List of English Words With Disputed Usage

List Of English Words With Disputed Usage

Some English words are often used in ways that are contentious between writers on usage and prescriptive commentators. The contentious usages are especially common in spoken English. While in some circles the usages below may make the speaker sound uneducated or illiterate, in other circles the more standard or more traditional usage may make the speaker sound stilted or pretentious.

Abbreviations of dictionaries cited
Abbrev. Dictionary Further details
AHD4 American Heritage Dictionary fourth edition
CHAMBERS Chambers 21st Century Dictionary 2006
COD11 Concise Oxford English Dictionary 11th edition
COED Compact Oxford English Dictionary AskOxford.com
ENCARTA Encarta World English Dictionary online
FOWLER The New Fowler's Modern English Usage Revised Third Edition (1998)
M-W Merriam-Webster online
OED Oxford English Dictionary online
RH Random House Unabridged Dictionary 2006; at Dictionary.com
Contents: Top 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, english, words and/or usage:

    Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    I made a list of things I have
    to remember and a list
    of things I want to forget,
    but I see they are the same list.
    Linda Pastan (b. 1932)

    While abroad, he met with a very salacious English woman, whose liberality retrieved his fortune, with several circumstances more to the honor of his vigor than his morals.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    We could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume always a crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.
    —A.J. (Alfred Jules)