You Keep Using That Word/Moderately Pedantic


 * Addict in adjective form is "addictive". However, clumsy attempts to mangle it into this form tend to fall to "addicting" instead, which is technically a gerund.
 * Assassin is a word often used synonymously with any sort of Professional Killer. Legally, however, the crime of "assassination" is defined as the act of deliberate killing of a prominent person, such as a politician or government official, and not always for profit. The crime a hired gun commits is more accurately defined as "contract killing".
 * Melee means a confusing, chaotic hand-to-hand fight (possibly free-for-all). In most Video Games however, it seems to be applied in a way that just means 'close-quarters range/fight'. If you're playing some sort of strategy game in which fights of a one-on-one nature are rare if they ever happen, the word may have a reasonable context. In other games, probably not.
 * Most video games just flat out refer to 'melee' weapons as the opposite of 'ranged' weapons and 'melee' itself as the opposite of 'casting spells' and/or 'shooting firearms'. In other words, in modern gaming parlance, the word 'melee' just means 'hand to hand'.
 * Race, species, phylum, and basically everything else from Taxonomic Term Confusion. Using "race" when you mean "species" is often forgivable in fantasy settings; even in Real Life, we have expressions like "the human race." Using "phylum" when you mean "taxon" is worse.
 * Doubly so on the fantasy setting point, as while "species" is fairly well defined in terms of viable reproduction, and while individual races, families, orders, classes, phyla and kingdoms are well defined in terms of particular phenotypical characteristics, there is no clear abstract definition (unlike for species) of when you should consider some novel set of similar creatures to constitute a new phylum (as opposed to a new class), meaning that the terms have little clear meaning outside an Earth biology context. If you say two distantly related alien species are part of the same phylum and I say they are merely part of the same kingdom, there is no principled way to resolve the dispute.
 * Historically, the word "race" has been used to mean anything from all humanity to a single family line. In Barry Lyndon, the title character at one point laments that it was not destined that he should leave any of "my race" on Earth after his death -- meaning, not humans, nor white people, nor Irish people, but people of the Barry family. On Wikipedia, one old map depicts "Races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire" -- meaning, nationalities, or ethnocultural groups with a common language -- Germans, Hungarians, Ukrainians, etc.; all of them would have been more or less the same colour. Before the mid-twentieth century, "race" could be applied to any group of living things that perpetuated itself. In the 18th century, people wrote of the "race of labourers" and the "race of tailors". That's why whenever we see a pre-1940 use of the word "race," we mustn't simply assume that it refers to skin color. When people of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries spoke of "racial purity" or "racial improvement," they could have simply meant advances in medical technology for a particular country's citizens. In particular, the full title of Charles Darwin's opus is "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". The "Favoured Races" here pretty much means species, not the kind of "Favoured Races" Hitler was talking about.
 * In modern times, a "race" is any group of people identified by specific physical traits that are deemed socially significant (as opposed to "ethnicity," which goes by cultural traits). With this in mind, race is a cultural construct, a judgment that the observer places on the observed, and not something with any basis in any somatic or genetic interpretation. Any attempts to create a taxonomy for race on the basis of physical appearance fails pretty quickly; after all, how black does one need to be "African," bearing in mind people of similar skin tones live on different continents. Are Indians Asian, with their dark skin and western facial features? The more specific the classification, the more members of that "race" are excluded; the fewer used, the more inaccurate such classifications get.
 * Aryan was originally the term of choice for Indo-Iranian peoples because they called themselves Arya. Whatever Arya originally meant, it was more of socio-linguistic designation than an ethnic one. Some of them may have had blond hair, but the majority probably didn't. By this definition, then, the descendants of the Aryans can be found in countries such as India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Bangladesh. (In India, Aryan is opposed to Dravidian.)
 * The word itself means something akin to "well formed", from a root *ar- (which survives in the Greek aristos, "best", and English art, amongst others). As applied to the people themselves and their language, it probably carries the meaning "skillfully assembled, rightly proportioned, obeying the right customs" or similar, with the feeling of "one of us" (its precise opposite, anarya, is frequently used to mean "wrong" or "other"). This, along with its status as the earliest attested Indo-European autonym, is one of the reasons it was adopted by white supremacists to label their racial ideal. It's more than likely that none of them had blond hair (this was considered a marker of specifically "Germanic" rather than Aryan heritage), because their origins were likely as nomads on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, where blond hair is rare.
 * Speaking of Aryans, the Nazis had a very, ah, unusual (read: arbitrary) definition of Aryan. Many Germans liked Karl May novels, so the Sioux became Aryans. For political convenience, the Japanese were Aryans. Nazi mythology placed the Aryan homeland in Tibet due to connection with Theosophy, so Tibetans were Aryans, too.
 * Gene is often used to mean "allele". An allele is one of multiple forms a gene assumes. For example, there is no human gene for brown hair; there's a gene for hair color in general, and one of its alleles results in brown hair. A valuable distinction for biologists, but not one that most people care about when they're at the movies.
 * Prodigal means "wasteful", not "wandering" or "long-lost". The Prodigal Son was the one who squandered his money; the wandering-and-returning happened in the process of his doing so. However, because of this parable, the word is very frequently understood to mean "lost".
 * Some use it as an adjective form of prodigy; the two words do look like they are related (the proper word for this usage is "prodigious").
 * To draw from another Biblical parable, a Good Samaritan is someone who helps even those that persecute him (as Samaritans were an ethno-religious group who were at the time regularly looked down upon by the Jewish people). However, thanks to a lack of context, many people just think that the term just describes someone who does good deeds. Most people also miss the context that Samaritans were looked down upon. Thus, a "good" Samaritan was noteworthy in that it was a rarity. This causes people to drop the "good" and just use "Samaritan" to mean a helpful or kind person, when it originally meant the opposite.
 * As the original religious group known as the Samaritans still exists, calling someone a "Samaritan" is like suggesting they are a part of this group, and much like calling them a "Jew" or a "Good Jew." Not an insult per se, but likely to offend very religious people.
 * Anarchy literally means "no government" or "without a ruler". Anarchism is a political position opposed to government as well as to other forms of hierarchy or authority. Anarchists believe that social harmony can be more easily maintained through cooperation rather than competition. However, the word "anarchy" has come to mean the opposite: a state of violent chaos due to a lack of central authority. The word "anarchist" has also been used to mean a terrorist or sower of discord, a perception influenced by a rash of terrorist acts and assassinations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which were committed by anarchists. And even theorists didn't always agree anyway on what it means: "Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has so often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human living conditions, which are always straining after higher forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal." — Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, 1938.
 * A Libertarian and Libertarianism has been a synonym/euphemism for "Anarchism" as far back as the 1890s. Libertarian Athenaeums gave thousands of people access to basic education -including pioneering sexual education- and Libertarian Unions stood against the State and the Capitalist establishment. All this hasn't stopped the U.S. right-wing "libertarian" movement -which started in the late 1950s and is a staunch proponent of Capitalism- from claiming exclusive rights to both terms. While in a vacuum libertarian shares most of the anarchist values such personal freedom with no state intervention, within mainstream politics libertarians normally are saying they want those things, but only as far as is reasonable within the current political system. They aren't incorrect to say that they are 'supporting liberty', but they don't want to tear down the democracy for it either. In essence, any political term that is used in the modern political mainstream needs to come with the rider 'but without wrecking democracy'. It would probably be more correct to call such people 'Democratic Libertarians', as they support the democratic system and individual liberty, but since they are a part of the democratic system it pretty much comes as read that they are OK with democratic politics.
 * Regime or Régime simply refers to any and all governments or political administrations ruling over a state, regardless of their ideological orientation or political system. Both the United States (a liberal democratic republic) and North Korea (an odd mix of a de facto absolute monarchy, a totalitarian police state, and a pharaonic cult) are led by regimes. In general usage, it is now mostly used to refer only to tyrannical, authoritarian, or repressive governments; political scholars have other definitions. In political theory it continues to mean "any form of government", and in international relations, it has come to mean "any political order of any kind, even if it isn't the government of a state" (e.g. "arms-control regime", "river-management regime", "regional security regime", etc.).
 * UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object, meaning that there's something moving in the sky, but you're not sure what it is. If it's obvious that said object is an extraterrestrial spacecraft, then it has been identified and no longer qualifies as such. The Bastard Operator From Hell lampshaded this one when it was pointed out that there was an "extortionate penalty payment for remaining at work after a UFO sighting in the vicinity of the building" written into his contract, which he later invokes by asking "is that a 747-200F or a 747-200C?".
 * Though, if you think about it, calling it a UFO is identifying it, so it no longer qualifies as a UFO.
 * Gay originally meant something closer to carefree, with undertones of being unrestricted by social conventions. Later on, it was used to describe...more sexually active women, who were most definitely of the kind referred to as 'straight' today. It now describes homosexual people, technically gender-neutral but mostly used for men. To top it off, it's seen heavy use as an insult lately.
 * Lame (unable to walk) and dumb (unable to speak) went from their respective meanings to being a synonym for "stupid" thanks to the euphemism treadmill. Words denoting negatively perceived characteristics naturally become used as insults. Idiot, moron, imbecile, and cretin were medical terms in the early 20th century, and "LD" for "learning disability" is already being used as a playground insult.
 * The word stupid itself is one of these. Originally it meant "in a stupor", so calling somebody stupid didn't mean unintelligent, but rather unresponsive.
 * "Dumb" as stupid and "dumb" as mute both come from "dumb" defined as "lacking an expected property", which is the etymology of "dummy". The OED suggests the Proto-Germanic meaning to be something like 'stupid', 'not understanding' (compare Modern German dumm, tumb).
 * Retarded technically means to be hindered or slowed down (hence it's use in the term "retard bomb" which simply means that it falls slower than usual), but used to mean that someone has a mental disability and is unable to learn at a normal rate. Recently, it turned into a synonym for stupid. Unlike the others, it is still seen as offensive, while it would take someone very touchy to get annoyed at "lame" or "stupid".
 * "Cretin": The most common derivation provided in English dictionaries is from the Alpine French dialect pronunciation of the word Chrétien, meaning Christian. Another misconception is that 'cretin' originally referred to the mainland Greeks' supposed low opinion of the inhabitants of Crete island. This is false: first, there is no mention of any persistent common prejudice directed to people from Crete from other Greeks, and second, in Greek, people from Crete are called 'Kretikoi', which would be transliterated to 'Cretics', not Cretans or Cretins.
 * Critic, incidentally, is unrelated to either; its root is the same as that of crisis and crime, among others: a verb meaning to distinguish between one thing and another. (A crisis is the moment of decision between two outcomes; criminal law distinguishes between what is and is not tolerated; a critic points out distinctions between good and bad art.)
 * To beg the question is to commit a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises (e.g. "Of course I had a reason for doing it -- otherwise, I wouldn't have done it!"). The phrase, however, is frequently used with the meaning "to raise the question" (e.g. "If you didn't put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder, it begs the question of who did."). The Latin name for it is petitio principii, literally, "assuming the initial point", they should have just called it "assuming the point" rather than "begging the question" for the fallacy's relation to circular reasoning. In general it implies something like "to request that one's opponent concede the initial point".
 * Moral equivalent: often, this phrase is used in the context of considering the metaphorical "scales" of ethics to be balanced: neither is more good (or bad) than the other. This is based on a misunderstanding (almost an inversion) of the intended meaning. William James wrote of "...war, or its moral equivalent." James meant that in modern societies war serves a purpose; the "moral equivalent" would be something which provides a similar function, but (unlike war) is not immoral.
 * Piloted Humongous Mecha are typically called Giant Robots despite the text book definition of robot being "an autonomous device".
 * This goes for smaller ones too, like the machines in Battlebots and Robot Wars being remote-controlled rather than autonomous.
 * Distaff means "female". Some tropers have described the male counterpart to an Always Female trope as a Distaff Counterpart. The male equivalent would be "Sword Counterpart" (or "Spear Counterpart"). Likely influenced by no one having any idea what a distaff is. It's a weaving tool, used to keep flax or other kinds of fiber untangled while spinning. And now you know.
 * Bar mitzvah literally translates to "one to whom the commandments apply", and so it is something that boys become. Therefore, you do not "have a bar mitzvah"; you have a celebration to commemorate becoming a bar mitzvah. And as any Jewish parent will tell you, planning one of these parties is like planning a wedding.
 * In addition, the plural, unisex way to say bat mitzvah or bar mitzvah is b'nai mitzvah (or b'nei miyzvah); however, because this is both plural and non-gender, no one "becomes" a b'nai mitzvah. You can go to one, as in, "I'm going to my cousins' b'nai mitzvah."
 * Also, a bar mitzvah is not when a Jewish boy is circumcised; that is on the eighth day, a bris (or b'rit, in non-Ashkenazi dialects). The confusion comes from the fact that in Africa, boys are typically circumcised at a much older age.
 * Penultimate means "next to last," but is sometimes incorrectly used to simply mean "last". Antepenultimate means "next to next to last," (or more simply, third to last), but is seldom used these days. The original word for last was ultimate (paene means 'almost'); however, all but the ultimate pedants have given up on convincing people that it means anything other than 'maximum'. Students of Latin are taught about the ultima, penult, and antepenult when it comes to placing the stress on the correct syllable of a word -- but then again, students of Latin probably don't need "penultimate" explained to them. And many people seem to also be under the impression that "penultimate" means something along the lines of "even more ultimate", which doesn't even make sense.
 * Hysteric(al) reactions may be funny to onlookers, but its original meaning is not "funny." "Hysterical" was originally used to describe a woman suffering from "hysteria", a psychological state of excessive emotion, especially fear, originally believed to be exclusive to women and caused by disruptions of the uterus (the term literally translates as "womb-fury"). Specifically, the ancient Greeks believed that the uterus could somehow travel around the body and attack the other organs, presumably for no reason other than to make trouble for the men who would have to put up with the results. The word itself derives from the Greek word for uterus, from which we also get "hysterectomy". It was often treated by "pubic massage" -- yes, that's what vibrators were invented for. They were used by doctors to induce a "hysterical paroxysm" i.e. orgasm, and the numerous euphemisms permitted the entire thing to be discussed by medical professionals back in Victorian times, as not only was it improper to discuss sexuality, it was thought females didn't even have any.
 * As late as the 1940s, hysteria was commonly used to mean, roughly, PMS. As late as the 1970's, reprinted house and garden handbooks from the 1940s included home remedies for hysteria.
 * The word work (as a noun) has many meanings in common usage, including something taking effort to produce, some form of artistic production or a job. However, in physics, 'work' means the amount of energy transferred by a force moving an object. This definition is much less known, and much less used.
 * The distinction between amount and quantity is often ignored. You have an amount of a mass noun such as water or money, and a quantity of a countable noun such as dollars or shoes. The distinction between "less" and "fewer" is related to this; you'd say "less money" but "fewer shoes", which is why the sign at the supermarket aisle ought to read, "Twelve items or fewer," not "Twelve items or less".
 * Immolate means sacrifice. When a monk lights himself on fire to protest a war, he is engaging in "self-immolation" because he is killing himself to make a point, not because he is setting himself on fire. The root meaning was to sprinkle meal on the victim, in preparation for a sacrifice.
 * Dictionaries today show the fire-based definition as an acceptable secondary; you may now concern yourself with whether World of Warcraft had anything to do with this.
 * You may have a family crest, if you can trace your family tree back to European gentry. But the crest is only the bit that stands on top of the helm (like the crest of a jaybird). In most European traditions the essential element is the shield, or escutcheon (in Germany, at some times, the crest(s) got much more emphasis than the shield; but in Romance-speaking countries crests were relatively rarely displayed at all). The full achievement may also include a motto and, for a noble, supporters (a pair of human, animal or monstrous figures standing beside the shield to prop it all up) and perhaps a coronet and pavilion (a fur-lined robe forming a tent around the whole). The original meaning of coat of arms was a tunic worn over armor to keep the sun off, which was painted in the same design as the shield, so the word coat is used for that design or, in the case of a composite shield, each of its quarters.
 * Some popular references claim that each charge (symbol) and tincture (color) has a specific meaning; and some crackpots say the same for each vowel and consonant in a language. The only thing we can be sure of is that arms often make puns (sometimes obscure) on part of the bearer's name.
 * In Japan, crest is a fair translation of mon because the primary emblem was displayed on helmets as well as elsewhere.
 * While lay is the actual past tense of lie, the former verb is often incorrectly used in place of the latter.
 * And the past tense of "lay" is "laid", not "layed". Just as in "getting laid". (The passive participle, in the nonsexy sense, is lain.)
 * And if you're going to use the transitive 'lay' (to put down something long or flat in a certain careful manner) reflexively, use a reflexive pronoun or it's wrong. "Go lay down" is bad; "Go lay yourself down" is fine, although its connotations are slightly different from those of "Go lie down".
 * The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably. The Internet is the network itself, over which all network protocols operate; the Web is just one of its applications, the set of servers that use Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). If you open an instant messaging program or go play an online game, you're using the Internet but not the Web. This has become pedantic in that often the word Internet is used in place of Web -- correctly, since a website is necessarily on the Internet. It's much more noticeable when switched around: if someone says Web or World Wide Web in reference to anything other than a website, you can expect anyone who understands this distinction to be all over it. As a side note, a computer can't be "hooked up" to the Web, since that implies that it was somehow connected only to the Web, not the entire Internet.
 * Furthermore, web pages (i.e. HTML documents) do not necessarily have to be distributed using the Internet (among other things, it could be a local network using internet protocols), or even with HTTP (e.g. it could be a local file on your computer).
 * Human: This is a tough one because, here on Real Earth, several possible definitions all collapse to the same group. The term is widely taken to refer specifically to Homo sapiens sapiens, i.e. "us". However, among the accepted dictionary definitions include any member of the species Homo sapiens, which would also include the now-extinct archaic varies of H. sapiens, such as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens idaltu. Others include the entire genus Homo, picking up more of our ancestors, or even any member of Hominidae capable of speech. Whether species outside our branch of the genetic tree (i.e. sapient aliens, robots, magical beings, future species descended from H. sapiens sapiens, etc.) could be properly called "human" is entirely up for debate: as it hasn't come up yet in the real world, neither linguists nor lawyers have made a canonical decision. As a result, many phrases and idioms use the term "human" in a way that will be incorrect if a decision in one direction or the other is ever made ("Human rights" vs "Human anatomy" for example). Person, particularly in the legal sense, is even more ambiguous.
 * The philosophical definition of "man" is "rational (i.e. sapient; see above) animal." This is the way it is used in any context outside of scientifically-rigorous biology. In the genre of space opera, where there are sapient extraterrestrial species that communicate with the humans, the proper term to refer to us would be "Terrans," since Klingons / Turians / Ctarl-Ctarl / etc. are all "man."
 * Controversial should not be used to describe people, things, or ideas that are merely "shocking" or "in bad taste". The word literally means "likely to provoke dissent" (i.e. controversy) -- and that dissent need not be bitter. That's why "controversial" does not always have to be a "negative" word, even though that's how it tends to be used. Since almost everyone disapproves of child pornography, for example, child pornography is not "controversial". You should use terms such as "scandalous" or "outrageous" instead. (But don't use "uproarious", because that term has incorrectly come to mean "extremely funny.")
 * Archaic does not simply mean old or outdated. It describes a word from an older language being used in a modern language in a specific sense, or something so old as to no longer be in use (for example, steam engine cars are archaic).
 * A manger is a feed trough. The little display with Jesus and Mary and Joseph in the stable can be called a "manger scene": there's generally a manger in it, but the whole thing isn't one.
 * Fundamentalist: Denotes somebody who puts a particular emphasis on the basic tenets of a doctrine as opposed to ideologies that might have a basis in that doctrine but are willing to question some basic tenets. It's really more a statement against revisionism than a statement for tradition and bigotry, it just usually ends up that way. A fundamentalist is, strictly speaking, somebody who emphasizes the fundamentals of an ideology, so it's not hard to see how this purist approach could lend itself to extremism.
 * Similarly, evangelical, in terms like "evangelical doctrine", just means "practicing evangelism". By that definition, many churches are evangelical, even if they don't consider themselves so and don't have the traits that most people consider "evangelical". Unfortunately this word has lost most of its usefulness by coming to mean the kind of church that still condemns dancing, throws fits about interracial marriage, and steadfastly maintains that the world was created in 7 days 6,000 years ago.
 * Also, radical means "pertaining to the root" (from radix, the Latin word for "root"), not "extreme". Radical movements seek to make radical (i.e. fundamental) changes in basic social structures. Of course, radical movements are often prone to extremism.
 * Tsundere originally was a term created on the Internet to designate a character's personality change over time, usually catalyzed by a love interest. However, the term has been expanded to cover characters that have two distinct personality modes, harsh and sweet, whether or not the character actually changes as the story progresses.
 * Yandere, when used to describe males, is often used to describe any abusive Bastard Boyfriend. It originally referred specifically to an obsessive love. Anakin Skywalker is a yandere for his obsession with trying to save Padmé, not because he chokes her while Drunk on the Dark Side. It's also mis-used on females to imply a Knife Nut or crazy-murderous girls in general, even if love isn't part of the equation (Such as Asakura Ryouko). Meanwhile, cute, innocent, Ax Crazy women (and sometimes men) are Yangire, since that does not require an object of affection to be yan over.
 * Kuudere is often thought to mean "Emotionless Girl". It's actually more of a "cool" approach to the Tsundere character type.
 * A miscarriage is an early term abortion. Both are medical terms for the termination of pregnancy and don't reflect any intent.
 * Popularly, a miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion, while abortion is a medical procedure performed for the sole purpose of terminating a pregnancy.
 * Contemporary means of the same time. To use it without a temporal context is to invite the question, "contemporary with what?" If you use it as a synonym for modern, well -- at least please be very careful that no other time, such as the lifetime of J. S. Bach, is mentioned or implied nearby.
 * Regarding the word Fetish, most people use it in the way it's defined on dictionary.com as well as in a few other dictionaries. That is, it's something normally unassociated with sex that that causes "habitual sexual arousal" in the observer and isn't something the fetishist necessarily has to have in order to become aroused. On the other hand, other dictionaries, such as Merriam Webster, explicitly state that it's something that needs to be present in order to arouse the fetishist. Those that use this definition argue that most people who claim to have a fetish actually have a kink instead, as it's rare for it to be that extreme. All of of this, of course, necessarily postdates the original use of the word; i.e., an idol or other artifact to which is ascribed supernatural qualities.
 * To say that you have a "Native American bear fetish" probably does not mean that you experience sexual arousal at the thought of bears belonging to tribes inhabiting the Americas before Europeans arrived. More likely, you have a carving or other artwork done by Native Americans to worship a mystic bear figure. Most likely.
 * Using the word sewer for storm drainage systems. Sewers carry sewage, everything that goes down the toilet, sink, dishwashing machine and bath or shower. Storm drains carry water that washes up on the street. The two are not the same, even though many writers of fiction and video game designers confuse the two. And even The Other Wiki lists another name for a storm drain in the US as "storm sewer".
 * To be electrocuted or to suffer electrocution is to be outright killed by an electric shock, not to simply receive one; indeed, the word was coined by Thomas Edison as a portmanteau of "electric" and "execute", after "to westinghouse" failed to catch on (a Take That against his AC-inventing rival).
 * A dropkick is either kicking someone with both feet at the same time, or dropping a ball and kicking it after it bounces, depending on whether you're talking about professional wrestling or football. It doesn't mean just any kick that makes someone fall down.
 * Or, in martial arts, an inverted side kick.
 * Scrum is derived from the words scrimmage or skirmish which mean something to the general effect of "disorganized fighting". In Rugby a scrum is one of the most organized things that can happen during play. The 9 forwards from each team bind against each other in an extremely organized fashion and perform a sort of reverse tug of war to contest the possession of the ball. The formation is very organized and players deviating from their position within the scrum will result in penalties. One of the most common things a non-rugby sports commentator likes to say is "that's an old fashioned rugby scrum!" when a play turns into chaos and the players pile up on top of each other. The funny thing is, if they took out "rugby" they'd be accurate as the rugby definition of a scrum deviates from the standard "skirmish" route. It's kind of a double subversion.
 * Cerebus is a small aardvark with a short temper who refers to himself in the third person. Cerberus or Kerberos was the three-headed giant dog that guarded the gates of Hades in Greek mythology.
 * Apocryphal means "of uncertain truth." Something cannot be "probably apocryphal" unless you're admitting you yourself Did Not Do the Research on its general acceptance; the word implies uncertainty, albeit sufficient uncertainty to reject it as historical fact, but not falsehood per se. One or two contemporary accounts or products could (and very often have) rocket most "apocryphal" events into widespread acceptance.
 * The word chef is widely used to refer to any cook regardless of rank, but it is the shortened version of the french term chef de cuisine, the head or director of a kitchen. The word "chef" comes from the Latin word caput ("head"), so "head chef" really means "head head". Only the highest ranking cook in the whole kitchen is the chef.
 * Longswords are not arming swords, and broadsword is not a synonym for either. The typical arming sword have long since been called longswords or broadswords in tabletop games, video games, books, films, and so many other forms of media, but in actuality you could not find bigger differences between the two. A longsword has more in common with a hand-and-a-half bastard sword except longer, having gotten the name due to their length. A broadsword, likewise, is descended from a rapier and boasts the same type of intricate hilt and handle, but with a much broader blade. Worse, now they're starting to become the "normal" term, as people are generally far more familiar with the term of "longsword" or "broadsword" than "arming sword".
 * Hackers, as in "those who hack", is a term for relatively skillful programmers (generally; certain non-programmers may also qualify) who find ways to use hardware or software for things it was not originally intended for (which may or may not be illegal), and who often see themselves as doing a public service by bringing security flaws to public attention. Hackers find offensive the popular use of the term "hacker" in reference to warez groups or malicious intruders, and prefer the word "cracker" for such. The fact remains though, that both terms are essentially arbitrary labels - it's not as though "hacking" means something nicer than "cracking"- and to the vast majority of people hackers means crackers.
 * Despite the opinions of the hobbyists, a given dictionary definition of "Hacker" is one who "attempts to gain unauthorized access to proprietary computer systems" (though that does not necessarily imply malice).
 * Note that the original meaning above is still in use in certain cases. One notable use is kernel hacking, as this requires a high degree of programming skill and many members of this group consider themselves to be hackers.
 * Beta is often used to refer to a video game in any development stage before it's released. It's actually the final development stage, just when it's about to be ready for release. It is not equivalent to a video game only being part way finished; the better term would be prototype.
 * If you want to be completely accurate, beta testing is the stage where part of your audience tests the software in question to help identify any issues. Alpha testing is (as the name suggests) the testing of the finished software by the development team prior to the beta release.
 * Manipulation is not inherently insidious. It means "to influence, direct, or control something to one's advantage", which need not be negative or even self-centered, just that it produces a net benefit to you. Dextrous manipulation, for instance, means to use your hands to make an object do what you want it to do. But one way of using the simplified meaning is for categorical opponents of genetic research to insist on referring to the practice as "genetic manipulation" to make it sound desirably sinister.
 * Similarly, as Narmy as it probably sounds to fans of Haruhi Suzumiya, "data manipulation" refers in the real world to misuse of statistics.
 * ASCII (see Wikipedia) is a character-encoding scheme. ASCII is used a lot in Roguelikes, and because of that, text-based graphics are often referred to as "ASCII" even if they use a different scheme such as CP 437 or Unicode (both of which are supersets of ASCII).
 * The word claymore does not refer to a specific type of sword. The word is a corruption of the Scots Gaelic phrase claidheamh mòr, which means big sword. It is commonly used to describe both the late medieval two-handed swords, and the 17th- and 18th century scottish basket-hilted broadswords, because both kinds were longer and heavier than the norm for swords at the time.
 * Otaku. In the Western world, this somehow became the word for "anime fan". In Japan, it's a (pejorative) word for geek or someone who's a little too into their hobby (love to watch a lot of movies that it begins to affect your personal life? You're a cinema otaku). The etymology gets muddled too since while it does mean "house", it does not refer to a literal house (as a result of this confusion, people thought the word was a reference to shut-ins) but a figurative word for "clan" or something like that.
 * Anime is Japanese for animation. That's it. There never was a special distinction between anime and other cartoons but in the West, it gets its own category just because the art has certain similarities with each other. Technically, there's no such thing as "anime art". The Simpsons or Disney would also be called anime in Japan.
 * On a similar note, manga just means comics. Any comic.
 * Parkour is getting from point A to point B while conserving energy. Free-running is getting from point A to point B while doing fancy acrobatics.
 * An entrée is the dish to be served before the main course, a fact one would never discover by inspecting American grocery stores and restaurant menus.
 * A clip is not a magazine. Firearms terminology is that a clip feeds a magazine (or the cylinder of a revolver) quickly; a magazine feeds into the weapon itself.
 * Related, a bullet is the metal slug fired from a gun. A cartridge or round is the unfired ammunition. A casing is the spent part of the cartridge ejected otherwise. Referring to unfired cartridges as bullets is a classic error. Similarly, shot is what's fired from a shotgun. Shell can be both the unfired ammo and the spent casing, though is considered antiquated when used to refer to small arms ammunition.
 * For small arms, caliber means the width of the barrel at the narrowest point. "High caliber" is not, in fact, a way of saying "high power". E.g. A 7.62x39mm round fired from an AKM will not impart as much energy to a target as a 7.62x54mm round fired from a SVD Dragunov, nor will the 9x19mm Parabellum round impart as much energy as the 7.62x25mm Tokarev round.
 * Another way to think of it is that a "high caliber bullet" will generally be fired from a bigger gun. However, caliber has nothing to do with strength by itself. If you're trying to say that a high caliber hand gun is more powerful than a low caliber rifle, chances are that you're wrong. Handguns generally have diameters of ~9 millimeters, ~10 millimeters, or ~.45 of an inch (11.5mm) to maximize mass in a short length while rifles are generally the much smaller .22 of an inch (5.56mm) or .30 of an inch (7.62mm) for better aerodynamics. Unless you want to get into the specifics of grain count, rifling twist, bullet velocity and weight, you're better off assuming that hand guns are less powerful than rifles.
 * To put it another way, "caliber" is absolutely not the same thing as "stopping power". A small-caliber bullet fired from a high-powered rifle is a lot more likely to kill you than a large-caliber bullet fired at a much slower speed—the former bulldozes its way through the entire region via hydrostatic shock; the latter punctures its way through a narrow path. Kinetic energy is a function of the mass times the square of the speed.
 * On the same subject, "Bore" and "Calibre" are not necessarily interchangeable. Traditionally for rifled weaponry, especially rifled artillery, "Bore" denotes the number of Turns in the number of Calibres I.E. how many times the width of the projectile down the barrel the projectile must travel to have one complete turn imparted on it by the rifling. So a rifled late Victorian artillery piece with one turn per 38 calibres is a 38 bore, but a smoothbore early Victorian cannon is a zero bore. To confuse matters further, in the UK the word "bore" is also used to mean the same as "gauge" in regards to shotguns: a measure of barrel diametre based upon the weight of a solid lead ball that will fit perfectly into the barrel, expressed as the numerator of a vulgar fraction of a pound if the denominator is one. Thus if the largest lead ball you can fit into the shotgun barrel weighs one twelfth of a pound, you have a 12-bore (or, in the US, 12-guage) shotgun.
 * To confuse matters, there are two separate meanings of the phrase "high-caliber," one of which means larger bullets, and the older of which means "fits the mold ideally." Therefore in other usage, higher caliber always means "better," but in guns it's just a straight technical term with no better/worse meaning.
 * To confuse the situation even further, the term caliber is also used to indicate barrel length of artillery pieces, especially naval artillery. So when one refers to a 5"/ 38 caliber gun, one is referring to a gun with a barrel that is one caliber, or 5", internal diameter, and 38 calibers, or 190" long.
 * Only calibers derived from fractions of an inch (.223 Remington, .308 Winchester) have a leading decimal and calibers using metric numbers (5.56x45, 7.62x51) do not.
 * Sternhalma is a board game that is often called "Chinese checkers", even though it originated in Germany and has very little in common with Checkers. In fact, in China itself the game is called Tiaoqi, which means "jump chess".
 * Cherub: This word is derived from "Cherubim", and whenever the word is mentioned, people think of angels who look like adorable infants or children with wings. In truth, Cherubs are the most well-described angel in The Bible but also the type who is the worst-interpreted. To be blunt, Cherubs do not look like that. In fact, as the Book of Ezekiel describes them, they look pretty terrifying. Ezekiel describes them as adult-looking angels with four faces - of a man, ox, lion, and eagle - with a lion's body, an ox's legs, and four wings that are covered with eyes. And seeing as they are classified in the first Ring of angelic hosts along with the Seraphim, they are among the most powerful of angels and likely wouldn't want to be viewed as cute and adorable. Genesis also claims that after Adam and Eve were ordered to leave Eden, a Cherub was the type of angel posted to guard it; this Cherub was a giant with a Flaming Sword. The "cute infant" depiction comes from the Renaissance, where the church felt depictions of angels should be pleasant, not scary, and artists - who worked for the church - painted many of them using the Greek depiction of Cupid; clearly, most clergymen simply said, Sure, Let's Go with That and the trend stuck.