When a writer for Ebony magazine referred to Kamala Harris’s “historical” visit to Ghana and CNN aired a report on the same “historical” trip, they didn’t mean the visit had happened in the past. They meant it was the first by an African American vice president — historic.
To err is human, of course, though it does seem more errors of expression are published and aired today than in the past. Journalists for NPR now regularly misuse the phrase beg the question to mean raise a question. It has become acceptable to use convince and persuade interchangeably. The distinction between fewer, which should be used with count nouns, and less, which should be used with non-count ones, is today almost entirely ignored.
Is this evidence of a historic decline in standards or proof that language changes over time? Who knows. What is undeniable is that many people still care about the meaning of words, however prone we remain to misusing them, because using just the right word for just the right thing is immensely satisfying.
Eli Burnstein understands this, and he has written an immensely satisfying book with illustrator Liana Finck called Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning. The book is a collection of roughly a hundred commonly misunderstood words and objects, defined and illustrated.
While it is not a style manual, Burnstein does correct some common misuses that one sometimes sees in print. He notes, for example, that convince should be paired with a noun, whereas persuade should be paired with a verb. As a result of this grammatical difference, Burnstein writes, “convince tends to refer to matters of thought (convince me of the need), persuade to matters of action (persuade me to vote),” but “the two words’ interchangeability” has become “so accepted … they may be treated as more or less equivalent.”
He also explains that shame is generally something you feel “for not being good enough,” while guilt is something you feel “for not doing the right thing.” “One is about who you are and are not, the other about what you do or don’t do,” Burnstein writes. “I feel ashamed of my puny muscles — and guilty for not going to the gym.” Accuracy refers to “how close you are to the correct answer,” but precision refers to how “finely you’re measuring” accuracy.
Burnstein notes that this difference can be helpful: “Accurate but imprecise readings suggest your tools are too coarse … while precise but inaccurate readings may mean your tools are poorly calibrated.”
But Burnstein devotes much of the book to the differences between commonly confused objects. Every reader of this magazine will already know the difference between England and the United Kingdom or between a symphony and a concerto. Most will also likely know the difference between an epigram and an aphorism or between a crypt and a catacomb, even if they might struggle to define that difference succinctly. (An aphorism is a short philosophical saying, whereas an epigram is a witty one, Burnstein notes, though there is a fair amount of overlap. A crypt is a vaulted chamber for the dead under a church. A catacomb is a network of cells under a city. Or, as Burnstein puts it: “One is an underground tomb for the few, the other an underground cemetery for the many.”)
But fewer may remember the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet (the former hurls “objects through a sudden release of tension,” whereas the latter does the same with counterweights and a sling) or between ristorantes (for formal dining), trattorias (for casual dining), and osterias (for “very casual” dining). Our friends at Reason surely know the difference between a joint and a spliff, but Washington Examiner readers may be interested to learn a spliff is a joint that contains both tobacco and cannabis. A blunt is pure cannabis wrapped in tobacco paper.
Many of the objects defined in Dictionary of Fine Distinctions remain part of our everyday lives. This makes it not only a fun book, but also a useful one. What is the difference, again, between sorbet and sherbet? A sorbet has no dairy in it, whereas a sherbet may have up to 2% milkfat or gelatin (or an egg). (By the way, a sherbet may be spelled with an extra “r” as “sherbert,” but this is “considered by many to be incorrect,” Burnstein notes, even if this usage has been around since 1645.) How about the difference between a lattice and a trellis? A lattice is for “dividing space,” but a trellis is for “growing plants,” which, of course, may also be used to divide space.
Each page has a pair or list of words that are commonly confused, a succinct definition (usually one sentence), and an illustration of each. The illustrations are simple and isolate the key difference effectively. Burnstein provides a further explanation after some entries in a section he calls “The Fine Print.” As he writes in his introduction: “Reality is messy. So while I have tried to single out differences as surgically as possible … I won’t hit the bull’s-eye for everyone at all times.” “Plus,” he adds, “some things are just fuzzy.”
In some cases, Burnstein provides a short history of how certain words came into use or an explanation of regional differences. “Before the industrial revolution,” Burnstein writes, “farmers would eat their largest meal late in the morning or early in the afternoon.” This was dinner. Supper, then, was a lighter evening meal. Today, however, the largest meal tends to be the evening meal, and so a lunch is consumed midday and dinner in the evening.
We have come to call the District of Columbia “the swamp” because it was partly built on a swamp and because it collects lobbyists like a swamp collects water. But after reading Dictionary of Fine Distinctions, I wonder if “bog” might be the better metaphor. After all, swamps still grow “trees and wooded shrubs, while marshes are all soft-stemmed grass and reed. Bogs, meanwhile, are highly acidic, so they don’t grow much besides mosses and heathers, which leave behind a spongy, slowly decaying plant matter called peat.”
Of course, peat is still useful for making Scotch whisky. Maybe the word I’m looking for is “wasteland.”
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Micah Mattix is a professor of English at Regent University.
