Plain Words: A Guide to the Use of English

IV

Correctness

My Lord, I do here, in the Name of all the Learned and Polite Persons of the Nation, complain to Your Lordship, as First Minister, that our Language is extremely imperfect; that its daily Improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily Corruptions; that the Pretenders to polish and refine it, have chiefly multiplied Abuses and Absurdities; and, that in many Instances, it offends against every Part of Grammar.

SWIFT, Proposal for Correcting, Improving and
Ascertaining the English Tongue, 1712

We will now turn to the implications of a remark I made in Chapter I: ‘Lapses from what for the time being is regarded as correct irritate readers educated to notice errors, distract their attention, and so make them less likely to be affected precisely as you wish’. This suggests a fourth rule to add to the three with which we finished the last chapter—‘be correct’. It applies to both vocabulary and grammar. This chapter is concerned with vocabulary only, and grammar will be the subject of Chapter IX.

Correctness of vocabulary seems once to have been enforced more sternly on officials than it is now. More than two centuries ago the Secretary to the Commissioners of Excise wrote this letter to the Supervisor of Pontefract:

The Commissioners on their perusal of your 2nd Round Diary observe that you make use of many affected phrases and incongruous words as ‘phantation’, ‘preconception’, ‘harmony’, ‘scotomy’, ‘illegal procedure’, … all which you use in a sense which the words do not naturally bear. I am ordered to acquaint you that if you hereafter continue that affected and schoolboy way of writing and to murder the language in such a manner you will be discharged for a fool. (Quoted in Edward Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825, 1934)

To us the punishment seems disproportionate to the offence, though the same penalty today might prove gratifying to those who think we have too many officials. That said, we can have nothing but admiration for the sentiment of the letter and for the vigorous directness of its phrasing. It serves moreover to illustrate a difficulty presented by this chapter’s precept. What is correctness, and who is to be the judge of it? It cannot be the same now as it was then. A collector of customs and excise today might certainly use the expression illegal procedure without being called into question, and might even refer safely to ‘harmony of relations with trade’. On the other hand it would not do now to say, as the Supervisor of Pontefract might have said, that the local bench was ‘an indifferent body’, meaning that they performed their duties with impartiality, or that a certain businessman prevented the arrival of his staff at his office, meaning that he always got there first.

English is not static—neither in vocabulary, nor in grammar, nor yet in that elusive quality called style. The fashion in prose alternates between the ornate and the plain, the elevated and the colloquial. Grammar and punctuation have defied all efforts over the years to force them into the mould of a permanent code of rules. Old words drop out or change their meanings; new words are admitted. What was stigmatised by the purists of one generation as a corruption of the language may a few generations later be accepted as an enrichment, and what was then common currency may have become a pompous archaism or acquired new significance.

Eminent figures with a care for the language, such as Swift, have from time to time proposed that an Authority should be set up to preserve what is good and resist what is bad. ‘They will find’, he said, in his Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue, ‘many Words that deserve to be utterly thrown out of our language, many more to be corrected; and perhaps not a few, long since antiquated, which ought to be restored, on account of their Energy and Sound.’ Swift’s plea, made in the form of a letter to the Lord Treasurer, came to nothing, causing Lord Chesterfield, Swift’s contemporary, to observe dryly in an essay of 1754 that this was less than surprising, ‘precision and perspicuity not being in general the favourite objects of Ministers’. A year later, in the Preface to his Dictionary, Dr Johnson described the task as hopeless:

Academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse invaders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been in vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.

More recently we have seen a Society for Pure English, with eminent leaders, inviting the support of those who ‘would aim at preserving all the richness of differentiation in our vocabulary, its nice grammatical usages, its traditional idioms, and the music of its inherited pronunciation’, but would oppose ‘whatever is slipshod and careless, and all blurring of hard-won distinctions’, while opposing no less ‘the tyranny of schoolmasters and grammarians, both in their pedantic conservatism, and in their ignorant enforcing of new-fangled rules’. But it is now defunct.

Dr Johnson was right, as usual. One has only to look at the words proposed by Swift for inclusion in his Index Expurgatorius to realise how difficult, delicate and disappointing it is to resist new words and new meanings. He condemns, for instance, sham, banter, mob, bully and bamboozle. A generation later Dr Johnson called clever a ‘low word’ and fun and stingy ‘low cant’. Should we not have been poorer if Swift and Johnson had had their way in this? There is no saying how things will go. The fight for admission to the language is quickly won by some assailants, but long resistance is maintained against others. The word that excited Swift to greatest fury was mob, a contraction of mobile vulgus. Its victory was rapid and complete. So was that of banter and bamboozle, which he found hardly less offensive. And if rep for reputation has never quite risen above being slang, and phiz for physiognomy is now dead, that is not because Swift denounced them, but because public opinion did not fully embrace them.

Some words gatecrash irresistibly because their sound is so appropriate to the meaning they are trying to acquire. Gatecrash is itself an example. It comes from America and has only been in the language since the 1930s. We still have defenders of our tongue who scrutinise such words, condemning them as undesirables. But we ought not to forget how greatly our language has been enriched by the ebullient word-making habit of the Americans. Acquisitions of the past few decades include debunk, commuter, cold war, nifty, babysitter, stockpile, bulldoze, teenager, traffic jam, underdog and many others. I do not see why people should turn up their noses at words that usefully fill a gap. These things are a matter of taste, but one’s own taste is of no importance unless it happens to reflect the general.

Reliable was long opposed on the curious ground that it was an impossible construction; an adjective formed from rely could only be reli-on-able. I remember noticing as a junior in the India Office many years ago that the Secretary of State struck it out of a draft despatch and wrote in trustworthy, but that must have been almost the last shot fired at it. The objection to it was a survival of a curious theory, widely held in pre-Fowler days, that no sentence could be ‘good grammar’, and no word a respectable word, if its construction violated logic or reason. But it is not the habit of the English to refrain from doing anything merely because it is illogical, and in any case it was less illogical to accept reliable than to strain at it after swallowing available and objectionable. (I shall have more to say about pedantry when we consider grammar in Chapter IX.)

Nice in the sense in which it is ordinarily used in conversation today has still not yet fully established itself in literary English, though we know from the rather priggish lecture that Henry Tilney gives about it to Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey that it was trying to get over the barrier as far back as the start of the nineteenth century:

‘Oh! it is a very nice word indeed! it does for every thing. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement;—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.’

‘While, in fact,’ cried his sister, ‘it ought only to be applied to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise.’

Equally, haver does not mean ‘vacillate’ (it means ‘blather’), but almost everyone south of the Border thinks it does: there is no withstanding its suggestion of simultaneous hovering and wavering. The dictionaries do not yet recognise this, but doubtless they will soon bow to the inevitable.*

There has been further stout resistance to certain words that attacked the barrier in the nineteenth century with powerful encouragement from Dickens—mutual, individual and aggravate. Mutual, not in the sense of ‘reciprocated’ but of ‘common’ or ‘pertaining to both parties’, as in Our Mutual Friend, goes back to the sixteenth century, according to the OED, yet some people still regard this as incorrect. Perhaps the reason it is so difficult to restrain the word to its ‘correct’ meaning is the ambiguity of common. (‘Our common friend’ might be taken as a reflection on the friend’s manners or birth.)* The use of individual that is unquestionably correct is to distinguish a single person from a collective body, as it is used in the Income Tax Acts to distinguish between a personal taxpayer and a corporate one. But its use as a facetious term of disparagement was once common and still lingers. That was how Mr Jorrocks, Surtees’s hero, understood it when Mr Martin Moonface described him as an ‘unfortunate individual’, provoking the retort ‘You are another indiwidual’. Over aggravate the long-drawn-out struggle still continues between those who, like Dickens, use it in the sense of ‘annoy’ and those who would confine it to its original sense of ‘make worse’.† About all these words, in the minds of purists, the issue is still in the balance. About all these words, in the minds of purists, the issue is still in the balance.

It is around new verbs that battles rage most hotly. New verbs are ordinarily formed in one of three ways, all of which have been employed in the past to create useful additions to our vocabulary. The first is the simple method of treating a noun as a verb. It is one of the beauties of our language that nouns can be converted so readily into verbs and adjectives. Elbow, for instance, was a 600-year-old noun when Shakespeare made it into a verb in King Lear. The second is what is called ‘back-formation’, that is to say, forming from a noun the sort of verb from which the noun might have been formed had the verb come first. In this way the verb diagnose was formed from diagnosis. The third is to add ise* to an adjective, as sterilise has been formed from sterile. All these methods are being used today with no little zest. New verbs for something that is itself new (like pressurise) cannot be gainsaid. Service is a natural and useful newcomer in an age when almost everyone keeps a machine of some sort that needs periodical attention. But it provides an interesting example of the way in which new verbs, once you give them an inch, may take a yard. Service is already ousting serve, as in

A large number of depots of one sort or another will be required to service the town.

To enable the Local Authority to take advantage of this provision it is essential that sites should be available, ready serviced with roads and sewers.

As I write, the credentials of to contact are still in dispute between those like Sir Alan Herbert, who in his book of 1935, What a Word!, calls it ‘loathsome’, and those like Ivor Brown, who, in A Word in your Ear of 1942, holds that it can claim indulgence on the ground that besides this ‘there is no word which covers approach by telephone, letter and speech’, and contact is ‘self-explanatory and concise’. If I were to hazard a prophecy, it would be that contact will win, but for the present it still excites in some people feelings akin to those aroused by split infinitives and those kind of things. So do feature, glimpse, position, sense and signature when used as verbs, though all have long since found their way into dictionaries. So do the verbs loan, gift and author, though these were verbs centuries ago, and are only trying to come back again after a long holiday, spent by loan in America, by gift in Scotland and by author in oblivion. Whatever their fate may prove to be, we shall not be disposed to welcome such a word as reaccessioned, used by a librarian of a book once more available to subscribers. To underground (of electric cables) seems at first sight an unnecessary addition to our vocabulary of verbs when bury is available, but an editor to whom protest was made retorted that bury would not have done because the cables were ‘live’.

But these words are mere skirmishers. The main body of the invasions consists of verbs ending in ise. Among those now nosing their way into the language are civilianise (replace military staff by civil), editorialise (make editorial comments on), finalise (finally settle), hospitalise (send to hospital), and publicise (give publicity to). The reason for inventing them seems to be to enable us to say in one word what would otherwise need several. Whether that will prove a valid passport time alone can show. If the words I have listed were all, they might be swallowed, though with wry faces. But they are by no means all. A glut of this diet is being offered to us (trialise, itinerise, casualise and reliableise are among the specimens sent to me), and they continue to come no matter our nausea. It is perhaps significant that at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II the word Inthroning was substituted for the first time for Inthronisation, used in all previous coronations. This may be symptomatic of a revolt against the ugliness of ise and still more of isation, which Sir Alan Herbert has compared to lavatory fittings, useful in their proper place but not to be multiplied beyond what is necessary for practical purposes.

Some of these, it is to be hoped, may prove to be freaks of an occasion and will be seen no more. But there is a class that appears permanent. This comprises verbs that denote the undoing of something the doing of which called for—or at any rate was given—a special term. If to affect with gas is to contaminate, to enforce a speed limit is to restrict, and to commandeer a house is to requisition, then the cancellation of those things will inevitably, whether we like it or not, be decontaminate, derestrict and derequisition, and it is no use saying that they ought to be cleanse, exempt or release, or any other words that are not directly linked with their opposites. Most of the new dis-words since the war have been invented by economists (several by The Economist itself). Disincentive and disinflation, received at first with surprised disapproval, seem to have quite settled down. It is recognised that the old-fashioned opposites of incentive and inflation—deterrent and deflation—will not do: we need a special word for the particular form of deterrent that discourages us from working hard, and for a process of checking inflation that is something less than deflation. Yet on the heels of these new arrivals come diseconomy and dissaving:

It would yield economies that would far outweigh the diseconomies that are the inevitable price of public ownership and giant size.

Some 13.4 million of the 22 million income earners … kept their spending in such exact step with their incomes that they saved or dissaved less than £25 in that year.

Will these be accepted also on the ground that in the first, no positive word—neither extravagance nor waste nor wastefulness—would express the writer’s meaning so well as ‘diseconomies’, and that in the second, ‘dissaved’ is the only way of expressing the opposite of saved without a clumsy periphrasis that would destroy the nice balance of the sentence? Perhaps; it is at least certain that these words spring from deliberate and provocative choice and not from mental indolence. What is deplorable is that so many of those who go in for the invention of opposites by means of ‘living prefixes with privative force’ do not know when to stop. It becomes a disease. ‘Disincentive’ replaces deterrent, then ‘undisincentive’ ousts incentive, and then disincentive itself has to yield to ‘non-undisincentive’. In George Orwell’s ‘newspeak’, which he pictured as the language of 1984, ‘very bad’ has become ‘doubleplusungood’.

The same warning is needed about the prefix non. To put non in front of a word is a well-established way of creating a word with the opposite meaning. Non-appearance, non-combatant, non-conformist and non-existent are common examples. But the lazy habit of using non to turn any word upside down, so as not to have the trouble of thinking of its opposite, is becoming sadly common. ‘Institutions for the care of the non-sick’ presumably means something different from ‘institutions for the care of the healthy’, but the difference is not apparent. I should have said that this trick was of recent origin if Mr G. M. Young had not sent me an early example of it that would hold against any modern rival. Sir John Simon, an eminent surgeon who later became a government official, giving evidence in 1869 before a Royal Commission on Sanitary Laws, referred to ‘a disease hereditarily transmissible and spreading among the non-fornicative part of the population’. Mr Young says he was surprised to come across this, because Simon was a man of culture and a friend of Ruskin. ‘It just shows’, he adds unkindly, ‘what Whitehall can do.’

Yet another favourite device for making new words is the suffix ee. This is an erratic suffix, not conforming wholly to any rule. But in its main type it serves to denote the object of a verb, generally the indirect object, as in assignee, referee and trustee, but sometimes the direct object, as in examinee, trainee and evacuee. It therefore makes for confusion of language if the suffix is used to form a word meaning the subject of a verb. Escapee is worse than useless; we already have escaper. When unskilled labour is used to ‘dilute’ skilled labour, the unskilled ought to be called not dilutees, as they are officially termed, but dilutors. The skilled are the dilutees. Apart from misuse such as this, we are getting too many ee words. They are springing up like weeds. Their purpose seems to be the same as that of many of our new verbs: to enable us to use one word instead of several. But we have got on very well for quite a long time without such words as expellee and persecutee.

While the age-long practice of creating new words has quickened its tempo, so has the no less ancient habit of extending the meaning of established words. Here again we ought to examine the novelties on their merits, without bias. The main test for both is whether the new word, or the new meaning, fills a need in the vocabulary. If it is trying to take a seat already occupied—as the new verbs decision and suspicion are squatting in the places of decide and suspect, and the enlarged meanings of anticipate and claim in those of expect and assert—they are clearly harming the language by ‘blurring hard-won distinctions’. Still more are words like overall and involve open to that charge: they are claiming the seats of half a dozen or more honest words. But those that claim seats hitherto empty may deserve to be admitted. Stagger, for example, has recently enlarged its meaning logically and usefully in such a phrase as ‘staggered holidays’.

Nor do I see why purists should condemn the use of nostalgic not only for a feeling of homesickness but also for the emotion aroused by thinking of the days that are no more. An appeal to etymology is not conclusive. When a word starts to stray from its derivative meaning it may often be proper, and sometimes even useful, to try to restrain it. There are many now who would like to restrain the wanderlust of alibi and shambles. The ignorant misuse of technical terms excites violent reactions in those who know their true meanings. The popular use of to the nth degree in the sense of ‘to the utmost’ exasperates the mathematician, who knows that strictly the notion of largeness is not inherent in to the nth degree at all. The use of by and large in the sense of ‘broadly speaking’ exasperates the sailor, who knows that the true meaning of the phrase—alternately close to the wind and with the wind abeam or aft—has not the faintest relation to the meaning given to its present usage. But there is a point when it becomes idle pedantry to try to put back into their etymological cages words and phrases that escaped from them many years ago, and that are now settled down firmly elsewhere. To do so is to start on a path on which there is no logical stopping point short of such absurdities as insisting that muscle means nothing but ‘little mouse’, or that the word anecdote can only be applied to a story never told before, whereas we all know that now it generally means one told too often.

Sometimes words appear to have changed their meanings when the real change is in the popular estimate of the value of the ideas they stand for. So imperialism, which in 1881 Lord Rosebery, the future Liberal Prime Minister, could define as ‘the greater pride in Empire … a larger patriotism’, has fallen from its pedestal. And academic is suffering a similar debasement owing to the waning of love of learning for its own sake and the growth of mistrust of intellectual activities that have no immediate utilitarian results. In music, according to the music critic of The Times, academic ‘has descended from the imputation of high esteem to being a withering term of polite abuse’, in spite of an attempt by Stanford, the composer, to stop the rot by describing it as ‘a term of opprobrium applied by those who do not know their business to those who do’.

Public opinion decides all these questions in the long run. There is little individuals can do about them. Our national vocabulary is a democratic institution, and what is generally accepted will ultimately be correct. I have no doubt that anyone happening to read this book in fifty years’ time would find current objections to the use of certain words in certain senses as curious as we now find Swift’s denunciation of the word mob. Lexicographers soon find this out. I have quoted Dr Johnson. Some seventy years later, Noah Webster was reported by the traveller Basil Hall to have said much the same thing in different words:

It is quite impossible to stop the progress of language—it is like the course of the Mississippi, the motion of which, at times, is scarcely perceptible; yet even then it possesses a momentum quite irresistible … Words and expressions will be forced into use, in spite of all the exertions of all the writers in the world.

The duty of the official is, however, clear. Just as it has long been recognised that, in salaries and wages, the Civil Service must neither walk ahead of public opinion nor lag behind it, but, in the old phrase, be ‘in the first flight of good employers’, so it is the duty of officials in their use of English neither to perpetuate what is obsolescent nor to give currency to what is novel, but, like good servants, to follow what is generally regarded by their masters as the best practice for the time being. Among an official’s readers will be vigilant guardians of the purity of English prose, and they must not be offended. So the official’s vocabulary must contain only words that by general consent have passed the barrier; and no helping hand should be given to any that are still trying to get through, even if they appear deserving.

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice.

Mr Eliot adds to these lines from ‘Little Gidding’, that in the sentence that is ‘right’,

every word is at home,

Taking its place to support the others,

The word neither diffident nor ostentatious

An easy commerce of the old and new,

The common word exact without vulgarity,

The formal word precise but not pedantic,

The complete consort dancing together …

Note. Gowers remarked in the middle of this chapter, ‘There is no saying how things will go’. But after more than half a century, it is at least possible to say what happened next to some of the new or ‘loathsome’ words that he discussed in 1954.

The verb to signature, for example, has failed to stick, but to underground survives in the jargon of the National Grid, and to contact has become entirely unremarkable. To service, which he thought a useful newcomer, almost immediately expanded its meaning into the unhappy realm of the utilitarian sex act. Dissave (to spend savings), diseconomy and derestrict persist as jargon, as does derequisition, though liberated from its narrow, post-war meaning. Dehumidify, another verb Gowers hoped would disappear completely, has now entered ordinary speech. To reaccession is still in use, but he was right that in general we should not be disposed to welcome it; and sadly, since the 1970s to deaccession has also found a place, ‘deaccessioning’, selling off exhibits, being the last resort of the impoverished gallery or museum. Purists still fume when they find mutual and aggravate given the senses of ‘common’ and ‘annoy’ (making mutual mean ‘common’ seems to have started with Shakespeare); however, a further word Gowers listed with those two, phenomenal, surely now means ‘prodigious’ in anyone’s vocabulary. As a poor reflection of modern politics, expellee and persecutee, after something of a lull, are coming back into ever greater use; and amputee, another word Gowers thought superfluous, is now unexceptionable. (Some people argue that amputee should refer not to the person who has endured surgery but to the bits that got taken off: to Nelson’s arm, so to speak, and not the rest of him. At least one might agree that the word itself has been lopped, and should really be ‘amputatee’.)

The habit of making adjectives out of other words by adding the suffix able continues apace. Those who once protested that reliable should be reli-on-able would presumably also argue that today’s relatable should be relate-to-able. (According to the Daily Mail, the Duchess of Cambridge is ‘relatable’ because she makes a habit of wearing the same garment twice.) Another adjective of this kind is scalable as it is now used in commercial English, where a ‘scalable’ business is always ‘scale-up-able’, or one that has the potential to be made larger.

Not all verbs created by means of ise are inexpedient, as Gowers conceded. Not all are necessary either. ‘Reliableise’ and ‘deinsectize’ may have died a quick death, but initialise has jumped the bounds of computer jargon and is now being used in the most general sense of to ‘begin’. Again, though to decision and to suspicion may not have lasted as examples of a form Gowers deplored, modern instances proliferate: to solution is creeping into the language in place of to solve (‘Prior to starting, you need to be able to solution these kinds of questions’); to action is used for to put in action or simply do, to transition is made to take the place of move, shift, switch, adapt, change—even, now, of to transit.

There are still writers who have what Gowers called ‘the lazy habit of using non to turn any word upside down’. A recent statistical report for the Department for Work and Pensions (Research Report No 416) found that men are ‘more disadvantaged by disability’ than women, giving as one reason that ‘a much higher proportion of non-disabled women than non-disabled men are non-employed in any case’. This could perfectly well have been written, ‘Among those adults capable of work, women are much less likely than men to have jobs’.

Gowers ended this chapter on correctness with a list, given below, of words and phrases that he described as ‘often used in senses generally regarded as incorrect’. Also given below are his clarifications of some knotty points of idiom and of spelling. He drew a distinction between the uses ‘generally thought to be incorrect’ marshalled in this chapter, and uses he considered merely ‘unsuitable’, examples of which are given at the end of Chapter VII (‘Seductive Words’) and Chapter VIII (‘Clichés and Overworked Metaphors’). He acknowledged that it was hard to draw a line between the two classes, the ‘incorrect’ and the merely ‘unsuitable’, adding that it was still harder to get others to agree about where this line should fall—if they even agreed that it warranted being drawn in the first place. He concluded, ‘Even if my choice is right now, it will almost certainly be out of date before long’.

It turns out, however, that by the lights of those who continue to care about these things, many of the words and phrases that he placed in the ‘incorrect’ category in 1954 remain there. It is true that a few of his bugbears have become so obscure that there is no longer a pressing need to warn against them. Who these days mistakes a prescriptive right for an indefeasible one, or wrongly uses desiderate to mean ‘desire’? It is not the fashion now to use ‘desiderate’ at all, though this verb enshrines what must be a widespread experience, that of longing with painful regret for something we miss or lack. But these obsolete examples are the minority. The rest of his list is given below, followed by a few examples of comparable incorrect uses too recently popular for him to have warned against them. These may themselves in future come to be universally accepted as correct, and in some cases were correct in the past. But for the time being they can be expected to irritate those whom Gowers called ‘vigilant guardians of the purity of English prose’. ~

WORDS AND PHRASES OFTEN USED INCORRECTLY

Alibi

Alibi is often now used in the sense of ‘excuse’, or of an admission of guilt with a plea of extenuating circumstances, or of throwing the blame on someone else. So we find that ‘Members of the timber trade, like members of any other trade, are glad of any alibi to explain any particular increases in price’. But alibi is the Latin for ‘elsewhere’. To plead an alibi is to rebut a charge by adducing evidence that the person charged was elsewhere at the time the criminal act was committed. The mischief is that if the novel, diluted use establishes itself, the language will lose precision, and we shall be left without a word to signify the true meaning of alibi.

Alternately and Alternatively

These are sometimes confused. Alternately means ‘by turns’. Alternatively means ‘in a way that offers choice’. ‘The journey may be made by rail or alternately by road’ means, if it means anything, that every other journey is made by road. It does not mean, as the writer intended, that for every journey, the traveller has a choice between the two means of transport. Conversely, ‘alternatively they sat and walked by moonlight, talking of this and that’ cannot have been intended to mean that they sat and walked in the moonlight as an alternative to doing something else. What must have been intended is that they sat and walked alternately.

Anticipate

The use of this word as a synonym for expect is now so common that it may be a waste of time to fight it any longer. But I should like even now to put in a plea that the official will set a good example by never using anticipate except in its correct sense, that is to say, to convey the idea of forestalling or acting in advance of an expected event, as in the time-honoured reply of Chancellors of the Exchequer, ‘I cannot anticipate my budget statement’.*

Approximate

This means ‘very close’. An approximate estimate is one that need not be exact, but should be as near as you can conveniently make it. There is no need to use approximately when about or roughly would do as well or even better. Moreover, the habit of using approximately leads to the absurdity of saying ‘very approximately’ when what is meant is very roughly, or in other words, not very approximately.

Note. Gowers caved in on this point when he revised Fowler in 1965, allowing that very approximately was universally understood to mean ‘very roughly’. It is worth remembering, even so, that because proximate means ‘close’ the phrase close proximity is tautological. ~

A Priori

Do not say a priori when you mean prima facie. In fact you can probably get by without either. It is wrong to say that if many medically advanced countries have done without a certain drug for twenty years, this ‘is sufficient to show that there is an a priori case for its total abolition’. To argue a priori is to argue from assumed axioms and not from experience. (The fact that the argument here rests on the twenty-year experience of several countries makes it an argument a posteriori.)

Prima facie, which is probably what the writer had in mind, means ‘on a first impression’, before hearing fully the evidence for and against.

Beg the Question

To beg the question is to form a conclusion by making an assumption that is as much in need of proof as the conclusion itself. Logicians call this petitio principii. Brewer gives the following example: ‘to say that parallel lines will never meet because they are parallel is simply to assume as a fact the very thing you profess to prove’.

Note. Gowers felt it necessary to add to this explanation that to beg the question did not mean (as was then commonly supposed) to ‘evade a straight answer to a question’. It does not mean that today either, in common or any other use: the error he was resisting has been overwhelmed by another. The phrase to ‘beg the question’ is now so far removed from its original meaning that it is freely used where to ‘raise’ a question would do, though the choice of beg can sometimes imply special urgency. If there is any lingering sense of difficulty attached to ‘begging’ a question, it is perhaps reflected in the peculiar new usage, to ‘beggar the question’. Presumably this mutation has sprung into being as an echo of ‘beggaring’ belief or description (a figurative use introduced into the language by Shakespeare). But though to beggar means to ‘exhaust’ or ‘outdo’, a question supposedly ‘beggared’ is not introduced in this way because it is thought unanswerable. Rather, it has yet to be answered.

There is no hope that ‘begging the question’ will ever again be reserved for the censure of petitio principii (reserved, that is, for condemning the logic of a remark such as ‘mercy killing cannot be condoned because it involves the taking of a life’). Yet even a liberal ear, happy to accept beg as meaning ‘raise’, might baulk at how beg the question is itself now regularly mangled. In the Daily Mail we find, ‘the question begs: when should you give in … ?’; a correspondent for The Times writes, ‘But as your question begs: where and how?’; and in a sociology journal, an academic throws out rhetorically, ‘The question begs of why?’ It is tempting to respond, in the words of a writer for the Guardian, ‘The whole thing beggars several questions’. ~

Comprise

A body comprises, or consists of, the elements of which it is composed, or constituted. It is wrong to speak of the ‘smaller Regional Hospitals which comprise a large proportion of those available to Regional Boards’. Here, the Regional Hospitals form or constitute a large proportion of those available.

The OED recognises comprise in the sense of ‘compose’, but calls it ‘rare’. Once again, in the interests of precision, it should remain so. The difference between comprise and include is that comprise is better when all the components are enumerated and include when only some of them are.

Note. Perhaps it was a general anxiety about the distinction Gowers outlines above that gave rise to the garbled form ‘comprises of’. This phrase is a particular favourite of estate agents in their descriptions of houses for sale, though it is made to vie for place with ‘boasts of’: ‘the accommodation comprises of three bedrooms, generous lounge, separate dining room …’. Though comprises alone (or even boasts alone) would be correct here, has is all that is really needed. ~

Definitive

This word differs from definite by imparting the idea of finality. A definite offer is an offer exact in its terms. A definitive offer is the last word of the person who makes it.

Dilemma

Dilemma originally had a precise meaning that it would be a pity not to preserve. It should not therefore be treated as the equivalent of a ‘difficulty’, or, colloquially, a ‘fix’ or a ‘jam’. To be in a dilemma (or, if you want to show your learning, to be ‘on the horns of a dilemma’) is to be faced with two (and only two) courses of action, each of which is likely to have awkward results.

Disinterested

Disinterested, according to the OED, means ‘unbiased by personal interest’. It is sometimes wrongly used for uninterested, i.e. ‘not interested’. A minister recently said that he hoped an earlier speech he had given in Parliament would excuse him ‘from the charge of being disinterested in this matter’. But people in such positions, dealing with public business, can never be ‘charged’ with being disinterested, as if it were a crime. It is their elementary duty always to be so.

i.e. and e.g.

These are sometimes confused, especially by the wrong use of i.e. to introduce an example; i.e. (id est) means ‘that is’ and introduces a definition, as one might say ‘we are meeting on the second Tuesday of this month, i.e. the tenth’; e.g. (exempli gratia) means ‘for the sake of example’ and introduces an illustration, as one might say ‘let us meet on a fixed day every month, e.g. the second Tuesday’.

Infer

It is a common error to use infer for imply: ‘I felt most bitter about this attitude … it inferred great ignorance and stupidity on the part of the enemy’. A writer or speaker implies what a reader or hearer infers. ‘If you see a man staggering along the road you may infer that he is drunk, without saying a word;’ explains Sir Alan Herbert, ‘but if you say “Had one too many?” you do not infer but imply that he is drunk.’ There is authority for infer in the sense of imply, as there is for comprise in the sense of compose. But here again the distinction is worth preserving in the interests of the language.

Leading Question

This does not mean, as is widely supposed, a question designed to embarrass the person questioned. On the contrary, because it is asked in such a way as to suggest its own answer, it may be one that helps the person. ‘You never meant to damage the Department’s reputation, did you?’ is a leading question. ‘What did you do?’ is not. In court, lawyers are barred from putting leading questions to those witnesses whom they themselves have called.

Majority

The major part and the majority ought not to be used when a plain most would meet the case. They should be reserved for occasions when the difference between a majority and a minority is significant. Thus ‘most of the members have been slack in their attendance’, but ‘the majority of members are likely to be against the proposal’.

Maximum

It is curiously easy to say the opposite of what one means when making comparisons of quantity, time or distance, especially if they are negative. A common type of this confusion is to be found in such statements as ‘Meetings will be held at not less than monthly intervals’, when what is meant is that the meetings will be not less frequent than once a month, that is to say, at not more than monthly intervals. Maximum and minimum sometimes cause a similar confusion, leading to one being used for the other, as has happened in the following sentence taken from a passage condemning the wounding of wild animals by shooting at them from too far away: ‘It would be impossible to attempt to regulate shooting by laying down minimum ranges and other details of that sort’.

Mitigate

Mitigate for militate is a curiously common malapropism. An example is: ‘I do not think this ought to mitigate against my chances of promotion’.

Note. Though Gowers saw no need to explain further, he could have added that the expression ‘mitigate against’ is not only curiously common but also simply curious. To militate against is to ‘counter’ or to exert a negative force on something, but to mitigate means to make more bearable or to ‘appease’. ‘Mitigate against’ ought therefore to have a sense akin to ‘alleviate against’, which, if it means anything at all, should cancel itself out. All the same, when a former Chief of the General Staff, in an article on combat in Afghanistan, explains that ‘an unlucky shot by a rocket-propelled grenade or a machinegun at close range remains a hazard that is very hard to mitigate against’, this does somehow carry the ring of truth. ~

Practical and Practicable

Practical, with its implied antithesis of theoretical, means ‘useful in practice’. Practicable means simply ‘capable of being carried out in action’, should anyone wish to do so. Something that is practicable may nevertheless be impractical (such as hoisting a loose giraffe on to the deck of a ship).

Protagonist

This word is not the opposite of antagonist (one who contends with another). The pair must not be used as synonyms of supporter and opponent, the pros and the antis. Protagonist has nothing to do with the Latin word pro: its first syllable is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘first’. Its literal meaning is the principal actor in a play; hence it is used for the most prominent personage in any affair. It is not necessarily associated with the advocacy of anything, although it often happens to be so in fact. When we say that Mr Willett was protagonist in the movement for summer time, we are not saying that he was pro summer time. We are saying that he played a leading part in the movement. Protagonist should not be used in the sense merely of ‘advocate’ or ‘champion’.

Resource

There is much pardonable confusion between resource, recourse and resort. The most common mistake is to write ‘have resource to’ instead of have recourse to or have resort to. The correct usage can be illustrated thus: ‘They had recourse (or had resort, or resorted) to their reserves; it was their last recourse (or resort); they had no other resources’.

Transpire

It is a common error to use transpire as if it meant ‘happen’ or ‘occur’. It does not. It means to ‘become known’. An example of its wrong use is: ‘I was in Glasgow, attending what transpired to be a very successful series of meetings’.

Note. The misuse described here dates from the eighteenth century. If nowadays you were to write that something had ‘transpired’ when you meant no more than that it had happened, you would still annoy a purist (if you could find one), whereas if you wished to suggest in a public document that something previously secret had leaked out and become known, and so correctly wrote that it had transpired, your precise meaning would escape all but a very few. ~

Wastage

Wastage should not be used as a more dignified alternative to waste. The ordinary meaning of waste is ‘useless expenditure or consumption’ of money, time, etc. The ordinary meaning of wastage is ‘loss by use, decay, evaporation, leakage, or the like’. You may, for instance, properly say that the daily wastage of a reservoir is so many gallons. But you must not say that a contributory fact is the ‘wastage’ of water by householders if what you mean is that householders waste it.

Note. Though Gowers’s distinction here is no longer fully supported by the OED, some may still find it interesting. In modern professional jargon, waste is frequently referred to as ‘arisings’, but that is another matter. ~

NOTE. SOME NEWER EXAMPLES

Behalf

A person who acts on your behalf is your agent or representative. (It used to be that someone who defended your cause or sought to further your interests acted in your behalf, but this distinction is now largely forgotten.) Just as it would make no sense to say that you acted ‘instead of’ yourself, so it is wrong in correct English to use the formula, ‘It was a bit of a mistake on my behalf to eat that pie’. The error here is easily amended by saying ‘It was a bit of a mistake on my part to eat that pie’, but the misuse of ‘on so-and-so’s behalf’ to mean ‘on so-and-so’s part’ (or even ‘by so-and-so’) is increasingly common.

Impunity

The OED defines impunity as meaning ‘exemption from punishment or penalty’, but it is starting to be used as though it means roughly the opposite. Thus a Guardian journalist can write that ‘The committee was charged with examining how a Times reporter … had managed to fabricate and plagiarise dozens of stories without impunity for so long’; and a reporter for the Independent can explain that ‘A series of legal actions will mean that the millions of users … can no longer post their comments without impunity’. Both examples require impunity to mean ‘fear of punishment’—unless perhaps without is to be thought of as meaning ‘with’.

Incredulous

Incredulous means ‘disbelieving’, or more loosely, ‘amazed’, ‘thunderstruck’, and so on. In an academic paper on information display systems, discussing the real case of an aeroplane whose fuel line ruptured in flight, it is stated that the pilot found himself faced by the ‘sudden and unexpected presentation of apparently anomalous and incredulous information’. Information somehow capable of feeling disbelief would indeed be an anomaly: though the information may have seemed incredible, only the pilot could have been ‘incredulous’.

Infinitesimal

An early press release for the Visitor Centre at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider advertised an exhibition that would plunge people into the fascinating world of particles, including ‘infinitesimally large’ ones. It is no longer unusual to find infinitesimally used as though it somehow has more to it of the infinite than infinitely does, but in correct English infinitesimally is only ever used to qualify what is very small.

May

The difference between may and can is that if you may do something, you are permitted to do it, but to say that you can do it is to say no more than that, if permitted, you would be capable. Those who can build a bomb have the knowledge and wherewithal to build a bomb, but not necessarily the permission that says they may.

May may be used to express a future possibility: ‘tomorrow it may be stormy’. But it is incorrectly substituted for the post-conditional might: ‘they might have got married last year, had she not been stuck in prison’. A cricket correspondent for The Times makes this error: ‘Had it not been for India’s success in South Africa, the IPL may never have happened’. The Indian Premier League already had happened by the time these lines were written. (It is with us still.) The reporter meant that the IPL might never have happened.

Reticent

It is now common for people to use reticent, which means ‘reserved’ and ‘likely to keep quiet’, as though it has the sense of reluctant, or disinclined and unwilling. In a Daily Telegraph article about the heir to a banking family, the young man in question is described as ‘famously reticent about publicity’, which is then explained as meaning ‘somewhat backward in coming forward’. If the young man is truly reticent about publicity, he is not reluctant to step into the limelight, but keeps his own counsel in the matter of publicity itself.

Up to Date

To keep something up to date is to keep it current. The substitutes ‘up to day’ and ‘up today’ are starting to creep into the language. (The next step may be ‘uptoday’.) Neither version is yet over the barrier, but Private Eye is keen to help, saying of the MoD’s hospitality register that its details are ‘skimpy and not terribly up to day’. The notionally related phrase ‘out of day’ does not yet exist, but ‘sell by day’ does, bringing to mind darkened supermarket aisles haunted by revenant items from the meat counter.

Other incorrect uses that seem ever more fashionable—ones that mangle what remain the prevailing meanings of the words they confuse—include the phrase to ‘make abeyance’ for make obeisance (to be in abeyance is to be temporarily dormant or in suspension; to make obeisance is to pay homage); ‘heart-rendering’ for heart-rending (the first suggests melting the fat out of a piece of meat; the second means ripping the heart asunder); ‘antidotal evidence’ for anecdotal evidence (an antidote is a medicine that counters the effect of a poison; anecdotal evidence is evidence flimsily drawn from anecdotes); ‘emerged in’ for immersed in (‘emerged in’ seems to blend immersed in with submerged, but strictly means something like ‘came out of in’); ‘lost in the midst of time’, which we all are, so that it hardly seems worth saying, for lost in the mists of time (i.e. ‘lost in the impenetrable past’); a ‘fool’s economy’ for a false economy (the second may be the first, but a false economy is specifically one where the pursuit of a perceived benefit will have unfortunate consequences that outweigh the desired advantage); and ‘from the offing’ for from the off (the offing is a nautical term for an area of sea that is visible from land but some way out from shore; the following job advertisement can therefore really only be aimed at a businesslike mermaid: ‘A calm and assertive individual with plenty of commercial acumen, you will be content to work without supervision from the offing and possess outstanding organisational abilities’). ~

SOME POINTS OF IDIOM

Idiom is defined by the OED as ‘a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from the meanings of the individual words’. When anything in this book is called ‘good English idiom’ or idiomatic, what is meant is that usage has established it as correct. Idiom does not conflict with grammar or logic as a matter of course; it may be grammatically and logically neutral. Idiom requires us to say try to get not ‘try at getting’. Logic and grammar do not object to this, but they would be equally content with ‘try at getting’. At the same time idiom is, in Otto Jespersen’s phrase, a ‘tyrannical, capricious, utterly incalculable thing’ (Progress in Language, 1894), and if logic and grammar get in its way, so much the worse for logic and grammar. It is idiomatic—at least in speech—to say ‘I won’t be longer than I can help’ and ‘it’s me’. That the first is logically nonsense and the second a grammatical howler is neither here nor there; idiom makes light of such things. Yet during the reign of pedantry, attempts were constantly made to force idiom into the mould of logic. We were not to speak of a criminal being ‘executed’, for ‘the person is prosecuted, the sentence executed ’; we were not to say ‘vexed question’, for ‘in our English sense, many a question vexes: none is vexed’; nor ‘most thoughtless’, an expression ‘inelegant and unhappy’, for if a person is without thought there cannot be degrees in the lack of that quality; nor ‘light the fire’, for ‘nothing has less need of lighting’; nor ‘round the fireside’, for that would mean that ‘some of us are behind the chimney’. So, in his Imaginary Conversations, argued Walter Savage Landor, sometimes as himself, sometimes in the person of Horne Tooke, but in both guises a stout and undiscriminating defender of his language against the intrusion of the illogical.

In spite of Fowler and Jespersen, some trace still lingers of the idea that what is illogical ‘must’ be wrong, such as condemnation of under the circumstances and of the uses of a plural verb with none. The truth, in the words of Logan Pearsall Smith, is that

a language which was all idiom and unreason would be impossible as an instrument of thought; but all languages permit the existence of a certain number of illogical expressions: and the fact that, in spite of their vulgar origin and illiterate appearance, they have succeeded in elbowing their way from popular speech into our prose and poetry, our learned lexicons and grammars, is a proof that they perform a necessary function in the domestic economy of speech. (Words and Idioms, 1925)

Circumstances

It used to be widely held by purists that to say ‘under the circumstances’ must be wrong because what is around us cannot be over us. In the circumstances was the correct expression. This argument is characterised by Fowler as puerile. Its major premiss is not true (‘a threatening sky is a circumstance no less than a threatening bulldog’) and even if it were true it would be irrelevant, because, as cannot be too often repeated, English idiom has a contempt for logic. There is good authority for under the circumstances, and if some prefer in the circumstances (as I do), that is a matter of taste, not of rule.

Compare

There is a difference between compare to and compare with. The first is taken to liken one thing to another: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ The second is to establish that the resemblances and differences between two things are about to be weighed. Thus: ‘If we compare the speaker’s note with the report of his speech in The Times …’.

Consist

There is a difference between consist of and consist in. Consist of denotes the substance of which the subject is made: ‘The writing desks consist of planks on trestles’. Consist in defines the subject: ‘The work of the branch consists in interviewing the public’.

Depend

It is wrong in formal writing, though common in speech, to omit the on or upon after depends, as in: ‘It depends whether we have received another consignment by then’.

Different

There is good authority for different to, but different from is today the established usage. ‘Different than’ is not unknown even in The Times:

The air of the suburb has quite a different smell and feel at eleven o’clock in the morning or three o’clock in the afternoon than it has at the hours when the daily toiler is accustomed to take a few hurried sniffs of it.

But this is condemned by orthodox commentators, who would say that than in this example should have been from what.

Doubt

Idiom requires whether after a statement of positive doubt, and that after one that is negative or rhetorical. ‘I doubt whether he will come today’ implies an active state of doubt as to whether or not he will come. ‘I doubt that he will come to day’ implies that there is no expectation that he will come.

Either

Old-fashioned purists argue that either means one or other of two. But it has been used to mean each of two throughout its history, as in Tennyson’s lines:

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye

or in, ‘The concert will be broadcast on either side of the nine o’clock news’. As this usage (each of two) remains common, there does not seem to be any good ground for Fowler’s dictum that it is ‘archaic and should be avoided’.

First

There used to be a popular rule that you must not write firstly; your enumeration must be first, secondly, thirdly. It was one of those arbitrary rules whose observance was supposed by a certain class of purist to be a hallmark of correct writing. This rule, unlike many of the sort, does not even have logic on its side. Of late years there has been a rebellion against these rules, and I do not think that any contemporary commentator will mind much whether you say first or firstly, or indeed first, second, third.

Follows (as Follows)

Do not write ‘as follow’ for as follows, however numerous the things that follow. The OED states that ‘The construction in as follows is impersonal, and the verb should always be used in the singular’.

Got

‘Have got’ for possess or have, says Fowler, is good colloquial but not good literary English. Others have been more lenient. Dr Johnson, in his Dictionary, said:

he has got a good estate does not always mean that he has acquired, but barely that he possesses it. So we say the lady has got black eyes, merely meaning that she has them.

When such high authorities differ, what is the ordinary person to think? If it is true, as I hold it to be, that superfluous words are an evil, we ought to condemn ‘the lady has got black eyes’ (for ‘the lady has black eyes’), but not ‘the lady has got a black eye’ (someone hit her). Still, in writing for those whose prose inclines more often to primness than to colloquialisms, and who are not likely to overdo this use of got, I advise them not to be afraid of it.

Hard and Hardly

Hard, not hardly, is the adverb of the adjective hard. Hardly must not be used except in the sense of ‘scarcely’. Hardly earned and hard-earned have quite different meanings. Thus ‘their reward was hardly earned’: they were rewarded but did little to deserve it; ‘their hard-earned reward’: the reward they went to great lengths to earn. (Hardly, like scarcely, is followed by when in a sentence such as: ‘I had hardly begun when I was interrupted’. Sometimes than intrudes – ‘hardly begun than I was interrupted’—from a false analogy with ‘I had no sooner begun than I was interrupted’.)

Help

The expression ‘more than one can help’ is a literal absurdity. It means exactly the opposite of what it says. ‘I won’t be longer than I can help’ means ‘I won’t be longer than is unavoidable’, which is to say, longer than I can’t help. But it is good English idiom. Sir Winston Churchill writes in The Gathering Storm: ‘They will not respect more than they can help treaties extracted from them under duress’. Writers who find the ridiculousness of the phrase more than they can stomach can always write ‘more than they must’ instead.

Inculcate

One inculcates ideas into people (as one might urge ideas upon them), not people with ideas. Imbue would be the right word for that. A vague association with inoculate may have something to do with the mistaken use of ‘inculcate with’.

Inform

Inform cannot be used with a verb in the infinitive, and the writer of this sentence has gone wrong: ‘I am informing the branch to grant this application’. This should have been telling or asking.

Less and Fewer

The following is taken from Good and Bad English (1950) by Whitten and Whitaker:

Less appertains to degree, quantity or extent; fewer to number. Thus, less outlay, fewer expenses; less help, fewer helpers; less milk, fewer eggs.

But although ‘few’ applies to number do not join it to the word itself: ‘a fewer number’ is incorrect; say ‘a smaller number.’
‘Less’ takes a singular noun, ‘fewer’ a plural noun; thus, ‘less opportunity,’ ‘fewer opportunities.’

Prefer

You may say ‘He prefers writing to dictating’ or ‘he prefers to write rather than to dictate’, but not ‘he prefers to write than to dictate’.

Prevent

You may choose any one of three constructions with prevent: prevent them from coming, prevent them coming and prevent their coming.

Purport (verb)

The ordinary meaning of this verb is ‘to profess or claim by its tenor’ (OED), e.g. ‘this letter purports to be written by you’. The use of the verb in the passive is an objectionable and unnecessary innovation. ‘Statements which were purported to have been official confirmed the rumours’ should be ‘statements which purported to be official confirmed the rumours’.

Unequal

The idiom is unequal to, not for, a task.

A FEW POINTS OF SPELLING

Note. As well as discussing the use of ise and ize, Gowers gave a few examples of words that sometimes cause confusion because, though spelt differently, they sound the same (known as homophones). He did not cite pairs where the words are likely to be mistaken through sheer carelessness, such as here and there and hear and their, but ones where the distinct meanings of the paired words are not always understood. The list has been very slightly expanded. ~

Ise or Ize

On the question whether verbs like organise and nouns like organisation should be spelt with an s or a z the authorities differ. The OED favours universal ize, arguing that the suffix is always in its origin either Greek or Latin, and in both languages is spelt with a z. Other authorities, including some English printers, recommend universal ise. Fowler stands between these two opinions. He points out that the OED’s advice over-simplifies the problem, as there are some verbs (e.g. advertise, comprise, despise, exercise and surmise) that are never spelt ize in this country. On the other hand, he says, ‘the difficulty of remembering which these ise verbs are is the only reason for making ise universal, and the sacrifice of significance to ease does not seem justified’. This austere conclusion will not recommend itself to everyone, and the round advice to end them all in ise is a verdict with which I respectfully agree.

Complement /Compliment

One thing complements another if it fulfils or completes it. A report on efficient new ways to kill rats might complement a report on the estimated number of rats infesting London’s Underground system. A compliment is an expression by which one offers praise (‘Both reports were excellent’).

Note. These days to complement is often used as though it means no more than to ‘match’ or ‘go well with’: ‘She wore ruby earrings to complement her red shoes’. This dispenses with the word’s more precise meaning, which the following sentence preserves: ‘She wore rubies to complement her red outfit’. ~

Dependant /Dependent

In the ordinary usage of today dependant is a noun meaning ‘a person who depends on another for support, position, etc.’ (OED). Dependent is an adjective meaning relying on or subject to something else. Dependants are dependent on the person whose dependants they are.

Discreet /Discrete

Someone who is discreet is quiet, tactful, unobtrusive, circumspect. A discrete entity is one that is separate or self-contained. In the greater difficulty of selling an undesirable house, one might face the discrete problem of its having a leak in the roof.

Enquiry /Inquiry

Enquiry and inquiry have long existed together as alternative spellings of the same word. In America inquiry is dislodging enquiry for all purposes. In England a useful distinction is developing: enquiry is used for asking a question and inquiry for making an investigation. Thus you might ‘enquire what time the Inquiry begins’.

Forego/Forgo

To forego is to go before (‘the foregoing provisions of this Act’). To forgo is to go without, to waive (‘I will forgo my right’).

Principal/Principle

Principal means primary, leading or most important. Matters of principle are matters of fundamental moral belief. (‘The principal point at issue is not what he did, so much as that in doing it he broke his word. It is against my principles to accept this.’)

Proscribe/Prescribe

To proscribe is to ban or exclude. To prescribe is to authorise a course of action or lay down a rule. Doctors prescribe medicines, but a responsible person might proscribe the use of pills prescribed by a quack.