Among its many intricacies and oddities, the English language yields several examples of word pairs that differ only by one letter between them and yet differ widely in meaning.  One of the most common such pairings is complement and compliment.  As close as they appear and, thus, as easy as they are to confuse, they have two entirely different definitions.  To use one where you mean the other can be more embarrassing than you might imagine.  One area where they’re easily mixed up is in descriptions of food and wine.  To say, for example, that a certain burgundy complements the short ribs you’re serving for dinner is to mean that the flavor of one rounds out and brings out the flavor of the other; each completes the other.  To substitute compliments for complements in such a situation isn’t entirely without justification.  Still, a more apt use of compliment might be what you pay the host upon tasting the deliciously complementary flavors of the burgundy and short ribs.  Typically, wines don’t dole out compliments. [Read more…]

On the April 5 edition of 60 Minutes, long-time correspondent Morley Safer opened his segment on Wikipedia by referring to it as “the greatest argument-settler wrought by man.”  That’s April 5, 2015.  Really?  We’re still saying and hearing phrases like “known to man” or “mankind has always . . .”?  And even on a TV show with some claim to intellectual respectability like 60 Minutes? [Read more…]

“Next year sees the publication of A Wilderness of Monkeys, Howard Jacbson’s literary re-imagining of Merchant [Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice]. Writing post-Holocaust gives him the chance to exploit the ambivalence in Shakespeare’s text. ‘Who is the hero of this play and who is the villain?’ Jacobson said when the book was announced.”

–Preti Taneja, in an article for The Conversation about censoring Shakespeare

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