Marital and martial look almost alike, but the only time they overlap is when you declare war on your spouse. Marital has to do with marriage, and martial is concerned with fighting.Continue reading...
Bazaar and bizarre might sound alike but a bazaar is a market and bizarre describes something kooky. There could be a bizarre bazaar run by monkeys selling people feet.Continue reading...
Get our your lucky rabbit’s foot! Fortunate is lucky, but fortuitous means by chance or accident. Silly rabbit, these words aren’t the same.Continue reading...
Climactic describes the high point, the most intense part of a movie, play, song, or, well, anything. Climatic refers to the climate, like the climatic changes that turned Santa's workshop into a sauna for elves.Continue reading...
All are good for research papers: cite is short for citation, site is a place, and sight is what your eyeballs are for. The Web has a lot to answer for, good and bad. One item in the minus column is the increased popularity of site and people throwing these sound-alikes all over the place!Continue reading...
In Sunday's New York Times Book Review, Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer has the back-page essay on the latest in slang dictionaries. You can read it online here, and you can listen to Ben's discussion with Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus in the weekly podcast here. Also check out Ben's Artsbeat blog post on a 1699 slang dictionary.