pronunciations. In this article, we’ll break down the distinctions, explain how the difference in pronunciation can help you remember the difference in meaning, and reveal which one is big enough for you to fall into. A crevasse, [ kruh–vas ] with a second syllable …
