| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 76
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| may want to be careful with this usage, however. In an earlier survey, 75 percent of the Usage Panel found it unacceptable in formal writing. | 1 |
baited / bated
| | If you wait for something with baited breath, people may well wonder what you have baited it with. The correct phrase is bated breath, which comes from the verb bate, meaning “to lessen or restrain,” as in “To his dying day he bated his breath a little when he told the story” (George Eliot). | 2 |
baleful / baneful
| | Baleful and baneful overlap in meaning, but baleful usually applies to something that menaces or foreshadows evil: a baleful look. Baneful most often describes something that is actually harmful or destructive: baneful effects of their foreign policy. | 3 |
barbarism / barbarity
| | There is a significant difference in meaning between barbarism and barbarity. Both denote some absence of civilization, but the word civilization itself has several different senses, one the opposite of barbarism, the other the opposite of barbarity. On the one hand, civilization may refer to the scientific, artistic, and cultural attainments of advanced societies, and it is this sense that figures in the meaning of barbarism. The English word barbarism originally referred to incorrect use of language, but it is now used more generally to refer to ignorance or crudity in matters of taste, including verbal expression: The New Yorker would never tolerate such barbarisms. On the other hand, civilization may refer to the basic social order that allows people to resolve their differences peaceably, and it is this sense—that is, civilization as opposed to savagery—that figures in the meaning of barbarity, which refers to savage brutality or cruelty in actions, as in The accounts of the emperor’s barbarity shocked the world. | 4 |
beside / besides
| | Some people argue that these two words should be kept distinct when they are used as prepositions. By this thinking, you should use beside only to mean “at the side of,” as in There was no one in the seat beside me. For the meanings “in addition to” and “except for” you should use besides: Besides replacing the back stairs, he fixed the broken bannister. No one besides Smitty would say a thing like that. But this distinction is often ignored by widely respected writers. While it’s true that besides can never mean “at the side of,” you will often see beside used in place of besides in print. Watch out for ambiguity when using beside in this way. The sentence There was no one beside me at the table could mean that you had the table to yourself or that the seats next to you were not occupied. | 5 |
better
| | better and
best
| | Which do you think is best? The chocolate chip or the mocha supreme? For a discussion of the use of superlatives to compare two things, see
better / best under Grammar. | 6 |
| had better
| | You better not. Is it OK to leave the had out of had better? For an answer to this question, see
had better under Grammar. | 7 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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