Sometimes it is possible to know the meaning of a word, to use it properly in a given context, yet to spell it wrong if the word we wrote had a different meaning from the one we uttered. Let us take a simple example, a pair of homophones used quite often in a conversation: his […]
Ah, the “beauty” of -ic/-ical adjectives. Let’s look at historic and historical. The two words are often listed as synonyms, but what do they mean? When do we use them? Open a dictionary (for example, this one) and you will find the following explanations: -historic: istoric, de importanță istorică; *part of history; famous or important […]
Study the way the various meanings of an English lexical item are presented in several dictionaries. Create an entry (or more than one entry) in your dictionary to illustrate your point of view. The item I chose to analyze is home. Its meanings are those of a noun, an adverb, an adjective, a verb. – Longman […]
Today we will focus on another set of homophones: to, too and two. It seems that it doesn’t matter if the ones using these words are native speakers of foreigners, they can appear in the wrong places either because of a typo or because their meaning is unknown. To is often found in front of […]
Homonyms… we encounter them probably more often than we realize. They can be used in jokes and they are at times the source of mistakes. Let’s see what homonyms, homophones and homographs are and have a look at a few examples. Perfect homonyms are words that are spelled and pronounced the same way, but have different […]
Today I want to speak about some homophones we all encounter daily (there, their, they’re), what they mean and when we can use them. If we have an example like “They’re in their car over there“, we will pronounce these three words the same way, but we need to be careful when we spell them. […]