You Keep Using That Word/Less Pedantic

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• 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 measuring fractions of an inch (.223 Remington, .308 Winchester) have a leading decimal and calibers using metric numbers (5.56x45, 7.62x51) do not. Not only is this bad writing, it's bad math: .9mm is 90% of a millimeter^{[please verify]} or 0.035 of an inch, a common diameter for wire.
• The AKM (Avtomat Kalashnikova Modernizirovanniy) is an improved, cheaper version of the AK-47 adopted in 1959 to replace the AK-47 and the Type 56 (first made in 1956) is a Chinese copy (with a few unique features like a hooded front sight and a bayonet) that was and is commonly sold to the third world. These two variants are often just called "AK-47" in the west despite actually outnumbering the original by a fairly heavy amount.
• The word factoid is often used as if it meant "little fact" or "trivia," as in "here's a little factoid for you". It actually means "something resembling a fact but with no evidence to support it", much like android is 'something that resembles a man'. Amusingly, this can often make the word more appropriate than the speaker's intention.
• Royalty is not the same as nobility or gentry. Royalty is basically the nearest family of a ruler, while nobles are descendants of knights and landowners. There could be royal dukes and noble dukes.
• Ironic doesn't (simply) mean "funny", "unexpected", "coincidental" or "cruel." See Irony for more on the subject, and Isn't It Ironic? for more on the misuse.
  • ... which leads to the fact that sarcastic doesn't (always) mean "cruelly smartassed"; that would be sardonic.
    • The element of cruelty is pretty basic to the term, though, since "sarcastic" come from the Greek phrase for "tearing the flesh".
    • If you want the sarcasm without the cruelty, the word you want is facetious.
  • And on a similar note, cynicism isn't "sarcastic but more". Sarcasm is mocking, cynicism is jaded negativity.
    • And before cynicism got its current meaning, it was a Greek philosophy which taught that virtue constitutes happiness, and that self-control is the essential part of virtue.
• Impeach does not mean to remove someone from office. Impeachment is the process by which an individual is put on trial for unlawful activity. So Congress did not "try to impeach" Bill Clinton or Donald Trump, they did impeach both men. Neither man was removed from office, though.
  • In the legal context, it means to attack someone's credibility. At trial, both lawyers are trying to impeach the other's witnesses and it has nothing to do with elected office.
• Irregardless is, according to many people, not a word at all. Their argument is that, in a case of actual irony, this is almost the exclusive purview of people trying to sound more literate than they are, and achieving the exact opposite. In a case of further irony, you're vastly more likely to encounter this word in a style guide or as part of a joke than you are to ever hear anyone using it naïvely; we're calling out people who "don't know the language" by accusing them of using what was originally a non-word, even in a descriptivist sense. Linguists often refer to this fairly common phenomenon as "overnegation". It is so common that the SAT has at least one question per writing section testing it. It is usually under the hardest questions, too.
  • Now if you want to get pedantic, it is technically a legitimate slang word, developed off of the two words "Regardless" and "irrespective." In as much as "ain't" is a word, "irregardless" also is. See dictionary.com's entry for it.
  • The Brothers Chaps lampooned this in their Peasant's Quest flash game by using the word "irredisregardless". The funny thing is, despite the word having no precedent, it's a triple negative, and technically correct.
  • Language marches on: "irregardless" is listed on page 751 of the 2006 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
  • It's funny how you never hear the people who complain about "irregardless" complain about "inflammable" - but the linguistic reasoning is exactly the same for both words.
• A Scientific Theory is not a guess, hypothesis, or conjecture. The exact meaning of the term has been muddied by recent debates over evolution, but traditionally it referred to a model of the natural world that made testable predictions. If a model makes accurate predictions and is consistent with testing and/or observation then it is called a theory, while the word hypothesis is reserved for an idea that you think might work but you haven't had the chance to rigorously test yet. As for why the word theory is used rather than, say, fact or law, this is simply a result of the general understanding that any theory may be incomplete or inaccurate.
  • This doesn't mean we have any doubts about the validity of the theory itself, but that we may not know everything about it. Gravity is a good example, gravity is "only a theory". That is, our model of how gravity works may not be entirely correct; in fact we know it isn't, since our current theory does not incorporate quantum effects. That doesn't stop gravity from being real. Similarly evolution simply means change, and in the context of biology simply means change from one generation to the next in terms of genetic makeup. Our current theory of how species evolve through natural selection is a theory because the model may not be perfect, but the fact that organisms change from generation to generation is an observable fact.
  • Incidentally, even in non-scientific usage the word theory did not always mean guess. If you look at how, say, Sherlock Holmes would use the word theory, it would be a model explaining a crime, which is based on evidence, is testable, and has explanatory powers. Most scientific theories have far more evidence than even one of Holmes' theories, which is part of why the term Theorem has come into vogue to signify that no, we do not doubt the validity of this model in any serious way.
  • "Theorem" is a mathematical concept. Richard Dawkins coined the term "theorum" to refer to a theory which is emphatically not a hypothesis.
• The words racism, prejudice and stereotype are often confused. Racism is defined as any policy or belief based in whole or part on race. Prejudice means the belief that "a group of people [are] characterized by their race, social class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, disability or religion." Stereotypes, on the other hand, are "generalizations of existing characteristics that reduce complexity" (also copied from The Other Wiki). So, the belief of Southern slave-owners that anyone who was not white was by default an inferior race was racism, the belief of English settlers that the natives were savages was prejudice, and the belief that all Canadians say "eh" is a stereotype.
  • Similarly, people often use discrimination to mean negative treatment based on prejudice. In fact, discrimination simply means any differential treatment, regardless of what such differentiation is based on or whether such treatment is positive or negative. Which is why we have an article for Positive Discrimination. Discrimination can and is perfectly rational and justifiable in many situations: for instance, the practice of hiring the more qualified candidate for a job is a form of discrimination. Another example would be to discriminate between foods one likes and doesn't like (i.e. ordering the strawberry shortcake over the apple pie because you do not like cinnamon).
  • Finns have become really, really bad at misusing "racism" ("rasisimi") in the past ten years or so. People talk about "age racism" or "fat racism" or god forbid, even "sex racism" because they think "racism" just means "discrimination". Part of this stems from the English loanword "rasismi" replacing the old, 100% Finnish word "rotusyrjintä" (literally "race discrimination"). Nobody in their right mind would use a term like "ikärotusyrjintä" ("age race discrimination"), but "ikärasismi", "age racism" is ridiculously popular.
    • You will often see this used correctly in military contexts. If armed forces are said to be indiscriminate, they have crossed the Moral Event Horizon.
    • "Reverse Racism" is supposed to mean when an assumed minority (not sure how the original South Africans were treated in South Africa, but they were technically in the majority, yet were oppressed by the minority) acts racist towards majority members, an assumption that a majority member is being racist to a minority member when in fact they're showing them preference. It's also used pejoratively when a majority member feels that they are being discriminated against because they are in the majority. These are all cases of racism, reverse racism would logically be the same as total equality.
  • Also, people often refer to any ill feelings towards a group as "bigotry". Jack Chick's attitude towards the Pope is bigotry because Chick hates Catholics. Sinead O'Connor's is not because she thinks the Pope is a religious hypocrite.
• Similarly, there appears to be a confusion about the words sexism and misogyny. Sexism is discrimination based on sex. Sexism towards women is misogyny. Sexism towards men is misandry.
  • Not quite. "Misogyny" means hatred of women, and "misandry" hatred of men, whereas sexism encompasses all forms of discrimination based on sex (indeed, even men who believe that women are inherently better than men, for example).
• Feminism also appears to be misunderstood, mainly because of its name and Straw Feminist. The movement aims for granting women equal rights, but also equal treatment in general. It is certainly not about presenting women as "superior" to men, or oppressing men. (If one wishes to refer to Straw Feminism, the best word is probably "misandry"; see above.)
• Subversion, well... see Not a Subversion. Mind you, the meaning of the word on this wiki is not the same as its use in the real world, where it means "overthrow".
  • Only in the sense that a subverted trope is figuratively "overthrowing" the audience's expectation that the trope in question will occur. Bit of a push, but one can see the connection.
• Polygamy is "marriage of one person to more than one spouse" (to distinguish it from "group marriage"). It is not just a synonym for "polygyny", "marriage of a man to more than one wife". Most arguments brought up in response to "What's wrong with polygamy?" (e.g., "It oppresses women") are just irrelevant to "polyandry", "marriage of a woman to more than one husband". (And not just because "polyandrists do not exist", which is also factually incorrect.)
• You can only truly plead the fifth in a particularly bad court of Hollywood Law. The correct phrase is to "take the fifth" (for those non-Americans unaffected by the Eagleland Osmosis: "The fifth" is the fifth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, one clause of which protects against self-incrimination; when being "read your rights", this is the first right you are reminded of). Pleading requires a plea, most often "not guilty" or "guilty".
• Similarly (and technically), pleading insanity is shorthand used outside of court for pleading "not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect".
  • Also worth noting is that one cannot be diagnosed as insane, because insanity is a legal concept, not a medical one. Even if a medical professional determines a person is mentally ill, a court must decide if that mental illness is legally relevant.
• Socialism refers to an economic system wherein the "means of production" are owned or managed in common, to some degree or other. Communism originally meant "revolutionary socialism" in general, but since Karl Marx's time, it has almost always been used to identify adherents to Marx's theories, or of his and his successors (such as Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, or Mao).
  • As with all such terms, there's a wide range in how they're used in practice. Policy positions that might be called "socialist" in one country would not be seen that way in another. And any move towards increased common control over any industry could be called a move toward socialism (by its supporters if the term "socialism" is popular, by its opponents if the term is unpopular).
  • The terms are also used differently in specialized areas. In Marxist theory, for example, "communism" refers to the end state of socialism, in which production is so abundant that neither government nor money is needed. "Communist" governments, by their own self-understanding, did not govern "communist" countries, but rather governed socialist countries that (it was believed) would progress towards communism.
  • The most common problem with "socialism" is that socialists always insist none of the socialist states that did (or still do) exist is "properly" socialist (except one to which they belong, if any).
• Crescendo is the process of getting louder, or greater in some other way, not to the peak reached at the end of that process. So something can't "reach a crescendo"—well, it can, but that would mean the point where things start to get more intense. The word you're probably looking for is climax (although pedants would point out that "climax" is Greek for ladder, and originally meant something similar to "crescendo". A pedant might recommend "apex", "acme", "pinnacle" or "zenith" instead.)
  • Crescendo has apparently been misused this way so much that this erroneous definition made it to the dictionary. Which arguably means it should go on the Very Pedantic page instead.
  • Nor does crescendo mean a rise in pitch.
• A B-Movie was a term that originated during The Golden Age of Hollywood for the second movie in a double-feature showing. Nowadays, when such showings are rare, the term has come to mean a low-budget non-arthouse flick, usually one with a campy nature.
• Exponentially more is sometimes incorrectly used to mean "much more". Mathematically speaking, "exponentially more" refers only to the difference between the rates of increase of two functions, and has a much more specific meaning than "this is growing faster than that". Static values can never be "exponentially more" at all. Most people who say this mean "orders of magnitude greater". An "order of magnitude" is (usually) ten times, so more than one would be 100 times, 1000 times, or more.
• A quantum is a discrete unit of something. Therefore, when James Bond finds his Quantum of Solace, he doesn't feel that much better. A quantum leap is a change directly from one state to another, without any defined intermediate states happening along the way. The distance leaped over does not need to be the smallest possible. Some pedants have not quite grasped this.
  • To better describe, think of the word "quantity". When you have a quantity of something, i.e. a specific number of units of it, those units are quanta. In physics, a quantum specifically means "the minimum amount of a physical entity involved in a physical interaction" (from The Other Wiki).
• Inflammable is not an antonym to flammable; it's a synonym. The antonym is non-flammable. (Granted, this is played for comedy more often than it's used seriously...)
  • The confusion here is mostly due to the fact that inflammable (derived from "inflame") doesn't come from the typical [in-] negation, it comes from [en-], to give or receive. It makes sense once you consider that the archaic enflame is similar to enrage and enjoy.
  • "Inflammable means flammable? What a country!"
  • "Flammable! Or inflammable, forget which. Doesn't matter!"
  • George Carlin: "Flammable... inflammable... non-inflammable. Why are there three of them? Either it flams or it doesn't!"
  • "It tries to set your face on fire, but you're inflammable." Wait, that means flammable. You're "un-light-on-fire-able."
• Mano a mano is a commonly used Spanish and Italian term that translate as "hand to hand", and means "one step at a time". It does not means "man to man". Sincerely saying that you want to settle things "mano a mano" before pulling out a gun is an example.
  • Although, technically in some countries people shorten the word "hermano" (brother) to just "mano". So it could also be "brother to brother" ("hermano" or "mano" has been used as an identifier even if the person in question is not a sibling at all.)
  • Even worse is when someone says "mano y mano" which is hand and hand, making no sense in relation to fighting, and even less sense when they think they are saying "man and man". Unless...
• The word whom is used by many as simply "who, but fancier." "Whom" is a direct or indirect object, so if you ever see someone use it otherwise ("Whom are you?" for example), they're futzing it up. As a general rule, replace the usage of "whom" with "him" and see if it still makes sense.
  • "Whom" is used to describe people something happens to, and "who" describes people who do something. You might ask about a proposed business deal, "Who affects the deal?" and "Whom does the deal affect?"
• People have been told not to say "Me and Joe went to the park", but "Joe and I ...". For too many, this has morphed to a general anxiety around the word "me", so they always use and I. This is a mistake. "He saw Joe and I" is wrong (it should be "Joe and me").
  • "I" is when you are the subject, and "me" is when you're an object. This does not change if you are accompanied by someone else.
  • First person singular pronouns always go after anything else when multiple subjects or objects are involved, so "I and ..." is never correct. (This is courtesy, not grammar.)
  • If you have trouble knowing whether or not to say "I" or "me", take out the other person/thing/whatever and see if the sentence still makes sense. ("Joe and I went to the park" changes to "I went to the park", not "Me went to the park")
  • This is only the case in formal English, however. In discourse, almost all speakers will accept "Me and Joe went to the park" as an informal but grammatical variant. "Me and Joe" is somewhat more common than "Joe and me", an interesting inversion of the above "first person last" rule.
  • Similarly, "He saw Joe and I" is used consistently by some speakers of e.g. Northern Californian English. This is probably hypercorrection in avoiding "me" entirely, as noted above, which has been adopted into the dialect.
• People who have been told that and I is not a panacea will often abuse the word myself. This is a mistake as well. Myself is reflexive—when you're both the subject and the object. "I wet myself", "I touch myself" and "I cut myself" are all okay (grammatically, that is). "Please send the memo to John and myself" is wrong. You mean "... to Joe and me."
  • Settling this and the above immediate point of grammatical confusion: In all cases where you list any series of individuals, ending with "and I/me", the way you settle the "I vs. me" is to eliminate everyone else from the list and isolate the "I/me". For instance, "Joseph, Victoria, and I went to the amusement park and rode the Thunderstrike," is correct because "I went to the amusement park..." would also be correct. Similarly, "Grandma Robinson regularly sent Joseph, Victoria, and me $5 checks on our birthdays," is also correct because "Grandma Robinson regularly sent me..." would also be correct.
• Ah, passive is another great example. Passive is a voice, not a tense. Similarly, "indicative" and "subjunctive" are moods, not tenses.
  • Also, people tend to confuse progressive aspect with passive voice. "I was kicking the ball" is not in the passive voice. "The ball was kicked by me" is.
    • Well, the examples in Strunk and White are a little painful, but not as painful as a movement to discard passives and all other uses of "be".
• A vaccine is a weakened form of a disease that trains the body how to fight that disease. As mentioned in Magic Antidote, though, people tend to simply replace it with the word "cure." A weakened form of the disease is not going to help you if you're undergoing the eleventh hour of the full-blown symptoms. It will just make things worse.
  • A therapeutic use of a vaccine is most likely to actually be a sero-vaccine, that is a mix between the vaccine and a serum containing antibodies against whatever ails the person being treated.
  • Originally, "vaccine" specifically meant the smallpox vaccine. The vacc- prefix means "cow".
    • As an aside, the first person treated with Pasteur's anti-rabies vaccine very likely already had the rabies, the vaccine enabling him to fight the infection.
• Bemused has nothing to do with being "amused"—in fact it means "utterly confused."
  • Similarly, Nonplussed does not mean "aloof" or "unimpressed". It means "bewildered".
    • Or "unperturbed". Non-reacting due to confusion, or just non-reacting.
• Slander and libel tend to be used interchangeably. Libel is defamation in the form of written words, while slander is defamation in the form of spoken words. Defamation is a catch-all that covers both. With the advent of the Internet and lower barriers to publishing, the definitions are changing, but libel is generally public postings and slander is generally private words.
  • The distinction (in the UK at least) comes from the permanence of the defamatory statement. If I said it to someone in a restaurant it's slander. If it happened to be inadvertently recorded and put in a movie soundtrack or written in an article, it's libel.
  • Mentioned in the first Spider-Man movie, as follows:

Peter Parker: Spider-Man wasn't trying to attack the city... he was trying to save it. That's slander. J. Jonah Jameson: It is not. I resent that. Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.

• In MMORPGs, people often say, "Spell X has been casted" or "I have casted spell X". There is no word "casted". The word "cast" covers both present and past tenses. So both, "I will cast spell X on the monster" and "I have cast spell X on the monster" are the correct forms. The same conjugation is also used regardless of the specific thing or person being cast: Some sculptures are cast, actors are cast in movies.
• Another mistake frequently made in fantasy contexts is the conjugation of slay. As seen on acres of Disney World merchandise, "I slayed the dragon" is incorrect. "Slay" doesn't work like "play." Instead, it should be "I slew the dragon." Alternatively, "I have slain the dragon."
  • Lampshaded in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Willow on one occasion had difficulty coming up with the right form. Giles, surprisingly, says either slew or slayed will do.
  • You do not seen something. You saw it, or you have seen it, but you never seen it.
    • Most uses of the phrase "I seen it," especially those with enough emphasis to rule out a slurred "I've", are identifying the speaker as a hick.
• Inbreeding means breeding among closely related individuals. Not breeding with members of another group or anything else. The confusion likely comes from the similar-sounding word "interbreeding." But in or intra refers to the inside and inter refers to the outside. By the same token, interbreeding should not be used to mean marrying your sister.
• Similarly, a butler is the head of a large household of servants, dealing specifically with the wine cellars -- "butler" is, in fact, a corruption of "bottler". Because Jeeves is Bertie Wooster's only servant, his first job title would be "valet", although butlers may double as valets and vice versa.
  • In one story, Jeeves' feelings are actually hurt when he is called on to buttle. That the normally unflappable "gentleman's gentleman" takes offense at something that seems trivial to us says that at one point it was a much more important distinction.
• Interstellar means traveling between stars. Earth to Alpha Centauri is interstellar; Earth to Mars is interplanetary (and for heaven's sake not intergalactic). Intrastellar travel would be travel within a star; transstellar would be across one; do not try either of these without serious heat shields or cooling tech unless you want to get fried to a crisp.
• To infer and to imply are different things. Person A may infer that Person B is stupid from the latter's misuse of words. Person A may then imply Person B's stupidity through witticism. Person B's inevitably incorrect response will be "Are you inferring that I'm stupid?" Person B is, in fact, inferring that Person A is implying that Person B is stupid, and they're right.
  • The difference has been lampshaded by Lisa Simpson and John Munch: "You infer. I imply."
  • As annoying as this can be for anyone familiar with discussing logic or literature the use of infer to mean "suggest" in fact is very old, having been used by eminent writers since the 16th century. While the distinction is required in formal discourse it is not strictly incorrect in everyday speech.
  • Lampshaded and Played With in The Dresden Files TV series:

Harry: These drakes, right, they can change shape? They're magical, immortal and all that. But you can change your appearance and you're magical and [stutters] you've been around a long, long time. Ancient Mai: Are you inferring something? Harry: Technically, I'm implying. You're inferring. Mai: Well, it's dangerous either way. Harry: You didn't answer my question. Mai: You didn't ask one. Which, at least, shows some common sense.

• Disinterested is not a synonym for uninterested; it means, rather, that you are unbiased or have no vested interest.
  • Though it wouldn't be unreasonable to be uninterested because you are disinterested.
  • A good judge is disinterested; a tough audience is uninterested.
    • Ironically, the earliest recorded use of "disinterested" is in the sense that now belongs to "uninterested".
• A light-year is a measure of distance: the distance light travels in a year. Many writers have made the mistake of using the term to describe a very long period of time. This is the one mistake guaranteed to infuriate pedants.
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, the only trainer in the first Gym remarks, "You're light years away from beating Brock!" but then admits "Light years isn't time! It measures distance!" when beaten.
  • To go into extreme pedantry, due to the effects of time and length dilation, units of distance can in fact be used as units of time.
  • Of course, often what a pedant interprets as literal but incorrect time could also be figurative and correct distance; a Sufficiently Advanced Alien might well be light-years more advanced than us if you take it to be a metaphor using distance in place of quantity of technical and scientific knowledge.
    • In fact the construction "light-years ahead" is parallel to "miles ahead". Some pedants need to actually pay attention to the language they're using.
    • Literally, "to advance" is "to move forward", so if we define forward to be the direction of the alien planet, then it is most mechanically literal to interpret that as true, even if the aliens are using rocks. To interpret "advanced" as meaning the aliens have more sophisticated technology and comprehensive scientific knowledge is itself a figurative use of language.
  • Of course, it's possible to get this both right and wrong at the same time.
• Similar to "light year", parsec is short for "parallax second", but is also a measure of distance, not time: 3.3 light years. The Millennium Falcon was able to shave distance off a smuggling run.
• Conspicuous means "obvious," not "suspicious," no matter the way it sounds. Thus, if something was conspicuously absent, you are merely able to notice that it was absent; you do not necessarily have to raise an eyebrow at its absence.
  • This may come from a character saying that they need to remain "inconspicuous" while in disguise or something similar. The character wants it to not be obvious they are in a disguise and consequently not be suspicious. Since they can say, "I want to be inconspicuous," or, "I don't want to be suspicious," interchangeably in such a situation, this may be why people equate them.
• Fascism is a political ideology that combines political radicalism, authoritarianism, nationalism, corporatism and certain forms of Social Darwinism. Most modern people and political parties that don't self-identify as "fascist" probably aren't fascists. Definite no-no's include communists, liberals, internationalists, socialists, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, Youth Hostels, Gandhi, women and dogs.
  • To be more precise, even people showing antisemitic or xenophobic cannot be called "fascists" indiscriminately, as the original fascism introduced in Italy by Mussolini wasn't heavy on xenophobia (fascists' aggression was usually directed towards their political enemies). It was German National Socialism ('Nazism' or 'Hitlerism") that introduces the ideas of racial superiority and genocide.
• Corporatism is the doctrine promoted by Mussolini that society should function as a body (Latin: corpus) in which each of the various sectors of society (government, business, labor, etc.) are treated as "organs" within the body, interdependent and working toward the betterment of the whole. The term can include big business, but is broader than a simple collusion between business and government; "corporatism" has absolutely nothing to do with the English word "corporation."
• Strictly speaking, there is no single period in prehistory called the Stone Age. The term originates from a listing of the three stages of a prehistoric society: Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. In the most literal sense of the term, cowboys fought members of the Stone Age in the Wild Wild West; heck, there were still "Stone Age" people living in isolated parts of the world by the time The Flintstones first went on air. The term is usually limited to Eurasian cultures, which complicates things.
  • Strictly speaking, humanity as a whole had a single "Stone Age" (during which no sub-group had advanced beyond stone tools), after which the "Stone Age" becomes a term with more limited application, and terms such as "Bronze Age" began to apply as soon as one group use bronze for this purpose, even though they were the only ones. Likewise, the Stone Age would have begun with the first evidence of stone tools rather than the point at which stone tools become ubiquitous. Arguing otherwise would be akin to stating that we don't really live in the Space Age because most people alive right now have never ventured into space.
  • Similarly, prehistoric does not necessarily mean ancient. "History" is "the study of what ancient people wrote about themselves," so for something to count as prehistoric, it merely has to predate the invention of writing (which was about 3500 BC). For this reason, there still exists a number of societies today which count as "prehistoric".
  • Also, the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age were more a reference to the archaeology of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
• Yea, an archaic version of "yes" (pronounced "yay"), is often used in place of "yeah".
  • And cartoonists often confuse it with "Yay!", which is an interjection expressing delight or enthusiasm. ("Yay/Yea, we won the game!")
  • This may happen from how people can and do use "Yes!" like "Yay!" anyway.
  • This is very probably simple coincidence due to onomatopoeia. The real instance of this trope would be those who misinterpret the older usage as being the newer usage.
• Object (the noun acted on by the verb) and subject (the noun doing the verbing) are opposites.
• Isotope. The proper term for its common use is nuclide -- that is, a substance with a fixed number of protons and neutrons. Isotopes are two or more substances with the same number of protons and different numbers of neutrons—that is, the difference is like between a boy and a brother—the latter can only be used as a comparative to something else.
• People use the word vagina to describe both a woman's vulva (external genitalia) and vagina (internal genitalia). Even the author of The Vagina Monologues.
  • Just to avoid making a false equivalency, "vulva" describes the entire external genitalia of the female, while "vagina" is one element of the internal genitalia (which also include the uterus, ovaries, etc).
    • Explained here.
  • Similarly, people seem to use Anus, Rectum and Colon interchangeably, when they are very different parts of the digestive system with very different functions. Look 'em up!
• Consequences. It's commonly used to mean the negative results of an action; the opposite of a reward or benefit. Its actual definition is all results of an action, positive and negative.
• Infamous is frequently used to mean "very famous," which is far from correct. While it is not the opposite of fame (that would be obscurity), it actually means having a very bad reputation, as in "the infamous Jack the Ripper." Don't make the mistake that the Three Amigos did when you're asked to meet someone infamous.
  • Confusion may also arise from: 1) Deliberately-ambiguous sarcastic use and/or 2) the Jerry Springer effect, i.e. "I want my 15 minutes no matter what I have to do to get it".
  • As described above, Infamous is not an antonym of famous. Just wanted to clear it out: if something is infamous, it actually has to have at least some fame.
• For another nice self-referencing example, compare the definition of trope in any reputable dictionary to the one used on this site. (For the sake of pedantry, assume the other wiki is not reputable.)
  • Merriam-Webster agrees with us!
• Good vs Well. Good is an adjective. Well is an adverb. You look good, because good is describing you. You see well, because well is describing how you see. (You can look well, but in that cause 'well' is being used as measure of health, i.e. the opposite of 'You look ill'.)
  • You can also correctly use 'look well' for 'look carefully', or 'look skillfully'. Similarly, the above could correctly describe a product that as part of its function interprets visual data. (A robot or something; if it's solely a camera, then its working is synonymous with its looking, and so it's still incorrect.)
• Some people, including many English teachers, insist that the statement I feel bad is only correct if it is used to mean that the speaker's sense of touch is functioning improperly, and the proper way to express that one is suffering is to say "I feel badly." This is totally incorrect, and in fact, the reverse is true: in the first case, "bad" is a predicate adjective modifying "I" and linked to it by the linking verb "feel," whereas in the second case, "badly" is an adverb modifying the action verb "feel," and describes how one's sense of touch is functioning. Likewise, the statement "I feel good" is a completely correct response to the question "How are you?", since "good" is, again, a predicate adjective modifying "I"; pedants who insist that one say "I feel well" are incorrect, although that statement is also grammatically correct.
  • Like "no split infinitives," this is another example of a Latin rule being shoehorned into English. In Latin and Romance languages, "good" and "bad" are defining characteristics, akin to "saintly" and "evil" - to say that one is feeling evil today is a far cry from being tired. Instead, "I feel well" or "I feel unwell" (or a more specific feeling) are the typical answers in those languages. In English those words do dual duty as vague placeholders and as strong characteristics.
• Decimate come from the Latin decimare, which means "to take a tenth part of something." Decimation was the Roman practice of executing one of every ten men in a rebellious or cowardly legion. However, it is used by many people to mean "massacre", or "devastate", no matter what proportion of a group was devastated.
  • Agents literally decimate their clients. Clients often agree this is the case in all uses of the word.
  • An episode of Monk references this.
  • As does the Doctor Who episode "The Sound of Drums".
  • And...
  • Dinosaur Comics mentioned this one.
  • Also in World War Z.
  • Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!!)uses it accurately in one of his novels. Of course, given the Imperium's fondness for Latin, this should be no surprise.
    • It should be pointed that aforementioned usage is exactly this trope. Decimation was not the 'name of killing 10% of a group' but a name of a method of execution that generally have precise names.
• Literally is often used as a generic intensifier, a "smarter-sounding" substitute for "really" or similar. The irony is that the usage is most often figurative, when it actually means "not figuratively." Example: "It was literally a slaughter!" in reference to a sporting event, assuming said sport isn't a Blood Sport. See Literal Metaphor.
  • Really suffers from a similar problem.
    • The cycle of words becoming a meaningless intensifier is ancient: "Very" comes from "verily", which means "truthfully."
  • Then there's the people who correct this by saying "You mean 'figuratively'," as in this Xkcd. That's only sort of right, as inserting that word into the sentence wouldn't achieve the desired effect. (As said above, it should be some intensifier like "really".)
  • Keep track of the rampant misuse of the word "literally" here. At least we hope phrases such as "They LITERALLY scared the shit out of us!" are misusing the term.
• The word indeed, used the same way on this wiki, when its real meaning is to confirm the truth of a statement. For example, the usage, "One bad motherfucker indeed," if referring to Samuel L. Jackson, is correct, as the "indeed," serves to emphasize the truth of the description. The usage, formerly of the Order Of The Stick Crowning Moment of Awesome page, "'Stay the hell away from us!' indeed," is not correct: There is nothing in the statement being confirmed, so "indeed" is incorrect.
  • However, it is (was?) a common usage, with a meaning roughly similar to "yeah right" which could be objected to on similar grounds.
• Peruse means "to read thoroughly", not "to skim."
  • The dictionary.com entry has an interesting usage note concerning this.
• Scan has been similarly diluted in common usage, perhaps because computers scan things so quickly.
• Incredulous means "not believing," not "incredible." If someone sees something incredible, then they can be incredulous.
  • It helps to think of it this way: the base of the two words is 'credible' (meaning 'can be believed') and the negation prefix 'in'. If something is 'incredible', it is not believable, or unbelievable (similar to 'fantastical'. If you are being 'incredulous', you are being the opposite of credulous (which means 'easily believing'), not treating something with credulity, or you don't believe it.
  • In The Accidental Tourist, it's pointed out that lacking credence is the proper use of the word.
• The difference between "rob" and "steal": You rob a person when you steal their property.
  • Technically, robbery is defined more narrowly than this: it's taking someone's goods by threat of violence. But yes, it's never correct to say "My wallet got robbed" or "He robbed my wallet", but "I was robbed of my wallet" is correct.
  • "Burglary" is a different kind of theft from "Robbery". If you leave your wallet at home, and when you get back, discover that it was stolen, you've been burgled.
    • Or "burglarized" if you're in the United States.
    • Legally speaking, burglary doesn't have to involve stealing (larceny and theft cover those). Burglary is the entrance of a building with the intent to commit a crime therein. You don't even have to actually complete the act you entered the building to do. If Alice enters Bob's house with the intent to murder Bob (or steal from him, assault him, or write a bad check while sitting on his couch), she has committed burglary, whether or not she actually does the deed. In some areas, even if you change your mind about committing the crime once your inside, you can still be on the hook for burglary. As a result, burglary is a favorite of prosecutors as it can be added as a charge to many different acts. The case law of what constitutes "building" and "entry" can get a little silly.
      • That depends on where you are. Where I live, legally speaking, Robbery is theft by force or threat of force (a mugger for example), Burglary is illegally entering a building or the interior of a personal vehicle (what is "illegally" is a longer story, but is MOSTLY self explanatory) with intent to steal, and stealing something from a location you have a legal right to be in (such as a store during normal operational hours, or a friends house if they invite you over, or even just a public park) without force or threat is Larceny.
• The term "Assault and Battery" exists because the two represent different parts of the same act. Assault is a a threat which suggests that "immediate harmful contact" will occur; battery occurs upon contact. Swinging a bat at somebody is assault. Hitting somebody with a bat is battery. Consequently, the latter usually depends on the former, except when the threat is unknown until contact. Generally, the contact doesn't have to be violent; an unwanted pie in the face or kiss on the cheek constitutes assault and battery.
  • Different jurisdictions have different definitions. Example: what the MPC and the above call "Battery" is called "Assault" in Delaware, and what the above calls "Assault" is named "Menacing".
• Off the northwestern coast of Europe are the British Isles, a collection of two large and many small islands, the largest of which is (Great) Britain and the second largest of which is Ireland. Together they contain two countries: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Ireland (called the "Republic of Ireland" to differentiate it from the island, of which it covers about five-sixths.) The United Kingdom is a country composed of four constituent countries: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. Cornwall is a politically united but culturally distinct area within England. There also exists the Isle of Man, the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and the Bailiwick of Jersey, which are not part of the United Kingdom, but which have its Queen as their sovereign and which the UK provides for its military defence. It is confusing but please, for your own safety, NEVER use England to refer to anything besides the land south of the River Tweed and east of the Rivers Vyrnwy and Tamar (Cornwall may be a more debated case but the Cornish will like you for it).
  • • Relevant.
  • The term "British Isles" is also disputed by many Irish people, who object to the term "British", given its usual usage as "of or pertaining to Great Britain". The governments of the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland both avoid using the term, as do most Irish people, but it is a common term in Great Britain, where it is seen as an entirely neutral, geographic term, akin to "Indian Subcontinent" or "North America".
    • Well the British Government uses it, just not in international documents. The neutral term often used is Islands of the North Atlantic (IONA).
    • At least in the travel industry, the "Indian Subcontinent" is now the "South Asian Subcontinent".
  • Also, it's standard practice to refer the UK as "Britain", even though Northern Ireland is part of the former but not the latter.
  • Also, people indigenous to Scotland are not Scottish, they're Scots, and some of them don't like you getting it wrong.
    • 'Scottish' is an adjective qualifying someone or something from Scotland. 'Scot' is a noun. While it's preferable to refer to people from Scotland as "the Scots" rather than "the Scottish", it is not wrong to refer to someone as Scottish by way of an adjective. On that note, the adjective is indeed 'Scottish'. Don't use the adjective 'Scotch' outside of Scotch whisky, Scotch eggs or Scotch pies.
  • These rules similarly apply to people. Hugh Laurie was born in England, Ewan McGregor in Scotland, and Catherine Zeta Jones in Wales. All three are British, but only Laurie is English. Pierce Brosnan is neither (he's Irish).
  • The Isle of Man is not part of England, Scotland or even the UK; it's a separate dependency of the British Crown. The Bailiwick of Jersey and the Bailiwick of Guernsey (known collectively as the Channel Islands) are the other two Crown Dependencies. ("Bailiwick" being an archaic term meaning the area under the jurisdiction of a bailiff—a bailiff being a sheriff's appointee, so a bailiwick would have been a part of a shire). There are also 13 British overseas territories, and the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (both on Cyprus).
  • On that note, now you know where the idiomatic expression bailiwick got its meaning: it means an area specific to one's jurisdiction (department, profession, area of expertise): "not my bailiwick".
• Immoral is knowing it's wrong and doing it anyway; amoral is, generally, not having a sense of right or wrong in the first place. Gravity and a large rock are amoral; my dropping a large rock on your head to kill you is immoral (unless, perhaps, I'm mentally disturbed in such a way that I'm incapable of making moral judgments). Furthermore, nonmoral deals with things that are not a question of morality, such as the choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream.
• Non-zero-sum does not mean "win-win" or "opportunity to cooperate." It refers to some valuable resources (money, time, oil, wood, etc.) being permanently lost or gained during the event. A zero-sum game merely means that everything the participants begin with is redistributed. Non-zero-sum games can easily be lose-lose instead of win-win, and, while the Prisoner's Dilemma and a few other well-known non-zero-sum games are cooperative, others, such as the dollar auction, are normally non-cooperative.
  • Whether something is win-win vs. lose-lose or cooperative vs non-cooperative is usually a function of the players' choices, not of the game itself. If the players in a dollar auction agree beforehand that only one person will bid, and that the profits will be shared equally, that is a cooperative/win-win strategy. Some games can be structured to always be lose-lose, but aren't as interesting to study.
    • If by "win" one means "end with more than one started" and by "lose" one means "end with less than one started", it is also not a requirement that someone must win and someone must lose in a zero-sum game; if everyone ends with exactly as much as each one respectively had at the start, it is still a zero-sum game.
  • Also, usually game theorists do not use "zero sum game" but "constant sum game". That's partly for ease of mathematics behind it, but it also can mean that all players lose or win if compared to the status quo before the game. It is just that each win of one side is countered by a loss of equal amount on the other side (and let's not start about more-than-two-player games). Also in many to most games meta gaming (e.g. side payments outside of the game itself to counter asymmetric payouts in a win-win situation) is not considered, thus not every non-zero-sum means opportunity to collaborate.
• Stupid and ignorant are not interchangeable: a stupid person lacks intelligence, an ignorant person lacks knowledge. So, if someone crosses a street on a red light because they didn't know that red means "stop", they're ignorant. If they cross a street despite seeing car coming at 50 mph and get hit, they're stupid.
  • If someone misuses the words on this page, they're ignorant, but not necessarily stupid.
  • "Ignorant" also does not mean "belligerent" or "impolite"
  • Perhaps a better example of the difference between intelligence and knowledge: knowing what the Pythagorean theorem is and what it's used for takes knowledge; being able to work out the equation mentally requires intelligence.
  • Once you've read the Pythagorean theorem, understanding what it means would require intelligence.
• On most Animal Planet documentaries, an astonishing amount of people say that they now appreciate wildlife and the danger that wild animals can cause after getting attacked. They probably mean that they now respect wildlife after such incidents. A lot of people can appreciate the beauty of a Big Badass Wolf, but not everyone respects (or even knows!) that the wolf can tear your throat out if he thinks you're a threat or his next meal. Surprisingly enough, children and teenagers use "respect" more often than adults.
• Née means "born". It does not mean "formerly known as" or "otherwise known as" or even "maiden name" except in the context that a woman's maiden name is generally her birth name. If a woman is born as Mary Smith, marries and changes her name to Mary Robinson, then divorces, remarries, and changes her name to Mary Jones, it would be correct to say "Mary Jones, née Smith"; it would not be correct to say "Mary Jones, née Robinson."
  • Secondly, "née" is feminine. If a man changes his name, it's né (e.g. "Malcolm X, né Little").
  • For transsexuals, as a general rule of thumb, you use the gender-specific words of the gender they identify as, rather than their genotype, if you are trying to be polite to them. IE if you know a FtM, it is "He" "Him" "né" etc.
• Similarly, French-derived adjectives should retain their French masculine-feminine endings. A woman with flaxen hair is blonde, but a man is blond. More obscurely, a man with dark hair is not a brunette but a brunet. It would all be pronounced the same in English, though, where articles don't have gender.
  • In French, they carry the literal meaning of "little brown(-haired) boy/girl." The alternate word for black, noirette, instead means "little black girl," and wouldn't be used to indicate hair; instead, cheveux de noir (black-haired) would be more correct as an adjective, but not a noun, where brunet/te still applies.
• Also, when one is engaged to be married, the proper word depends on the person's gender: a man is a woman's fiancé, whereas a woman is a man's fiancée. As with other French-derived terms, they may be pronounced exactly the same, but their gender matters.
• People keep using pragmatic to describe someone who appears to be thinking quite ideally, or something along the lines of that. This is used frequently to describe politicians during political campaigns. The word means "of or pertaining to a practical point of view or practical considerations." In a related sense, pragmatism is a "character or conduct that emphasizes practicality." So depending on the case, one may be correct or not.
• If you're waiting on someone, then you're performing the job of a waiter or servant. If you're looking at your watch wondering where the hell they are, you're waiting for them.
  • Dialect difference. Like how people from parts of the eastern US say "on line for tickets" instead of "in line for tickets". Slight differences between preposition use are a common dialect variation, especially in Germanic languages (anyone who took high-school German probably read that word "preposition" and began to weep softly, like a Shell Shocked Senior).
    • Trust me, us Germans aren't happy with English prepositions either.
• A narcotic is any sedative, defined as drug with morphine-like effects (to quote The Other Wiki). Most people use it as an umbrella term to include all illicit drugs.
  • The term was corrupted as soon as cocaine was classified as a narcotic in US federal law, so for legal purposes it is - despite being a stimulant.
• Argumentum ad hominem is (to quote The Other Wiki) "an argument which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise." It's not just a fancy word for a personal attack. "You suck, therefore your argument is false" is ad hominem. "You suck" on its own isn't, neither is "your argument is false, therefore you suck," nor is "Your argument is false and you suck."
  • In many cases, the "therefore your argument is false" part is left implied. The intent is still to discredit the advocate rather than (probably more difficult) rebuttal of the premise; that the link is not explicitly stated doesn't necessarily mean it isn't ad hominem - if the attack is trying to bring down the premise, it is. If the person being attacked is not advocating anything, though (or if anything they might be advocating has nothing to do with the attack), it isn't ad hominem - just a personal attack.
• Semitic doesn't necessarily mean Jewish. It means of Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, and/or Phoenician ancestry. On the other hand, the terms antisemitic, antisemitism, and anti-Semite typically only refer to hatred of Jews; these words were coined in 19th century Europe, where the only Semites anyone was likely to meet were the Jews, and the terminology has stuck ever since.
  • And technically, "antisemitic" and "antisemitism", at least, are supposed to be written in all-lowercase, as doing otherwise implies that there is a belief called Semitism to which antisemitism is opposed. As the Semites are an actual group, "anti-Semite" is probably correct, though it gets confusing when used to refer only to a hater of Jews and not the other Semites. Contrast with the lesser-known word anti-Judaism, which refers specifically to opposition to Judaism as a religion, and not to Jews as a race. It is written like that because it is opposed to the belief known as Judaism.
• Populist has done a complete turnaround of meaning since the 1890s. Political scientist David Nolan once used it as roughly a synonym for socialist. Actually, while the Populist (or People's) Party of the 1890s that thrived in much of the western and southern United States was more anti-"big business" than anti-business generally, it did call for some reforms that are usually thought of as socialistic (such as the nationalization of particularly lucrative industries). Nowadays, the word has been shorn of almost all economic connotations. To be a populist is to bear resentment against society's elites, who need not necessarily be "the rich." Class is still a factor to some extent, but differing educational levels and the contentious nature of American popular culture also enter into the equation.
  • The broadest definition of populism is opposition to the elite, whatever "elite" may mean at the moment. As such, it's perfectly correct to use it for the political movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked for their socialist tendancies and dismantling of corporate giants, as it is to use it for the current anti-intellectualist bent in the American social and political landscape.
    • Populist is not about opposition to the elite but about favouring and aiming efforts at the greater populace. To be a populist is to promote oneself to be liked by the majority, the non-elite, if they happen to like the elite it would be populist not to go against the elite...
• Objective (as in the opposite of Subjective), especially when used with the word review (as in a critical review). There is no such thing as an objective review. A review, by definition, is subjective. A consensus may be derived from many reviews, but there will never be a definitive, objective review.
  • The word one should use when speaking about review that is as unbiased as possible and takes into account multiple point of views is 'intersubjective'.
  • Also misused in theology. If morality comes from a mind, even a superior one, it is subjective.
• The use of a somewhat archaic word has butted its meaning, but nibbling on hors d'oeuvres serves to whet one's appetite, not wet it. Whet means "to sharpen," as seen in the term whetstone, a stone used for sharpening knives—if something is sharpening your appetite, it's leaving you hungry for more, not dampening (or wetting) your enthusiasm. So, "whetting your appetite for destruction" would mean starting small as a prelude to becoming more destructive, not sating the urge altogether.
• Psychotic: It does not mean "going around and killing people for no reason"; someone who does that is just homicidal. Psychosis is a loss of touch with reality, characterized by disorganised thinking, delusions, and sometimes (but not always) audial, visual, and tactile hallucinations. While people with psychosis can be homicidal, it is extremely rare.
• Psychopath/Sociopath: They are usually not murderers; in fact, many successful CEOs, lawyers, and politicians are psychopaths or sociopaths. Psychopathy and sociopathy both mean lack of a conscience, a limited emotional range, and difficulty in forming significant relationships. They also often lack impulse control. Both psychopaths and sociopaths can be classed as having antisocial personality disorder, though not all people with the disorder are psychopaths or sociopaths. Psychopathy and sociopathy are typically held to be synonyms under the umbrella of antisocial personality disorder (which is the term the DSM-IV uses that includes psychopaths and sociopaths), and when a distinction is made it has nothing to do with the origins of the disorder, since the origins are not definitely known. The typical distinction is that sociopaths have a more normal temperament and are better able to adapt to societal norms. While statistically speaking murderers are likely to be psychopaths or sociopaths, psychopaths and sociopaths are not very likely to be murderers.
• Antisocial: Sometimes used to mean someone who dislikes or fears socializing. In the psychological sense, it doesn't mean that at all. Antisocial attitudes or behaviors are against society, from extreme acts like murder to more minor transgressions like simply being a manipulative, self-centered Jerkass. Someone who fears interacting with other people should be said to be suffering from social phobia, not "antisocial" tendencies. As a matter of fact, social phobia is an outdated term, and is usually now called "social anxiety disorder." In other words, people who are antisocial are hostile—not merely indifferent—towards society.
  • "Antisocial" is also used to denote "rebellious" individuals actively fighting (not necessarily by violence, also by dissent or passive-aggressive behaviour) any authority and are incapable of operating under external influence.
  • An increasingly more popular—and accurate—term for the above disorder is agoraphobia, from the ancient Greek term for "fear of the marketplace." But to be honest, I've always understood that agoraphobia is fear of the entire outside world, not just the "social" parts of it. Thus, an agoraphobe would be just as afraid of being lost in a forest or a desert as they were of crowds.
    • It makes more sense once you know that 'agora' in this case is what the Romans called the 'forum', rather than your run-of-the-mill farmers' market.
  • Agoraphobia is more specifically a fear of being unable to escape from whatever situation you're in (sometimes amended to include 'without severe embarrassment'), rather than the situation itself. In the above examples, the phobic response would be due to the fear of never escaping the forest, or being lost in the desert forever. Being in a busy place (e.g. a football crowd) could count if you couldn't leave your set without making a huge scene.
  • Perhaps more appropriate word would be "asocial", and it is sometimes used, though it implies lack of interest in social interaction while not fear of it (not moving with the flow, nor against the flow, but being aside of it - thus deliberately refusing to give a damn one way or another as some cynics did technically falls under this too).
    • This is exactly the term used in psychological parlance to describe people avoiding social situations due to social phobias, egomania, extreme introversion or any other factor.
  • Agoraphobia is a disorder more focused on the area and getting to safety (without embarrassing yourself) if needed and usually has to do with panic attacks or some of the symptoms of them. A fear focused on actual people or socializing is called social phobia or social anxiety disorder (and is much more severe than shyness so should not be used lightly despite its commonness—the most common mental disorder in adults other than substance abuse or depression, which is saying something). The best replacement for "antisocial" is "avoidant"—avoidant personality disorder is associated with extreme social phobia. "Asocial", as pointed out above, is different. Most shy/socially anxious/avoidant people would love to be social if they weren't anxious about it. There are people who simply do not like to be around other people without being either avoidant or antisocial; these are asocial. "Asocial", however, may look like a typo in writing "antisocial" to a reader.
  • On a related note, introversion is not being antisocial; being introverted is simply preferring solitary activities to social activities.
• Manic-depression is more properly known as bipolar, and does not mean "severe depression" or "wild mood swings;" the highs and lows last for days or weeks at a time. Neither one is a catch-all for "crazy ex." (See borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic disorders for what most people think of as "crazy ex syndrome.")
  • Marvin the Paranoid Android is a manically depressed robot, not manic-depressive robot, which is true - he's enthusiastically depressed.
  • Also, bipolar is an adjective, not a noun. It's either "my friend is bipolar" or "my friend has bipolar disorder," NOT "my friend has bipolar."
  • And it doesn't have anything to do with tsunderes, no matter what certain fansubs say.
• Chronic does not mean "severe". It means "recurring/habitual" and/or "happening for a long time." Contrast acute, which means "brief and severe". Too many people associate "acute" with "small" due to its meaning in geometry.
• Paranoia and paranoid are a particularly egregious case. Paranoia is a full-blown psychosis, not just thinking people are out to get you. However, someone who really WAS diagnosed with paranoia would be paranoiac (literally out of his mind), not paranoid, which denotes a neurotic paranoid state.
  • This is lampshaded in the movie version of The Caine Mutiny, where Maryk admits that until Keefer talked to him, "I didn't even know the difference between paranoid and paranoia."
• Schizophrenia does not involve multiple personalities. Multiple personalities are a form of dissociation known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). It is an extremely rare diagnosis, so rare that its existence is very hotly debated. In addition, one of the major prerequisites is that the separate personalities are usually not aware of each other—something that is often overlooked in both real life and the media, as the protagonist in United States of Tara was quick to point out.
  • Especially confusing for those who like their Greek roots, because 'Schizophrenia' literally means 'Split Personality'.
    • Or more precisely, "split mind".
  • If we wanted to do right by the etymologists we should switch from Schneider's 'schizophrenia' name for schizophrenia back to Emil Kraepelin's 'dementia praecox'.
    • The correct etymology for schizophrenia is skhizein (σχίζειν, "to split") and phrēn, phren- (φρήν, φρεν-; "mind, intelligence") not exactly personality...
  • The confusion is likely from some schizophrenics having auditory/visual hallucinations and sometimes speaking back to them, giving the illusion to some people that another "personality" is speaking to the schizophrenic.
    • If psychology texts are reliable, the confusion is the above misinterpretation of "intelligence" as "personality", plus failure to understand that "divided" in this instance means something closer to "shattered" than it does to "split".
• Sex/Gender: The distinction between sex and gender is lost on most people. The sexes (male and female) are the two divisions in which many organisms are placed, based upon their reproductive role. The genders (masculine and feminine) refer to social characteristics (such as behavioral norms) associated with males and females, respectively. To illustrate: facial hair is a male characteristic, while courage is a masculine characteristic in many cultures. Unfortunately, when "gender" is used on this very wiki, it's mostly used in the place of "biological sex" (i.e. wrong). Ranma ½ doesn't turn into a Camp Gay or sensitive guy, he becomes a girl, which still talks and acts like a boy and definitely wants to become a boy again, thank you very much—his sex changed, his gender obviously didn't! While one has to admit that "sex" allows confusion with the sexual act and also doesn't allow tropes with "gender bender" or "gender blender" rhyme, it's still wrong. Especially problematic since the word "gender" tends to be pushed by people whose pet theory is explaining everything by psychological and sociological factors, ignoring things like genetics and hormones completely. Doesn't change the world, but makes many people interpret it in a wrong way.
  • A more easily understood example is a bicycle designed to be ridden by women. The seat is wider because of sex; a woman's physiology gives her wider hips than a man. The crossbar is lower because of gender; dresses and skirts are worn only by women out of social convention.
  • Another example: a transgendered person is a man with female genitalia, or a woman with male genitalia; a transsexual person was presumably once transgendered, but has had sexual reassignment surgery.
    • note: this is not the common definition within the transgender community. The distinction between the two terms has nothing to do with genitals or whether or not someone has had SRS. "Transgender" is usually understood as an umbrella term for anyone who's sex/gender aren't totally congruent, or who strongly deviates from gender norms. It includes transsexuals, cross-dressers, drag queens, drag kings, etc. "Transsexual" means someone who permanently transitions from one gender to another, usually through medical treatments like hormones and surgery as well as social and legal changes, but no individual step is necessary for being transsexual. SRS doesn't have much to do with it. Many transsexuals can't have SRS or choose not to. Furthermore, "transgender" is already an adjective. Saying "transgendered" is simply redundant.
  • This is a simple case of linguistic drift, as even scientists tend towards 'gender' even in scientific publications. It is used so often most wouldn't even consider it 'wrong' in modern times.
    • It probably stems from squeamish parents and Moral Guardians not wanting children to hear "the S-E-X word".
  • While "sex" retains its Latin meaning, "gender" derives from a word meaning "kind, sort." The distinction between the two is of a largely arbitrary albeit useful nature.
• Quean does not mean, as Brian Jacques claimed in interviews about The Sable Quean, "wicked woman". Nor, as some readers might assume, does it mean "queen". It means "prostitute" or "promiscuous woman". Then again, this is probably actually a case of Getting Crap Past the Radar.
• To be bereft of something does not just mean to be without something. It means to be without something that you previously had.
• Peasant is not a general term for a poor person. A peasant is a tenant farmer, a free laborer who rents a farm and works it himself. The hierarchy is: slave (who is owned property that can be bought and sold), serf (has some rights, but is required to work his lord's land and give the lord a portion of the harvest), sharecropper (a free man who works on someone else's land and pays the landowner a portion of the crop) peasant, crofter (a farmer who owns his own house, but still rents land to farm), yeoman (owns enough land to support a family), gentleman (owns enough farmland to support himself by renting it out).
• Concerning is often deployed as meaning an area of much concern rather than its actual meaning, regarding. The real word to use in such an instance is disconcerting.
• A Chaingun is a single-barrel weapon with an electrically driven bolt operated with a chain. It is not a rotary gun. This comes from Doom misusing the term; usually, the reasoning for the mistake is that the latter is fed with a "chain" (ie a belt) of ammunition, or that the barrel group is driven by a chain.
  • More accurately still, a "Chain Gun" is the specific model of weapon used on many US and NATO aircraft. Any autoloading (generally fully automatic) weapon larger than a machinegun is called an "autocannon" regardless of mechanism. A multi-barrelled weapon in this class that rotates is called a "Rotary Autocannon." A single-barreled weapon that uses a rotating loading mechanism is a "Revolver Autocannon". The most accurate name for Doom's "chaingun" would be "Rotary Submachine Gun", as it uses pistol ammunition.
• "Decapitated head" is paradoxical: to decapitate someone is to de-head him. Cutting a head off of itself is...well...inconceivable. A body can be decapitated; a better adjective for a head on its own is severed. (Disembodied usually means 'intangible'.)
• Differential is both a noun and an adjective, but in the noun form, it is a mechanical device used for combining torque from different inputs, not a synonym for difference. This is a favorite of television sports announcers ("There's a three-point differential in the game!").
  • A differential is also used in mathematics to refer to infinitesimals in calculus and differential geometry i.e. dx, dy etc or to the Jacobian matrix of partial derivatives.
• A demigod is not a lesser "category" of deity. "Demi" means "half", i.e. "half god". A demigod has both mortal and divine parentage. For example, Hercules (son of Zeus, a god, and Alcmene, a human) is a demigod, whereas a dryad (a forest spirit) is not.
• Something being random means that it has no clear predictability or arrangement. It doesn't mean "kooky" or "off the wall", and neither sporks nor waffles nor doom are "random" (see also: the 4chan meme "Katy")
• Chiropractic is also an adjective. The noun form is chiropraxy. Use it.
• A categorical imperative is not simply an absolute imperative. While "categorical" can mean "absolute," a "categorical imperative" is a moral obligation born of the consequences of a significant portion of a category of people shirking it, despite little harm in any one individual doing so.
• Prequel doesn't mean "a previous installment in a series". It means "a sequel to an existing work that takes place earlier in the timeline of its 'Verse.
• The suffix mancer does not mean "magician". A [something]mancer is a very specific type of magician who uses [something] to predict the future. (A "necromancer" used bones and entrails to divine.) The word for someone who uses magic based on [something] is [something]. Urge, also misused in this context, means "maker". A thaumaturge (maker of marvels) is a magician, but a dramaturge (playwright) isn't, and neither is a metallurgist nor a demiurge.
  • If you must form neo-Greek technical-sounding words for different kinds of magician, -magos or -mage is best.
• The Internet usage of Troll does not mean "someone who has a different opinion from mine", "someone who has an unpopular opinion", or "someone who does something for attention". A troll is someone who does/says things for the sole purpose of trying to piss people off. Someone can legitimately have an unpopular opinion, but he's not a troll unless he states it just to be annoying.
  • A well known real-life troll is Fred Phelps, who travels around the country saying the most upsetting things they can to emotional audiences (mainly at funerals), in the hopes that someone will cross the legal line so he and his family (all lawyers) can sue them.
  • The term comes not from the mythical creature, but from a form of fishing involving moving through the water while waving the bait behind you. An internet troll is fishing for reactions, waving their 'opinion' as bait.
  • In even narrower sense, troll do not even have to have an unpopular opinions. They cause also can cause stir by simply initiating a discussion that is bound to cause an argument but they may do so without taking sides themselves. (However, be careful with accusations in this case; they may simply have triggered an event by accident.)
    • Not to mention the Wookiee Defence.
• A furry is not the same thing as a zoophile. A zoophile gets off on real animals, while furries like fictional anthropomorphic characters, most of whom would be intelligent enough to consent if they were real.
  • Also, many if not most furries are not interested in the sexual aspect of the fandom at all, they simply like drawing/dressing up as/writing about anthropomorphic animals.
• Armageddon and Apocalypse are not the same thing. Apocalypse, literally, simply means "revelation", but since the biblical Book of Revelation (also known as the Apocalypse of John) is mostly concerned with the end of the world, that is what "apocalypse" has come to mean. Armageddon, on the other hand, means "the mountain of Megiddo", where the final battle between good and evil will take place according to the Book of Revelation. The correct fancy word to use when discussing The End of the World as We Know It is eschaton.
• I.e. ("id est," "that is") and e.g. ("exempli gratia," "for example") are not interchangeable. I.e may be used to expand upon a point or to exhaustively list every possibility, while e.g. merely gives possible answers but leaves the list open.

"There are many varieties of pasta, e.g., spaghetti, macaroni, and gnocchi." "Pasta should be made al dente, i.e., firm and chewy, not overcooked."

• • A useful mnemonic is to remember i.e. as "in essence" and e.g. as "example given."
  • On a similar note, etc. ("et cetera," "and other things"), should never end a list introduced with "e.g." or "i.e." (or the plain English "for example" and "such as"). Etc. and e.g. are redundant, and it makes no sense to abbreviate i.e.
• A cannibal eats members of its own species. Something that is non-human, but eats humans, is an anthropophage. "Anthropophage" is a pretty pedantic word, but come on; use "man-eater" or something. Technically a human who eats other humans would be a cannibal and an anthropophage, but "cannibal" seems superordinate in this case. The word "cannibal" derives from the Carib people (after whom the Caribbean Sea is named) who were once believed to chew and spit out the flesh of a defeated enemy.
  • This was actually mentioned in Dawn of the Dead, where it was said that the undead were not cannibals, because they were no longer human.
  • This is also pointed out in Dragon Age: Origins by Alistair when he remarks that it's not cannibalism if Dog is eating fallen foes.
  • However, in fantasy/sci-fi settings, the definition is sometimes extended to any sapient creature eating another (Elves eating humans would be considered cannibals in such a setting).
• The phrase "more highly evolved" means nothing: evolution doesn't work like a ladder that animals climb to the top. No biologist has thought of it that way since Darwin. You could say that a species that hasn't changed for a few million years is "unevolved" but that would be a rather simplistic way of looking at it. After all evolution is still working on the species, because they aren't changing, evolution is "selecting" for no change. Evolution is always working on a species, unless they reach a very specific and almost impossible set of conditions.
  • Can't we say a species is more or less completely adapted, if its environment has recently changed?
  • The word evolution can mean a lot of different things, from the scientific "natural selection", and "development of life from single-celled organisms to current situation", the same but including emergence of life from non-life, and the less scientific "change over time", "change for the better" or simply "huge change", as used in advertising.
    • Evolution may also refer to specific terms of conditions. If we speak about, say, the operating systems that are meant to be user-friendly and efficient then we can say that better-developed systems are 'more evolved'. In the case of natural selection such judgment makes little sense because that would have required an objective knowledge of the meaning of life which is, as all things objective, beyond the grasp of human mind.
  • Similarly, terms such as devolution, de-evolution, reverse evolution, etc. carry no meaning in biology (although "devolution" carries a separate meaning in politics), since complex forms of life can become less complex and physical traits that were once advantageous can disappear (or remain as vestigial traits) over generations when confronted by a new environment. That doesn't stop the writers of science fiction from occasionally using this term when a member of one species "returns" to an ancestral form, nor does it stop some people from adopting the term to mean "reverse progress."
  • Also: By the millions of years their species have been around with few significant changes, two of the least highly evolved creatures are alligators and sharks. Evolution doesn't have any direction, but once it stumbles on a winning combination, it is really good at sticking with it.
• Castration is specifically the removal of testicles. The correct term for the removal of the penis (or the male genitalia as a whole) is emasculation. Though it might be argued that the correct term for either one is ouch.
  • The surgical removal of the penis is called a penectomy, while orchiectomy is the term for the surgical removal of the testicles.
• A totem is not a personal spirit guide, even if it is an animal. A totem animal protects an entire group of people, such as a family, clan, or tribe.
• Asexual is applied in general to anyone who doesn't have sex for any reason, but, as a proper sexual orientation, there are several more nuanced shades of meaning. Asexual in the strict sense means that a person does not feel physical attraction to others. A person who wants to have sex but has physiological or psychological reasons preventing them from having sex is not asexual. Similarly, someone who identifies as asexual does not see themselves as suffering from a medical disorder like lack of sex drive.
  • An asexual can and often does experience attraction but it's more of the platonic/aesthetic type. There are as many different types of asexuals as sexuals, but it should really be pointed out that it has nothing to do with desiring relationships. There are many sexuals who do not desire relationships, for example, Charlie Sheen's character on Two and A Half Men.
  • Being asexual does not necessarily mean that the person doesn't want relationships—an aromantic person is uninterested in relationships. One can be asexual but romantic (enjoys friendship, love, kissing or hugging, but is uninterested in sexual activity) or sexual but aromantic (interested in sex but not in relationships).
  • Autosexual can refer to a person who enjoys masturbation, but not sex (with another person). Autosexuals are not considered asexual.
    • Technically as an orientation, an autosexual is someone who is in love with themself. Otherwise, autosexuality or autoerotica is a behaviour, not a sexual orientation. Otherwise, sexuals who masturbate would also be called autosexuals.
• Relatedly, abstinence is a willing choice not to engage in some activity—such as, for example, sexual abstinence (which might range from "doing everything but intercourse" to much stricter levels of abstinence, like refraining from masturbation and from sexual contact with others). Celibacy originally meant simply "being unmarried", but now generally means being unmarried and sexually abstinent. Chastity means obeying the appropriate moral rules for sexual behavior, which does not necessarily imply sexual abstinence: in traditional Christian teaching, for example, a chaste husband and wife would be sexually active with each other (but with nobody else), but a chaste, unmarried person would be sexually abstinent.
• Epic refers to "epic poetry," which means narratives that are heroic, majestic, or impressively great. Calling something "epic" is to compare it to the scale of something from an epic narrative ... Which is meaningless if one doesn't know about epic narratives. Since internet culture uses this word to describe anything that is remotely good, that underscores how meaningless it's become.
  • It's gotten to the point that there are now backlash sites and entire groups against its misuse.
• Comprise and compose are (roughly) reciprocal, not synonyms. An archipelago is composed of many islands, and comprises those islands; it is not comprised of the islands—if anything, the islands are comprised of the archipelago (though this use of of is very archaic; comprised by might be better—although not by much, since comprised by is hardly a common expression either).
• Erstwhile is not laudatory; it means 'former'.
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a negative condition ("Disorder") that occurs after ("Post") painful ("Traumatic") emotional pressure ("Stress"). Saying someone who has PTSD suffers from "Post-Traumatic Stress" is like saying someone eating an after-dinner mint is eating an "after-dinner."
  • It may, however, be correct to state that a person is "in a state of Post-Traumatic Stress", or possibly "has Post-Traumatic Stress", although either or both of those forms could refer to any stress (positive or negative) that occurs after a traumatic event or sequence of events.
  • One might be forgiven for thinking that trauma is inherently stressful and therefore the second word of "traumatic stress" (if that is indeed the core phrase) is redundant.
  • "Suffering a post-traumatic stress' is perfectly correct term. The 'disorder' part means that the post-traumatic stress is experienced unnaturally long after the trigger traumatic event had taken place (so, the pathological problem is the presence of stress in an absence of traumatic event). Think feeling headache long after hangover is gone.
• In chemistry, Volatile does not mean "explosive" or "flammable", it means how likely the substance is to vaporise. Vapours of a given flammable substance likely will be even more flammable than say the liquid form, but that's just coincidental. The correct words to describe something which is likely to go boom or otherwise react spontaneously is either unstable (for when it is energetically likely) or labile (when it is kinetically likely); in particular, gasoline and oils are volatile but not particularly unstable, compared to compounds like acetylene.
  • In regular English, the other meaning ("quick to anger" or "prone to violence") is perfectly correct, however.
• Holland is a region in The Netherlands. It comprises most of the coastal region and the best-known cities from The Netherlands lie in Holland, namely Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Holland is not a valid name for the country, nor is the name of a province any more. The region that was once Holland now has the imaginative names North Holland and South Holland.
  • It should be noted that in several languages the official name of Netherlands is derived from the name of the Holland province (e.g. 'Holandia' in Polish or 'Holland' in Danish and Estonian). It is used however to denote only the European part of the Kingdom of The Netherlands that incorporates also Aruba and former Dutch Antilles).
  • Of course, it doesn't help avoid confusion when the pars pro toto shorthand "Holland" is used in the name of the national football team and by local fans who shout "Holland!" and "Hup Holland Hup!" at matches (so the word "Holland" is prominently implied to denote the whole country to the rest of the world's spectators), and at one point "Holland" was even used by the Dutch Tourist Board to informally refer to the entire country in English language literature. And after all, it contains the biggest city Amsterdam, the capital Den Haag and almost 40% of the population.
• A rabbi is a person sufficiently versed in Jewish law to have obtained this designation from a religious authority, not unlike an academic degree. A rabbi:
  • is not the Jewish equivalent of a priest (there still exists a hereditary priestly class within the Tribe of Levi, called Kohanim, although their duties have been significantly reduced since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE);
  • is not a person who certifies kosher food (this is a mashgiaḥ, which literally means "inspector", and it is certainly not done through "blessing" food as Hollywood seems to think);
  • is not a person who leads prayers in the synagogue (this is a ḥazan or cantor, or often just a lay member of the congregation); and
  • is not exclusively the spiritual leader of a synagogue (rabbis who do this are usually called "pulpit rabbis", but there are thousands of individuals with rabbinic ordination who do not work for synagogue congregations, including those who simply study full-time).
  • Now to be fair, there is overlap among these categories—some kohanim become rabbis, some rabbis work as mashgiḥim, etc., but the fact of being a rabbi does not mean that one is/does any of them. Also, any bearded man wearing black is not a rabbi—this is standard appearance for all ultra-Orthodox Jews whether or not they have rabbinic ordination.
• The generic verbing of nouns, medaling to describe winning a medal, actioning for doing something, friending for becoming friends. This is an interesting case, as it is becoming increasingly acceptable to "verb" nouns in colloquial speech, and it isn't like these words have any other established uses that would make a distinction worthwhile to defend (being neologisms for the most part). As a result, it's difficult to solidly classify any of these verb-to-noun constructions as solecisms (except perhaps actioning, which provides only a clumsy synonym for doing much as utilizing is most frequently used as a clumsy synonym for using), but one would be very well-advised to avoid them in more formal writing.
• Jealousy typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, particularly in reference to a human connection. One can be a jealous boyfriend, but one cannot be jealous of someone else's boyfriend, unless there's already something between the two of you. This is often confused with Envy, which is "an emotion that occurs when a person lacks another's (perceived) superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it. Further compounding the confusion is the word Covet, which includes all the characteristics of the definition of 'envy' but also indicates a willingness to take the object coveted for themselves. For instance, if a person has a television set that you want, envy might drive you to buy a bigger, better TV (as you desire the quality of owning a nice television). If you coveted it, however, you'd be more likely to steal their TV (as you desire the exact television set they own).
  • This confusion has caused no small amount of confusion with one of the Christian commandments. The command is correctly translated as 'Do not covet', but 'Do not envy' and, worse yet, 'Do not be jealous' are common incorrect translations.
• Lose vs. Loose: More of a spelling issue than a language one; people still say them correctly. However, (particularly online), the two are used almost interchangeably, though it is more common to add an "o" than to subtract one. For the record, "lose" (rhymes with "booze") is a verb, and it means the opposite of winning. "Loose" (rhymes with "goose") is an adjective, and the opposite of tight. You can lose a game, but not tighten it. Your shoelaces can be loose, but you can't win them. Okay, technically shoelaces could be a prize...
  • Loose can also be used as a verb, to mean "release", but that usage is kinda archaic—you've probably never heard it outside The Bible or the phrase, "Cry havok! and let loose the dogs of war." It still isn't the opposite of "win" or "find", ever.
  • Not only a spelling issue, but very often a "spell-check" type of issue, where the word could be a typo but will never be caught by spell-check.
  • A particularly interesting example of this is a Swedish book called The Looser Handbook which is about the art of leading a life of constant failure. It only stands to reason that the author would fail at naming the book, since failure is what the book is about.
• Casualties also refers to wounded people in addition to those that have died in a conflict or accident; you were probably looking for Fatalities. Note however that the definition of wounded is pretty fluid - it can mean anything from "minor stab wound" to "three limbs blown off and permanent loss of hearing". In other words just anything short of actual death.
• Invalid with regard to arguments is a matter of not having the correct form. It has nothing to do with the truth value of the statement.
• CGI: In Video Games, the term is often misused to describe pre-rendered cutscenes. All videogames (except ones done entirely with Full Motion Video) use CGI, which means "computer-generated imagery". Even Pac-Man and Donkey Kong use CGI; their graphics were created by computer images. When a cutscene is debated on whether it shows real gameplay, there's no question whether it has CGI (unless it features live-action video). The question is whether the video was pre-rendered and recorded beforehand or if it features the actual game assets.
• MMO is commonly used to refer to an MMORPG, an abbreviation for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. While it makes sense to abbreviate the term, most people refer to an MMORPG as an "MMO", when "MMO" is merely a prefix, as any genre can be Massively Multiplayer and online. Most Massively Multiplayer Online Games happen to be RPGs because the formula had been experimented with the most, but if you refer to game as an "MMOG" or refer to Neocron or PlanetSide as an "MMOFPS" or Darkwind War On Wheels as an "MMOTBS", people will often look at you weirdly and not understand what you meant as other multiplayers, no matter how massive they are just call them "Multiplayer" or "Online".
• A Protagonist is the principle character (or, more loosely, characters) of a work, typically the one from whose perspective it is narrated and usually (though not always) The Hero, or at least the person we're meant to sympathise with. Strictly speaking, there can only be one protagonist. The second-most important character on the protagonist's side is the "Deuteragonist", the third is the "tritagonist", and so forth. An Antagonist is a character who creates problems for the protagonist, and is thus typically The Villain (although again, not always). It is NOT the other way round. Some people get this wrong, even though you'd think it obvious given that 'antagonist' obviously shares a root with 'antagonize'...
• If a person has anorexia, then she is an anorectic or she is anorexic. She is not an anorexic, nor is she anorectic. "Anorectic" is a noun; "anorexic" is an adjective.
• MP3 refers to either the MPEG standard popularly used to encode music or audio files, or a file using this standard. It is not the same as an MP3 player, which is either computer software or a physical media player which plays MP3s, and it is not a catch-all for all kinds of digital audio.
  • On a side note, MP3 does not stand for MPEG-3 but for MPEG-1 Layer 3 (and MPEG-2 Part 3) which is a sound encoding mechanism for the MPEG-1 format. In order to avoid any further confusion, the MPEG (Moving Picture Expert Group) decided there would never be any MPEG-3 standard and thus they went from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4.
  • This is made worse by chinese manufacturers who simply bump the number after "MP" whenever they add a new feature, so we have MP3 player, MP4 player (their 'new feature' is video playback, but they're also unrelated to MPEG-4 and don't support MPEG-4 video at all), MP5 player, MP6 player...
• A riff is "a short, repeated phrase, frequently played over changing chords or harmonies or used as a background to a solo improvisation". The way "riff" is often used, especially by Mystery Science Theater 3000, is as though the riff itself is an improvisation, and "riffing" is the act of coming up with something on the spot. It's actually the opposite: a riff is the same thing repeated over and over again, possibly with slight variation. The confusion likely comes about because riffs are used in jazz, and jazz is improvisational music; but improvisations are not made of riffs, they're made of longer, more complex melodic phrases. Improvisation is the spontaneous creation of a melody, and is not properly called "riffing". An example of "riffing" would be the guitar part in the verse of "You Really Got Me", "Come As You Are", or "Whole Lotta Love"; or in jazz, the repeated horn parts heard most famously in Count Basie arrangements: a short fragment that's repeated constantly and identically.
  • as a note [no pun intended] when people refer to a "riff" or "riffing", what they are probably INTENDING to refer to is "scatting" - scat singing, specifically, although one can scat on any instrument; "scat" officially means "vocal improvisation with wordless vocables" (nonsense syllables generally, sometimes just "oooo" or "aaa", sometimes a single word used over and over, etc) but over the past decades has grown to mean ANY instrument improvising the melody, over the riff, in a jazz or jazz-based song or piece.
• Occasionally, a law-enforcement officer will refer to the scene of a brutal crime as being very "graphic". Well, duh, you're there and you're looking at it, one would expect it to be visual and realistic instead of merely implied. The idea of "graphic" violence in media isn't that it's Gorn, just that it's shown onscreen rather than implied.
• Rein vs. reign. "Reign" means to rule as royalty, "reins" are what one uses to guide a horse. Both involve leadership and sound exactly alike, and so are easily confused. A very common example is the phrase "free rein", which means letting loose of the reins and allowing a horse to wander as it pleases. This is often misused as "free reign", which doesn't even make sense: a King by definition has freedom to reign, it's what makes him a King. So to recap: "reign" refers to a state of having authority, while "free rein" or "being given the reins" refer to the actions of leadership in a situation. If there is a plural, it's almost always going to be "reins".
• Charisma refers to someone's speaking talents and ability to influence others through force of personality and diplomacy. While good looks help, someone is not charismatic because she looks good in a formal dress, or because he has blue eyes and a nice smile; similarly, just because someone is able to speak publicly and get their point across doesn't qualify them either, not unless people are cheering wildly for how the news is presented, rather than the facts themselves.
• Calorie is a non-SI unit of energy (1 cal ≈ 4.2 J). It is relatively small unit however, so caloric intake of foods is usually expressed in kilocalories, (1 kcal = 1000 calories). Thus an average recommended daily energy intake is not 2200 calories but 2200 kilocalories or 2,200,000 calories.
  • A Calorie refers to a kilocalorie, while a calorie refers to the base unit. This can get confusing when 'calorie' is at the beginning of a sentence, which without context, would be indistinguishable as to if it was between the normal unit or the large unit.
• Stereophonic refers to an audio that has exactly two speakers, instead of one (mono) or more (surround), such as four (quadro). It is slightly inaccurate to refer to a system with surround sound as a "stereo", but always inaccurate to refer to the output as being "stereo sound."
  • Less commonly, it can be any sound the gives the illusion of being surrounded by a sound field. It's not useful stereo if the two speakers are stacked one on top of the other, or placed too close together as in a boombox.
• One's interest is piqued, not peaked. This mistake is understandable, since "peak" can be used as a verb to mean "maximize" or "climax"; though your English professor will still probably mark this as being wrong.
• The Immaculate Conception refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who "from the first moment of her existence [...] was preserved by God from the Original Sin and filled with sanctifying grace that would normally come with baptism after birth." Jesus was the Virgin Birth. (Whether Mary actually was immaculately conceived is a huge theological dispute between Catholics and modern Protestants, so nothing more will be said about that.)
  • And the Immaculate Reception is something else entirely...
• A song is called "song" because there's singing in it. If there is no singing in it, it is not a song. There is a proper word for a musical composition without singing. It's a piece. In the context of music in an album or playlist, one might call it a "track" (which encompasses music that does have singing and music that doesn't).
  • Musical definitions are strange animals because composers are always Playing With definitions. Mendelssohn quite famously wrote piano pieces called or "Lieder ohne Worte," or "Songs without words." Even in German, the Lied was associated with singing, and Mendelssohn was Playing With the idea in the 19th century. Also, a "piece" can include singing, but it is normally limited to one where the singing is not the primary purpose, like Beethoven's 9th symphony. However, there is a song in that movement (which we know as "Ode to Joy"). Composers love to Mind Screw with convention.
• A neophyte is someone who is new to something (a newbie); it literally means "new/young/newly-planted plant". A neophile is someone who likes things that are new.
• Novitiate is the state, condition, or period of being a novice, not the person. William Buckley fouls this up in Tucker's Last Stand.
• An epidemic refers to the frequency of a disease substantially exceeding what is expected in recent history.
• A statute of limitations is a law which lays down how much time you have to bring a civil action. It is not the time period itself. When people say "the statute of limitations is about to expire", this makes no sense unless the law itself is about to get turfed with a sunset clause. One of the limitation periods that the statute lays down might be expiring, though.
• Sushi is a food consisting of cooked rice mixed with vinegar ("shari") and other ingredients. It can contain a large variety of ingredients ranging from vegetables, seafood (mostly uncooked, but some are cooked as well), sauces, etc. The shari makes it sushi. Onigiri or (o)musubi is usually rice (no vinegar), another ingredient, wrapped in seaweed.
  • Similarly, Sashimi is taken to be the the word for raw seafood by itself, but it actually refers to the way it is prepared (thin slices), and can apply to other types of meat or vegetables.
• Tween, as originally coined by JRR Tolkien, refers to a person in their twenties. Modern marketing, however, has co-opted the term to refer to the age 10-12 demographic, referring it as a shortened term of "between."
• Ichor originally meant the blood of gods or angels. In later times, it has somehow come to also mean pus. Fiction writers, however, like to use it as a "fancy-sounding" word for pretty much any liquid.
• Your and you're. "Your" is an adjective used to describe something that belongs to the person being addressed, while "you're" is a contraction of "you are". If "you are" would fit instead, then "your" is not the correct word.
• Implicate means to be responsible for something, or to assign responsibility to someone. Insinuate means to subtly hint at something unpleasant. Both are used for "imply", whether positive or negative. Imply actual means to strongly hint at something or include an assumption that something is true.
• Pilot does not simply mean "the first episode of a TV show". It should be used if, and only if, the episode is made by itself with the intention of shopping it around to various networks who will then pick it up as a series. Pulp Fiction, which popularized the term, actually made this distinction, but along the way the word has become conflated with premiere. This usage is especially incorrect when referring to animated shows, which often get a whole season commissioned in advance due to animation lead time, and the pilot or pitch demo, often made cheaply and quickly, is simply redone.
  • The exception, obviously, is when the pilot is made and then broadcast as the first episode.
• Ripoff is either a bad financial scam where you are conned into buying a fake product, or something where you are tricked into giving money without receiving anything in return. A lot of people use "ripoff" to mean the general act of copying or mimicry in general, and in the form of entertainment, a Ripoff is apparently "Something that's similar to a movie I saw before."
• Egregious has been used so egregiously here and on TV Tropes that it has its own page.
• Similarly Your Mileage Will Vary is used as a way of referring to Your Mileage May Vary taken Up to Eleven on especially controversial issues that reach a point where there is no middle ground. Your Mileage May Vary comes from car commercials that say consumers might get a different amount of mileage than is advertised, and on this wiki, means that viewers might not agree with the statement. Using "Your Mileage Will vary" implies unanimous disagreement rather than inevitable controversy.
• Energy does not mean "something glowy". It's a property of material systems. Therefore e.g. the phrase "converted to pure energy" is even more nonsensical than "converted to pure mass" - even annihilated matter doesn't "convert to pure energy", it converts to photons (specifically, gamma rays).
• The word Trope does not come from TV Tropes, and like "subversion" its meaning in the real world is different than on this site. In reality "trope" does not mean "storytelling device" but "the use of a word to have a meaning different than the usual one."
• The word logical does not mean "reasonable" or "the result of a well-shaped argument". It means "defined according to the rules of logic", logic being a number of highly specific ways to describe and analyze the interaction between set premises.
• One that shows up every now and again is equivocal to mean "equivalent". An equivocal statement is one that is ambiguous and open to interpretation (conversely, an unequivocal statement is one in which the meaning is clear).
• "Subspace" means "subset of a set that must be a space, which is a valid space and is compatible with said superset in definitions of basic operations".
• People often still call road rollers and excavators "steamrollers" and "steam shovels", respectively, even though steam-powered versions of such equipment fell out of use around 1930.
• Purgatory: This word is an often-misunderstood Catholic doctrine. Many believe the word is either a synonym for Hell or possibly a type of temporary Hell where a soul can be granted "parole" after penance and redemption (the latter concept used by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy. In truth, the Church refers to Purgatory as "the Church Expectant", meaning it is a place of cleansing and purification after leaving the "Church Militant" (life as a mortal) before a soul can join the "Church Triumphant" which most call Heaven. Not that this is always needed, as innocents suffering from disease, poverty, or persecution will be considered to have undergone the cleansing during life and will be admitted to the Church Triumphant immediately upon death and granted access to Paradise.
• Hamburger originally meant the type of meat the sandwich is made from, not the sandwich itself. In other words, ground beef. It wasn't until this sort of beef became popular in the United States that someone decided to make them into sandwich patties and call them hamburgers.
• Soap Opera: Originally, back when these daytime serials originated on radio, they were low-budget programs whose sponsors were almost exclusively soap and detergent manufacturers, and "soap opera" was a derogatory term. In comparison, the term "horse opera" was used at the time low budget westerns, while "space opera" was used for science fiction. Since then, the term "soap opera" is more out of tradition than anything else, "space opera" is still a popular term, while "horse opera" has been replaced by Spaghetti Western.