Rest Assured

Today I was wondering what the difference was between ensure and insure. They have something in common, the root "sure."

The Bing dictionary defines insure thusly:

cover something with insurance: to agree formally that, for a sum of money paid to a company, the company will pay compensation or costs if a particular harm or loss occurs to somebody or something

protect against risk: to get protection from something undesirable that might happen, usually by making contingency plans or taking precautionary or preventive measures

Thus "ensure" is a synonym for insure, but insure also has the meaning of Paying for insurance on something.

And what about assure?

1. convince somebody: to convince somebody of something
2. make somebody confident: to overcome somebody's doubt or disbelief about something
3. make something certain: to make something certain to happen

You can be sure, I am liking these BING definitions!

Good Counsel

Today I am intrigued by the words counsel and council.

Counsel is a verb and it means to advise.

Council is a noun and means a official group of people.

Words that sound the same are called homophones.

Spelling, as easy as A-B-C?

Why do these homophones have such widley diffeernt spellings?

Which and Witch.

I don't often see them confused.

But I got a message recently, which spelled peak like peek. That's a common mistake. One which the spell check will not detect.

There was this thing called a dictionary and it gives proper spelling as well as usage for the word. I whish more peple used them.

Stationary

Are you stationary or mobile? Still or moving?

I'm intrigued by homophones like stationary and stationery.

Stationary is an adjective, meaning immobile, unchanging.

Stationery is a noun.

Stationery is out of style right now. But someone gave me some beautiful notecards the other day. He's a photographer and he took the photos and printed them on card stock himself. I will definitely have to use them! For those of you born before the ubiquity of email and texts, that means that I am going to send a card through Snail Mail. It used to be called just "mail." But now we need to differentiate between the modern and traditional.

I don't want to be left behind, but sometimes the old ways are better. Think about how annoyed you were after the 20th text you got today, and how happy you were the last time you got a card or letter through the mail, in your mailbox! Even if you try to persuade me that texts are better, I will remain stationary on this matter.

Of course, sometimes the new way is better. When I went to college I had a popcorn maker. You can't make anything else in them, just popcorn. And now we can just put a package in the microwave for about 3 minutes and have delicious, hot, flavored popcorn.


Popcorn is not stationary. I wonder how high the people jumped the first time they threw some dried up old corn kernels on the fire and they started jumping and popping...

A Jury of Your Piers

I know orthography doesn't count for anything anymore, but when I get an email from someone trying to sell me high priced products, I expect them to edit and correct their work. Once in a while I publish my blog with a misspelling, and I correct it as soon as possible. And if I were sending marketing material, it would be proofread first. I understand that spell-check will not find this mistake. "Pier" is a valid word, so the computer cannot know or care if someone has a pier full of boats or is referring to another person, considered equal in legal terms. And people might not notice, because pier sounds just like peer and both are nouns...

I am probably in the minority, but send me a sales pitch with such a glaring error and you lose all credibility in my eyes. I won't do business with you.

I am probably in the minority, because most people wouldn't notice the error, that I find so glaring. But I think people should be more careful with written documents.

Do I have any peers that agree with me?

Any piers?

Bombs

First of all, I want to know why these two words sound the same:

balm

bomb

I was looking for my lip balm and noticed the similarity.

The meanings are very dissimilar and so is the spelling....

What do they have in common?

Antagonized

Have you ever noticed how similar the words agnostic and antagonistic are?

Just a thought from me as I write an article about spirituality and somehow type antagonistic instead of the word agnostic. A Freudian Slip perhaps?

Agnostic comes from Not know, in Greek, of course.

Antagonistic comes from Latin? I'll look it up and let you know. NO! It's from Greek, to struggle against.

Also hysterical and historical. One is Greek and the other Latin. They sound alike but have taken very different voyages into the English language.

Tripping over words

Firstly, homophones are words that sound alike. We have discussed this before. These words are not strictly homophones, because they are not exactly alike. But could be mistaken for each other in certain situations.

Why are "inmate" and "intimate" so similar? I was reading an article and misread the word "intimates" as "inmates." It was referring to the people around you, with whom you have a close relationship. And it seemed appropriate, even though it was not talking about the friends around you with whom you share your prison. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe they are synonyms.

Invincible and invisible? If you were invisible, would you be invincible? Maybe I'm thinking about this because My son and I are reading The Hobbit.

Expiring and Aspiring? It's probably only me. I mean I tripped over the word "technological" last weekend, so in most circumstances people would not hear one of these words instead of the other, unless someone was nervous and speaking very fast and tripped over their tongue.

Cynicism and sinister!

Peak experience

There are 2 peaks, or peeks. One is "peek," the other is "peak." One is a verb, to sneak a look at something, the other is the very top or pinnacle of a mountain. They sound the same. But are spelled differently. I think this is okay because the different spellings alert you to the different meanings. Don't you think it's confusing when one word with one spelling has several vastly different meanings? Or is the spelling of homophones more confusing or difficult to remember? Let me know what you think!

Homonyms sound the same and share the same spelling. Comes from Same Name in Greek, if you look at the prefix and root.
Homophones sound the same, but have different spellings! Comes from Same Sound in Greek.

So technically speaking, peek and peak are homophones.