A Guide To Learn English Language

In pre­vi­ous post we came to know the mean­ing of dic­tion which is noth­ing but proper choice of words. In Eng­lish, we can find many words that have sim­i­lar mean­ing, but can­not be used inter­change­ably. In such sit­u­a­tions, a choice must be made accord­ing to the gram­mat­i­cal situation.we have already seen some exam­ples of some pairs of such words which are really con­fus­ing while usage. From this arti­cle let us know more pairs of such words that we usu­ally con­fuse very much at the time of usage.

Dic­tion– spo­ken English

• Hanged/Hung

They both are cor­rect past par­tici­ple forms of the verb hang.But:

Hanged refers to exe­cu­tions (killing) of persons.

Eg: The mur­derer was hanged to death.

Per­son

Hung refers to things.

Eg: The pic­ture was hung over the fireplace.

Thing

• Advice: A noun

Eg: My father gave me an advice to pur­sue post-graduation.

Advise:  A verb

Eg: The doc­tor advised him to take nutri­tious food.

• Adapt: make suitable

Eg: Nov­els are adapted for the stage.

Adopt: take a child as one’s own.

Eg: Mr.Ramesh adopted a son.

• Allu­sion: reference

Eg: The allu­sion that I’m stingy is a mistake.

Illu­sion: false notion

Eg: I don’t have illu­sions about her ability.

• Ami­able: Pleas­ant and good-tempered

Eg: Radha is quite an ami­able person.

Ami­ca­ble: friendly

Eg: The dis­pute was quite seri­ous and there­fore could not be set­tled amicably.

• Appo­site: relevant

Eg: His speech was appo­site to the occasion.

Oppo­site: contrary

Eg: Heavy is the oppo­site of light.

• Beside: by the side of

Eg: The mother sat beside him.

Besides: in addi­tion to

Eg: Is any­one com­ing besides you?

• Child­ish:  silly

Eg: I don’t like his child­ish behaviour

• Child­like: innocent
• Eg: Gand­hiji always put on a child­like smile on his lips.
• Con­fi­dant: per­son with whom one trusts with secrets

Eg: Nehru was a con­fi­dant of Gand­hiji in polit­i­cal matters.

Con­fi­dent: to be sure

Eg: I’m less con­fi­dent in the examination.

• Con­tin­ual: very frequent

Eg: He had con­tin­ual argu­ments with his wife.

• Con­tin­u­ous: going on with­out a break

Eg: There was a con­tin­u­ous rain yesterday.

• Deny: ascer­tain some­thing is wrong

Eg: The min­is­ter denied the alle­ga­tion that  he had taken bribe.

• Refuse: decline to take some­thing that is offered to or to do some­thing that one is asked to do

Eg: He refused the money given as bribe.

• His­toric: famous or impor­tant in history

Eg: Our strug­gle for free­dom is his­toric as many a leader sac­ri­ficed his life.

• His­tor­i­cal: per­tain­ing to history

Eg: Our pro­fes­sor is engaged in his­tor­i­cal research about pyramids.

• Inge­nious: clever at organising

Eg: As he is very inge­nious, he can invent more sci­en­tific marvels.

• Ingen­u­ous: art­less, frank

Eg: Lucy’s love for her daugh­ter is ingenuous.

• Lux­u­ri­ous: hav­ing luxuries

Eg: Rich peo­ple live in lux­u­ri­ous lines.

• Lux­u­ri­ant: rich in growth

Eg: There is a rich growth of veg­e­ta­tion on the farm.

• Ver­bal: relat­ing to words

Eg: Man alone is capa­ble of ver­bal communication.

• Ver­bose: wordy

Eg: Dur­ing the Vic­to­rian era, writ­ers used a ver­bose style in their works.

• Dis­in­ter­ested: free from bias or prej­u­dice, free­dom from per­sonal or self­ish motives.
• Unin­ter­ested: lack­ing in interest

Eg: A judge must be dis­in­ter­ested in the case, but he should not be uninterested.

• Prophecy: pre­dic­tion

Eg: The man’s prophecy about a ter­ri­ble earth­quake turned out to be false.

• Proph­esy: to predict

Eg: He proph­e­sised the end of earth.