For Who the Bell Tolls by Marsh David

Author:Marsh, David [Marsh, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: English
ISBN: 9781783350131
Publisher: Guardian Faber Publishing
Published: 2013-10-02T23:00:00+00:00

aural, oral or verbal?

Verbal does not really mean the same as oral, although it has been said that verbal sex means talking about it.

KEITH WATERHOUSE

Aural means to do with the ear. If you have verbal skills, you are good with words. All agreements are verbal, but an oral agreement is unwritten.

awaken

I recommend using ‘I woke up’, ‘I was woken up’, and so on, because the forms starting with A are either considered wrong (‘I was awoken’) or sound wrong (‘I was awakened’). The American grammarian Bryan A Garner says: ‘The pasttense and past-participial forms of “wake” and its various siblings are perhaps the most vexing in the language.’

bacteria

Bacteria are plural; the singular is bacterium. You do see bacteria used in the singular, which annoys scientists in particular, though not as much as saying bacteria when you mean virus. Similarly, criteria are plural and the singular is criterion.

bail out or bale out?

You bail out a prisoner (by standing bail for them), a company (through a bailout) or someone in financial difficulty (with a loan or gift).

You bale out a leaking boat, or from an aircraft. This is also the spelling for bale of hay and baleful expression.

baited trap; bated breath.

balk or baulk?

To balk is to obstruct or stop short; baulk is an area of a snooker table.

bellwether

The sheep that leads the herd with a bell round its neck, so figuratively something that shows the way. A seat in an election might prove a bellwether if it points the way to the overall result.

biannual or biennial?

As no one can agree which of these means twice a year, and which means every two years, it’s best not to use them at all; ‘twice a year’ and ‘every two years’ are unambiguous. The same applies to bimonthly and biweekly: say ‘every fortnight’, ‘twice a month’ or ‘every two months’, and so on. It’s remarkable that no one has sorted this problem out; nearly a century ago, HW Fowler was already calling it ‘a cause of endless confusion’.

blatant: obvious; flagrant: shocking.

It was a blatant foul, but banning him for 12 games was a flagrant abuse of power.

blond

An adjective, whether describing a man or a woman. Only put an E on it if you work for a tabloid newspaper and feel you need to call a woman ‘a blonde’.

bonus

As this word already means additional, ‘added bonus’ is a waste of a good adjective.

born out of necessity; borne out by the facts.

breach of promise; breech birth.

brickbat

A piece of brick, ‘the typical ready missile, where stones are scarce’, as the OED helpfully advises. Newspapers were once very fond of contrasting brickbats with bouquets, but you don’t see that so often nowadays.

brutalise

To become brutal rather than to treat brutally; for example, some prisoners were treated brutally by soldiers who had become brutalised by serving in Iraq. Accepting the misuse is not just lazy but causes confusion (which one is meant?) and, ultimately, means that either one meaning is lost or the word can no longer be used to mean anything.

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