| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 98
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| the similar incorrect use of a comparative in a sentence such as Her boys are 7, 9, and 13; only the younger was born in California. | 1 |
fortuitous / fortunate
| | The word fortuitous is unfortunate since people argue about what it can and cannot mean. In its oldest sense, fortuitous means “happening by accident or chance.” Thus a fortuitous meeting may have either fortunate or unfortunate consequences. Many people insist that this is all fortuitous can mean. But people for decades have used the word in reference to happy accidents, as in The company’s third-quarter profits were enhanced as the result of a fortuitous drop in the cost of RAM chips. This use may have arisen because fortuitous resembles both fortunate and felicitous. Whatever its origin, the use is well established in the writing of reputable authors. The additional use of fortuitous to mean “lucky or fortunate” is more controversial, as in He came to the Giants in June as the result of a fortuitous trade that sent two players to the Reds. This use dates back at least to the 1920s, but people still widely regard it as incorrect, and you may want to avoid it. | 2 |
founder / flounder
| | People often confuse the verbs founder and flounder. Founder comes from a Latin word meaning “bottom” (as in foundation) and originally referred to knocking enemies down; people now use it also to mean “to fail utterly, collapse”: The business started well but foundered. Flounder means “to move clumsily, thrash about” and hence “to proceed in confusion.” Thus if John is foundering in Chemistry 1, he had better drop the course; if he is floundering, he may yet pull through. | 3 |
-ful
| | You usually form the plurals of nouns ending in -ful by adding s to the suffix: cupfuls, glassfuls, spoonfuls. | 4 |
fulsome
| | Fulsome is often used to mean “offensively flattering or insincere.” But people also use the word, particularly in the expression fulsome praise, to mean simply “abundant,” without any implication of excess or insincerity. This usage is all right, but it may invite misunderstandings in contexts in which someone could infer a deprecatory interpretation. You may unintentionally offend someone by saying I offer you my most fulsome apologies, where the use of an adjective like full or abundant would leave no doubt about the sincerity of your intentions. | 5 |
fun
| | Ten-year-olds nowadays are likely to say sentences such as The carnival is funner than the Science Museum, and their parents are likely to have given up trying to correct the sentence to The carnival is more fun than the Science Museum. This use of fun as an inflected adjective (fun, funner, funnest) became popular in the 1950s and 1960s and has persisted, so that a press release today will announce perfectly seriously: The corporation believes that a spelling bee is a fun way to emphasize the critical importance of good basic communication skills in America’s workplace. The day will no doubt come when | 6 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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