I Hate Word Mix-Ups!

The above gem is from the March 5, 1991 Oklahoman.  I think it's pretty self evident that limiting  ANY kind of intake would prevent putting on pounds.

However ...

Most of the word mix-ups I encounter in my voluminous reading are words which are homonyms but not synonyms.  They sound alike, but don’t mean alike.

             When someone is trying to say that a plan is coming together, or an idea is taking shape, then things are not beginning to “gel.”  Gel is a noun, referring to something like jelly.  If things are aligning, then they are beginning to jell.  http://grammarist.com/homophones/gel-vs-jell/

             When you’re studying documents, you are not “pouring” over them.  You are poring.  To pore is to examine intently.  To pour is to decant.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/pour-or-pore

            Of course, our skin has pores, but it’s another word that’s spelt the same, “Late Middle English: from Old French, via Latin from Greek poros ‘passage, pore’.”

             If two things go together or correspond, they do not “jive.”  They “jibe.”  Jibe means “to agree with.”  Jive is a word which can apply to music (or jive dancing) or it can mean “fake, inauthentic,” as in our college slang of calling somebody a “jive turkey.”  https://www.thoughtco.com/gibe-jibe-and-jive-1689398

             For me, the original of all word mix-ups was innocence itself.  By the second grade I was reading fifth-grade and higher material.  This led to a lot of words entering my vocabulary through reading only.  I’d never heard those terms spoken aloud.  And I figured out their meanings from their context.

            So, when I read that somebody was misled, I came up with a verb, “misle.”  This word was pronounced like the name of the Saudi King Faisal.  In my mind, this word meant confused or unsure about something.  If you said somebody was misled, then they misunderstood something.  They were MY-zuld.

            I also knew the word “misled,” as in being led astray.  That word was pronounced miss-LEDD.  An entirely different word!

             I was somewhere in my twenties when I reconciled the two words in my mind. Ahh, memories of precocious youth!

      I'll leave you with more unintentional silliness, this time from the June 8, 1983 Buyer's Guide distributed hereabouts in the OKC area.

Note the CANDY BARS blurb.  Don't you want a "huge ass" from candy bars?

See ya Thursday.