I read recently on Facebook that one of my friends had encountered ‘hoards’ of Japanese tourists during her visit to Cambridge.
Unless the city has started hoarding its tourists in cupboards and refusing to allow them to leave, I would imagine my friend was referring to ‘hordes’.
It’s not a surprising error. Indeed, it’s not a confusion I’d ever considered before noticing it on that Facebook status and, until fairly recently, I was probably making the same mistake.
I’ve seen perfectly competent writers slip up with such cringe worthy offerings as ‘I poured over the document’ and ‘She gave her ascent to my proposal’. Is it any wonder, though, when the English language is full of bizarre (bazaar!) words that sound the same but mean something entirely different?
Other words I’ve noticed causing a lot (or ‘alot’ as is seen a lot) of confusion are:
Bated/ baited (‘I await with baited breath.’ Really?)
Alter/ altar (‘My altar ego’)
Bear/ bare (‘I can’t bare this place’)
Precedence/ president (‘This has set a president for future negotiations’)
Envelop/ envelope (‘We need to envelope the company ethos …’)
Stationery/ stationary (‘Teachers need to check their stationary supplies’)
The ‘stationary’ example above was found in a respected newspaper’s education supplement, which just shows how easily it’s done.
Please share any vocabulary confusions you’ve noticed recently.