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Words are not what they seem

 
23

‘Look it up in the dictionary!’ – That’s what my mother always told me when I ran across a word I didn’t understand. Good advice, yes? But this was before the internet, and lugging that hefty volume off the shelf wasn’t nearly as appealing as doing the next best thing—guessing at the meaning according to the context of the sentence. And that seemed good enough.

I’ve been doing the same thing for years when it comes to the spoken word. I adopted words I liked, heard often on television, from friends, on the university campus, and read in books, assuming I knew what they meant. They sound right. They’re fun to say. I use them the way others do. The only problem is—I think they mean something they don’t. Take a look at this list of commonly misunderstood words and see if you’ve made some faulty assumptions, too. You might be surprised!

 

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Tags: thing, doing, spoken, adopted, words, Words, years, comes