Ever had to stop and think about the difference between practicable and practical, or legible and readable? Which one should you use?
There are a number of words in English whose appearance closely resembles another word; this sometimes causes the inappropriate one to be used, resulting in the wrong meaning being communicated to the listener.
A few such words are listed below, which we will consider in their misused pairs to show clearly their distinction.
practicable/practical
Practicable: something able to be done, or put in practice, as in “That solution is practicable in the time available to us.”
Practical: suitable for use, or workable, as in “He came up with several practical suggestions.”
ability/capacity
Ability: possession of the means or skill to do something, as in “Our manager shows an exceptional ability to motivate people.”
Capacity: the amount that something can contain or produce, as in “The fridge’s capacity is 200 litres.”
imply/infer
Imply: to indicate something by suggestion rather than explicit reference, as in “The increase in traffic implies more air pollution.”
Infer: to deduce or conclude from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements, as in “From the latest police report, we can infer that crime is increasing.”
disinterested/uninterested
Disinterested: unbiased or impartial, as in “A good referee should always be disinterested in the outcome of a game.”
Uninterested: to have no interest in something, as in “The bored student was completely uninterested in what the lecturer had to say.”
continual/continuous
Continual: used to describe an event that occurs regularly over a period of time, with intervals of interruption, as in “The continual street repairs disrupted traffic for several months.”
Continuous: unbroken or non-stop, as in “A circle is a continuous curved line, the points of which are of equal distance from a fixed central point.”
More will follow…