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.
| 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 |
|---|
Read more about List Of English Words With Disputed Usage: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, W
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, english, words and/or usage:
“Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“This is the Scroll of Thoth. Herein are set down the magic words by which Isis raised Osiris from the dead. Oh! Amon-Ra—Oh! God of Gods—Death is but the doorway to new life—We live today-we shall live again—In many forms shall we return-Oh, mighty one.”
—John L. Balderston (1899–1954)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)