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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS hoard/horde
To hoard is to squirrel stuff away, like gold bricks or candy wrappers. A horde is a crowd of people, usually, but it can also be a gang of mosquitoes, robots, or rabid zombie kittens.
If you gather all the info you can about hoard, and store it away for later, you'll find it comes from the word for "hidden treasure." When you hoard something, you are collecting lots of material, usually of value, in secret. You store these things in case you need them later. It's a noun and a verb. Hoarding canned goods and batteries before a hurricane is smart. Not throwing out that hoard of old playground equipment in your yard, not so smart. Here's some hoarding from the news:
American firms continue to hoard cash and overall bank deposits soar despite rock-bottom interest rates. (New York Times)
Clippings and advertisements for free samples were hoarded and quickly posted. (Lauren Ann Isaacson)
Every one is given at least one talent for use; not to hide and hoard away. (Louise Vescelius-Sheldon)
A horde, on the other hand, is a busy mob, like the one that chases Frankenstein's monster with torches. Hordes are often roving and mad. Horde is usually derogatory and should be use with care. Here are some hordes from the news:
In China, it means angry hordes parading victims wearing dunce caps through the streets before stringing them up in public squares. (Time)
As darkness fell, women illuminated by wood fires stirred vats of couscous and beef stew for the hordes of visitors. (New York Times)
The only reason people get these words confused is that they sound. Remember, there's an "a" in hoard and "gather." Horde is just a wild bunch of letters holding pitchforks.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS homonym/homophone/homograph
This word set can be confusing, even for word geeks. Let's start with the basics. A homograph is a word that has the same spelling as another word but has a different sound and a different meaning:
lead (to go in front of)/lead (a metal)
wind (to follow a course that is not straight)/wind (a gust of air)
bass (low, deep sound)/bass (a type of fish)
A homophone is a word that has the same sound as another word but is spelled differently and has a different meaning:
to/two/too
there/their/they're
pray/prey
Not so bad, right? The ending –graph means drawn or written, so a homograph has the same spelling. The –phone ending means sound or voice, so a homophone has the same pronunciation. But here's where it gets tricky. Depending on whom you talk to, homonym means either:
A word that is spelled like another but has a different sound and meaning (homograph); a word that sounds like another but has a different spelling and meaning (homophone)
OR
A word that is spelled and pronounced like another but has a different meaning (homograph and homophone)
So does a homonym have to be both a homograph and a homophone, or can it be just one or the other? As with most things in life, it depends on whom you ask.
In the strictest sense, a homonym must be both a homograph and a homophone. So say many dictionaries. However, other dictionaries allow that a homonym can be a homograph or a homophone.
With so many notable resources pointing to the contrary, are we losing this strict meaning? What then will we call a word that is spelled and pronounced the same as another but has a different meaning? If homonym retains all these meanings, how will readers know what is actually meant?
The careful writer would do well to follow the strict sense, ensuring his meaning is understood
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS hone/home
To hone is to sharpen a knife or perfect a skill. Home is where you live, where your stuff is, is where the heart is, and all that.
Hone in or hone in on, is an eggcorn for home in on. (An eggcorn is a word accidently used for another word that sounds similar, like saying eggcorn instead of acorn.)
Home in on (with an "m") means to move toward an object or goal, like a missile zooming towards a target. Or as a homing pigeon does, which is where the term comes from. Here are some examples:
Another international e-commerce site that has homed in on the Brazilian market is farfetch.com. (New York Times)
Bedbugs are active at night, leaving their hiding places to home in on body warmth or carbon dioxide to reach their victims. (Monsters and Critics)
Hone is to sharpen something, like a blade or your attention in math class. The only reason people get it confused with home is when hone horns in on home in.
Although you can make something pointy by honing, when you try to hit a target, you home in on it, like going home after a long day.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS imply/infer
Imply and infer are opposites, like a throw and a catch. To imply is to hint at something, but to infer is to make an educated guess. The speaker does the implying, and the listener does the inferring.
To imply is to suggest something indirectly. If you hand your friend a stack of napkins during dinner, you imply that she needs them. Things can imply, too, like a chimney that implies a fireplace. Check out these examples:
By their very definition, flea markets imply cheap prices for used and unwanted items, as is still the case in most other places. (New York Times)
Stern also implied the entire season might be at risk. (Seattle Times)
It isn't fair to imply that cardiovascular disease is going away. (Nature)
Infer is on the receiving end of imply, yet infer is often used to mean imply. To infer is to gather, deduce, or figure out.Writers tend to know how to use infer correctly:
He talks about having led in the private sector but voters have to infer too much about what that means. (Slate)
They were also better at inferring feelings from images of just the eyes. (Scientific American)
Yet it must not be inferred that farming women are without mental ability or common sense. (Sidney Lewis Gulick)
Like baseball? Theodore Bernstein, in his classic The Careful Writer, gives us a way to keep imply and infer straight: "The implier is the pitcher; the inferrer is the catcher."
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS incredible/incredulous
Incredible describes something you can't believe because it's so right, like an incredible double rainbow. Incredulous describes how you feel when you can't believe something because it's so wrong, like when someone tells you leprechauns left two pots of gold.
If you pay attention to advertising, we live in an incredible world: Your local team had an incredible comeback. The latest movie is an incredible adventure. Wash your hair with this new shampoo and get incredible shine.
It's enough to make you incredulous, or skeptical.
Incredible isn't just an empty modifier for some new product. The adjective means that what it describes is hard to believe. People use it to mean it's so awesome you can't even believe it. It's usually something good, but bad stuff, like earthquakes, can be hard to believe, too:
He is an incredible player: Hall of Fame talent combined with world-class relentlessness. (New York Times)
Japanese earthquake, tsunami causes incredible damage; effects felt in U.S. (North Jefferson News)
The brain drain out of rural America has been incredible. (Reuters)
Incredulous describes someone unable to believe something, someone being super skeptical. Put your fists on your hips and say "no way!"when you're incredulous. It comes from the Latin incredulous, meaning not believing. Incredulous describes people, and their reactions to things they can't believe:
Asked whether writing the book forced him to seize on moments that he might otherwise have passed over he looked incredulous. (New York Times)
"Do you mean," he began, and paused, scrutinizing her tortured face with disconcerted, incredulous eyes. (F.E. Mills Young)
Something incredible is not credible; it's unbelievable.People, rainbows, and other things can be described as incredible (just check that shampoo label), but only people can feel incredulous, or unbelieving and a little irked
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS indeterminate/indeterminable
Understanding the nuances of this word pair, indeterminate and indeterminable, hinges on understanding the words' parts. The root word, determine, means to establish something. The prefix in- in this case means not. Both –ate and –able create adjectives, -ate meaning having the characteristics of and –able meaning to be able.
Indeterminate, then, means not (in-) having the characteristics of (-ate) being fixed (determine): not fixed. Indefinite. Not determined. As in:
Prisoners on indeterminate sentences 'left in limbo' over parole dates
A man of indeterminate age peeks out of a cut-glass window.
For no discernibly good reason, I am back on Twitter for an indeterminate period of time.
Indeterminable means not (in-) able to (-able) establish (determine): incapable of being fixed or determined. Such as:
This equated to 1082 votes for and 102 against, with two ballots indeterminable.
However, there are those movies that fall into that rare category of indeterminable.
I said before how if B existed inside of the mold by itself, B's size would be indeterminable because it rests inside of infinity, which it can't be compared to.
Remember: if something isn't fixed, it's indeterminate. If it can't be fixed, it's indeterminable.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS indict/indite
Ex-General Electric Executives Indited in Muni-Bond Scandal
This particular man was only indited in his scam because he came clean about it with Google in a blackmail scheme.
Both of these examples use indite to talk about people being formally accused of lawbreaking. Unfortunately, the sentences themselves break a rule of good writing: choose your words with care (or perhaps a different rule: always have someone edit your work).
What those statements wanted was indict, a homophone of indite that means to formally accuse someone of lawbreaking:
Prosecutors Delay Indictment of Man Arrested in Harlem NYPD Shootout
Roger Clemens has now been indicted on charges he lied to Congress under oath.
Indite, an uncommon word, means to craft something, such as writing a sonnet or composing a musical score. Most instances of it in a Google search bring up results like our first ones or instances of language so mangled, one wonders why it was published at all:
Roger Clemmons is being indited for 6 counts of "lying to Congress".
I would declare you indite your own; some another artefact would be a writing ravishment and rattling unethical!
Occasionally, though, you can find an instance or two that use indite correctly, if in a consciously literary way:
I hold indited epistles of hurting, of rejection, of sentences.
Ofttimes musicians (especially in electronic music and hip hop) hit a hard time grasping this distinction because they indite music while they are producing it.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS inflammable/inflammatory
Inflammable and inflammatory can be confused with one another, but they also offer their own source of confusion with the prefix in-.
Inflammable refers to something that is easy to set on fire; something flammable. How can inflammable mean the same as flammable? True the prefix in- can mean not, as in inaccurate. But it can also be used as intensifier meaning in or into. It's that second prefix at work here. Something inflammable is something that's capable of not just being lit on fire but being easily lit on fire.
The fire created panic in the area as the spot is surrounded by dying units that produce highly inflammable chemicals.
However, we suspect that a spark in inflammable material or gas leakage might have caused the incident.
You can improvise your own personal ashtray by using an old tin of breath mints, or something similarly inflammable.
Inflammatory is also related to fire, although figuratively, and makes use of intensifier in-. Used literally, inflammatory describes something that is inflamed, that is, red, swollen, and hot. Muscle and tissue often become inflamed, and an inflammatory disease, such as arthritis, cause parts of the body to become so inflamed.
A novel treatment option for inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis seems to be underway.
Used figuratively, inflammatory describes something that incites anger or violence. It inflames people's emotions or responses.
This is false, inflammatory rhetoric.
The protestors have been known for their inflammatory remarks and signs.
The root of inflammable and inflammatory give you a clue to their meaning with the idea of fire. Inflammable is a literal fire: something that can be easily set on fire. Inflammatory is a figurative fire, whether with swollen joints or angry words.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS ingenious/ingenuous
Quiz time! Which example uses ingenuous correctly?
YouTube Marketing An Ingenuous Thing: What You Need To Know
Indeed, even an ingenuous child cries out with remorse when caught.
Joe Muench: Ingenuous plan for using those Asarco properties
If you picked the second one, give yourself a gold star. Ingenuous means innocent, artless, simple. It could be a compliment or an insult, but it does not somehow mean clever or creative. Our second example explains that even a innocent child will feel remorse about a thing if he's caught doing it (though, if he's "caught," doesn't that imply wrongdoing?).
The sad, ingenuous path of John Locke has been trumped by the machinations of Betty Draper.
If you refuse to take part in a game of corruption that everyone around you is playing, you're taken for an ingenuous fool.
Both the first and third examples wanted ingenious, meaning something original, creative, inventive. As in:
Caffeinated Marshmallows?! Ingenious!
YouTube marketing might be just thing clever thing to sell your product. And though you might have an innocent way of using those Asarco properties, it's not something worth bragging about. A creative use is another story. So are caffeinated marshmallows. Just don't give them to ingen
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS insidious/invidious
Neither insidious nor invidious are happy words: insidious describes something that lies in wait to get you, and invidious is something offensive or defamatory. Cancer can be insidious, lurking in your body without your knowing it. Invidious doesn't hide; it's hateful right away.
Insidious didn't fall too far from the tree – it comes directly from the Latin word insidiosus meaning "deceitful, cunning, artful," from insidiae "plot, snare, ambush." Something insidious can even be attractive while doing harm, like an insidious plot to befriend your crush's girlfriend, so you can break them up. But often it's not attractive, just sneaky:
Storms like Agnes and Irene are insidious, often striking slowly over time in ways that can be unpredictable and far more damaging than anticipated. (Salon)
An insidious new email virus infiltrated high-profile US companies Thursday. (Toronto Star)
Rather, it is the insidious silence and insensitivity that surrounds so many of the most excruciating diseases of the mind that so often trigger suicide. (CNN)
Invidious comes from the Latin for ill will or envy. Some bouncers probably love the invidious task of not letting good-looking people into their clubs. It's often paired with segregation, but other things can be invidious as well:
Arnold is in an invidious position, and has tried to create a very different type of museum on the proverbial shoestring. (New York Times)
"After an old-fashioned, all-round team performance ... it might seem invidious to single out one player," admits the paper before singling out one player. (Guardian)
The cheap shots against the Democrats and Obama at the beginning were unnecessary and invidious. (Washington Post)
Joining the cheerleading squad so you can poison the football team is insidious. Yelling, "Teams like yours always lose!" at the game is invidious.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS instant/instance
Around the Vocabulary.com office, we might like an instance of tea, but we vehemently oppose instant tea.
That's because instance means an example or an occurrence:
Police investigated five instances of criminal mischief to motor vehicles on Forest Avenue
A student in the engineering academy, for instance, would have to take three engineering-specific electives.
There was an instance in a game in August where the catwalk came into play.
Instant, on the other hand, mean immediately or urgently:
Easy Reader: Philip Roth's Nemesis an Instant Classic
Starbucks announced last summer it would start retailing flavored instant coffee, and here it is.
Now think about the times when you fell victim to the instant desire to buy that new shinny thing.
Oddly enough, the two are related. Instance dates back to 1380 as meaning the current time, but it comes from the Medieval Latin (through Old French) instantia, which refers to both presence and urgency. Instant dates to about the same time, prior to 1398, as meaning a specific moment. It comes from the Medieval Latin instantem, meaning present and urgent. Instant picked up its modern meaning of immediately around 1443 from its English definition and instance seems to have never meant urgency, creating a distinction between the two.
But instant tea is still disgusting.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS intense/intensive/intent
If your teacher offered you a choice between an intense course or an intensive one, which one would you choose? And would you wonder what his intent was?
Intense means of severe strength or force; having strong feelings. An intense course, then, would be an extremely tough course, such as advanced nuclear science. Intensive means focused on one subject or area for a short time; extremely thorough. So an intensive course would be very focused on one topic and would last short time, as with summer courses. The teacher's intent, his purpose or intention, might be to guide you to the best course for you. Or it might be to fill his summer course.
Searching online, you'll find that in particular intensive is used instead of intense:
Michigan Solar Panel Factory's Labor-Intensive Assembly Tasks
These hiking-intensive trips can, of course, be strenuous.
Implementation can be a time-intensive process in terms of training, data input, data conversion, and down time.
Some dictionaries point out that intense is usually connected with a subjective response, while intensive is generally connected to an objective description. Here are a few examples that get it right:
Intense heat sears Southern California for 4th day
Seaton's intent to lie, cheat is as serious as a felony
Professional mountain bike rider in intensive care after hit-and-run
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS laudable/laudatory
Choose your words:
Acclaimed playwright-actor returns home for a laudable/laudatory cause
When it was published, the most laudable/laudatory review came from the novelist Anthony Burgess.
In the first sentence a playwright-actor comes home for a good cause, a praiseworthy cause. That's laudable. Though a positive word, laudable many times precedes a negative follow-up statement.
I soon realized that the efforts, though laudable, have a ways to go to meet the standard being set in my hometown.
Cutting taxes laudable, but some city needs must be addressed
In the second sentence, Burgess gave a positive review of the it mentioned. The review itself isn't being described as praiseworthy, the review was doing the praising. We want laudatory here.
A trio of laudatory articles on Amazon in recent days compelled one to take another look at the company's performance.
Thomas Keneally wrote a laudatory biography of Hasler in 1993 titled Utility Player.
The difference to watch for between these adjectives is who or what is receiving the praise. If the noun that the adjective modifies is receiving the praise, such as a worthy cause, then choose laudable. Think able to be praised. If the noun is giving the praise to something else, such as a positive review of a book, then choose laudatory.
9 loath vs loathe
Confusion between loath ("unwilling or reluctant") and loathe ("to hate") is a growing trend.
What do the following sentences have in common?
But Saudi Arabia isn't the only Muslim country that seems to loath Iran.
Broadcasters are loathe to relinquish control of lucrative cable package services to third party providers.
I'm loathe to put up another Netbook, so let's try this.
Deep Down inside Bud Grant loaths the state of affairs in Minny.
All of them use either loath or loathe incorrectly and all are from trusted publications. The error is a growing trend. Garner's Modern American Usage puts this error at stage 3: "commonplace even among many well-educated people but is still avoided in careful usage."
Loath means to be unwilling or reluctant about something:
For-profit education institutions have been loath to put out that kind of information.
Coalition upper house leader David Davis was loath to speculate on the final outcome in the 40-seat Legislative Council.
Loathe, on the other hand, means to strongly dislike someone or something or find it disgusting:
Love it or loathe it, there's no denying that the holiday season is upon us.
And if voters in general dislike Obamacare, Republican voters positively loathe it.
When it comes to loath and loathe, choose your words with care and avoid a common error.
1 luxuriant vs luxurious
No doubt advertising affects language. Where would we be without the free gift, new and improved, or supersize? (Perhaps writing more grammatically and eating more healthily...) In yet another attempt to reduce English to features and selling points, advertisers often use luxuriant to describe their products or services:
Luxuriant Cracked Heel Repair
Luxuriant Christmas Tree Wallpaper
Miralux Luxuriant Mattress
Problem is luxuriant means lush growth; thick and rich. As in a luxuriant growth of leaves in the spring. What those advertisers really want is luxurious, as in self-indulgent; comfort, elegance, or enjoyment in the extreme:
Mediterranea ... is a luxurious community situated adjacent to the sea, boasting stunning views of the Mediterranean.
This luxurious penthouse at the One Hyde Park development in the Knightsbridge of London just sold for a record-breaking £140 million or $220 million.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy orders brand new, luxurious presidential jet to rival Air Force One
As a society, we tolerate a lot of bent or outright broken language rules in advertising. We tune a lot of it out, anyway. But the careful writer should not emulate advertising-speak and should be wary of copying its word usage. Using luxuriant for luxurious is very much considered an error and is to be avoided.
2 marital vs martial
Marital and martial look almost alike, but the only time they overlap is when you declare war on your spouse. Marital has to do with marriage, and martial is concerned with fighting.
Marital comes from the word marriage. It means either related to marriage or to a husband and his role in a marriage (usually the first). It comes from the Latin marītalis, used to describe something belonging to married people. Although it's not very romantic, being married is a legal status, so the word marital shows up in court all the time:
New Hampshire's House plans to investigate whether grounds exist to impeach a marital master, a court officer that handles family court cases. (Boston Globe)
Overall, the pre-marital contract can prevent a bad divorce experience. (FiGuide.com)
On the other fist, martial is related to war; related to the profession of war; or the characteristics of a warrior. These meanings come from the Latin martialis, which is from Mars, the Roman god of war. Martial law is when the military takes over, and a martial art is something like karate or judo, as in these examples from the news:
Last week Bahrain called in troops from its fellow Sunni-ruled neighbours, declared martial law and launched a crackdown that drove the protesters from the streets. (Reuters)
An off-duty Houston police officer used a martial arts move to kill a man who had asked a bartender for her telephone number. (Houston Chronicle)
With marital, remember the connection to marriage in sound and spelling: mari- and marri-. When looking at martial, think of Martians from Mars, the Roman god of war. People in divorce court like to move the "i" to the other side of the "t."
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mean/median/average
Wordsmiths sometimes dislike numbers, or at least have a hard time grasping them. These words offer us an opportunity to better understand numbers and use their terms more precisely in writing and speaking.
Let's say we have a set of numbers:
11
23
30
47
56
The mean, sometimes called the arithmetic mean, of this set is 33. The mean is the sum of all the numbers in the set (167) divided by the amount of numbers in the set (5).
The median is the middle point of a number set, in which half the numbers are above the median and half are below. In our set above, the median is 30. But what if your number set has an even number of, er, numbers:
11
23
30
47
52
56
To calculate the median here, add the two middle numbers (30 + 47) and divide by 2. The median for our new list is 38.5.
So far, so good. But what about average? The average of a set of numbers is the same as its mean; they're synonyms.
Let's see our terms in action:
Performance is calculated by the arithmetic mean of the returns in an equally weighted portfolio of individual stocks, on a quarterly basis.
The median single-family homeowner in town will pay $175 more in property taxes this year.
Average retail gas prices in California fell 1.3 cents in the last week, putting the average tank of gas at $3.13 per gallon.
While we wordy types may still struggle to understand what an "equally weighted portfolio" is, wonder whether we are median single-family homeowners, or continue to look for lower-than-average gas prices, at least we know how the mean, median, and average were calculated.
3medal/meddle/mettle
Here we have a trio of words that sound the same (at least in American English) but mean very different things: medal, meddle, and mettle.
A medal is a disc made of metal with an inscription or image. It is generally used as an award or a commemoration of an event:
Maplewood Officers Receive Medal Of Valor
Special Olympics duo wins gold medal in golf
To meddle is to interfere with someone or something:
Belarus will not let any other country meddle in its December presidential election.
Politicians meddle with existing taxation arrangements at their peril.
Finally, mettle is a quality or qualities that help a person in a difficult situation. Those qualities might include courage, ardor, and stamina:
Madison native tests his mettle in "Hell's Kitchen"
Test of mettle: How the Steelers can win without Roethlisberger
If you don't speak American English, you might be wondering why mettle makes this list. In American English, when a t appears in an unstressed syllable between two vowels—or between a vowel and an l, as is the case here—that t is said with a flap of the tongue similar to how we say d. Linguists call it a "medial flap." The same thing happens in betting, metal, noted, writing and many other words.
4 moral vs morale
Moral/Morale of the story: If you became a middle school football coach so you could trick little kids, shame on you.
Posh needed a moral-/morale-boosting win after a couple of insipid home displays and credit to the players for providing it.
In our first sentence, we want a word that means the lesson of the story, especially a lesson of right and wrong. That word is moral. In the plural, it refers to the rules by which one conducts one's life. Some more examples that use moral:
However, here are 10 moral character failings destroying our nation that I feel, like the mayor, we ought to be up in arms about addressing.
Saudi Arabia Blocks Facebook on Moral Grounds, Promptly Unblocks It
The second sentence describes a win that will make the team feel more confident and enthusiastic. Here the choice is morale. If your department or team has a strong sense of common purpose or dedication, your morale is high; if there's a lot of bickering going on and people are quitting the company or just not doing their jobs, morale is low.Some more examples:
Perks keep morale high at Michigan's top workplaces
To improve officer morale, Sheppard said he will repair union relations, address concerns that officer discipline is handled unfairly and solicit more officer input while improving training..
4 morbid vs moribund .Morbid describes something gruesome, like smallpox or Frankenstein's monster. Moribund refers to the act of dying. Goths love both. What fun!
Morbid and moribund are both dark and popular around Halloween, but if you dig up their graves, you'll find their Latin bones are different: Morbid comes from morbus, for disease, while moribund comes from morī, for dying.
Morbid is a busy adjective, going from dark to darker describing terrible things such as anything related to disease -obesity, insanity, the plague - or unwholesome thoughts. Morbid pops up all over the place, such as in
The Morbid Imagination, a Website about Gothic Horror and the Arts.
Or in this quote from a book about country life:
And the slender, undersized, morbid girl needed just such tonic. (Lillian Elizabeth Roy)
You can be morbidly obese or morbidly thin, as long as you're sick in some way, even in the head, you're morbid. Appropriately, Morbid is the name of a Swedish death metal band.
On the other hand, moribund means dying, literally or figuratively. It can refer to a person about to leave this world behind or to something that's almost obsolete. In both senses, moribund does not mean death but dying. It refers to the action, not the outcome, like in this example from an old medical book:
This heart was taken from a man who came into the hospital in a moribund condition.
The word also shows up in the news, all too often describing an economy:
But the domestic economy remains moribund, while the fragile export recovery could be sabotaged by slowing in the global economy. (New York Times)
The hermit crab that hasn't had water in three days is a moribund pet. The kid with the black lipstick who wants it to die is morbid.
CHOOSE YOUR WORDS hoard/horde
To hoard is to squirrel stuff away, like gold bricks or candy wrappers. A horde is a crowd of people, usually, but it can also be a gang of mosquitoes, robots, or rabid zombie kittens.
If you gather all the info you can about hoard, and store it away for later, you'll find it comes from the word for "hidden treasure." When you hoard something, you are collecting lots of material, usually of value, in secret. You store these things in case you need them later. It's a noun and a verb. Hoarding canned goods and batteries before a hurricane is smart. Not throwing out that hoard of old playground equipment in your yard, not so smart. Here's some hoarding from the news:
American firms continue to hoard cash and overall bank deposits soar despite rock-bottom interest rates. (New York Times)
Clippings and advertisements for free samples were hoarded and quickly posted. (Lauren Ann Isaacson)
Every one is given at least one talent for use; not to hide and hoard away. (Louise Vescelius-Sheldon)
A horde, on the other hand, is a busy mob, like the one that chases Frankenstein's monster with torches. Hordes are often roving and mad. Horde is usually derogatory and should be use with care. Here are some hordes from the news:
In China, it means angry hordes parading victims wearing dunce caps through the streets before stringing them up in public squares. (Time)
As darkness fell, women illuminated by wood fires stirred vats of couscous and beef stew for the hordes of visitors. (New York Times)
The only reason people get these words confused is that they sound. Remember, there's an "a" in hoard and "gather." Horde is just a wild bunch of letters holding pitchforks.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS homonym/homophone/homograph
This word set can be confusing, even for word geeks. Let's start with the basics. A homograph is a word that has the same spelling as another word but has a different sound and a different meaning:
lead (to go in front of)/lead (a metal)
wind (to follow a course that is not straight)/wind (a gust of air)
bass (low, deep sound)/bass (a type of fish)
A homophone is a word that has the same sound as another word but is spelled differently and has a different meaning:
to/two/too
there/their/they're
pray/prey
Not so bad, right? The ending –graph means drawn or written, so a homograph has the same spelling. The –phone ending means sound or voice, so a homophone has the same pronunciation. But here's where it gets tricky. Depending on whom you talk to, homonym means either:
A word that is spelled like another but has a different sound and meaning (homograph); a word that sounds like another but has a different spelling and meaning (homophone)
OR
A word that is spelled and pronounced like another but has a different meaning (homograph and homophone)
So does a homonym have to be both a homograph and a homophone, or can it be just one or the other? As with most things in life, it depends on whom you ask.
In the strictest sense, a homonym must be both a homograph and a homophone. So say many dictionaries. However, other dictionaries allow that a homonym can be a homograph or a homophone.
With so many notable resources pointing to the contrary, are we losing this strict meaning? What then will we call a word that is spelled and pronounced the same as another but has a different meaning? If homonym retains all these meanings, how will readers know what is actually meant?
The careful writer would do well to follow the strict sense, ensuring his meaning is understood
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS hone/home
To hone is to sharpen a knife or perfect a skill. Home is where you live, where your stuff is, is where the heart is, and all that.
Hone in or hone in on, is an eggcorn for home in on. (An eggcorn is a word accidently used for another word that sounds similar, like saying eggcorn instead of acorn.)
Home in on (with an "m") means to move toward an object or goal, like a missile zooming towards a target. Or as a homing pigeon does, which is where the term comes from. Here are some examples:
Another international e-commerce site that has homed in on the Brazilian market is farfetch.com. (New York Times)
Bedbugs are active at night, leaving their hiding places to home in on body warmth or carbon dioxide to reach their victims. (Monsters and Critics)
Hone is to sharpen something, like a blade or your attention in math class. The only reason people get it confused with home is when hone horns in on home in.
Although you can make something pointy by honing, when you try to hit a target, you home in on it, like going home after a long day.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS imply/infer
Imply and infer are opposites, like a throw and a catch. To imply is to hint at something, but to infer is to make an educated guess. The speaker does the implying, and the listener does the inferring.
To imply is to suggest something indirectly. If you hand your friend a stack of napkins during dinner, you imply that she needs them. Things can imply, too, like a chimney that implies a fireplace. Check out these examples:
By their very definition, flea markets imply cheap prices for used and unwanted items, as is still the case in most other places. (New York Times)
Stern also implied the entire season might be at risk. (Seattle Times)
It isn't fair to imply that cardiovascular disease is going away. (Nature)
Infer is on the receiving end of imply, yet infer is often used to mean imply. To infer is to gather, deduce, or figure out.Writers tend to know how to use infer correctly:
He talks about having led in the private sector but voters have to infer too much about what that means. (Slate)
They were also better at inferring feelings from images of just the eyes. (Scientific American)
Yet it must not be inferred that farming women are without mental ability or common sense. (Sidney Lewis Gulick)
Like baseball? Theodore Bernstein, in his classic The Careful Writer, gives us a way to keep imply and infer straight: "The implier is the pitcher; the inferrer is the catcher."
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS incredible/incredulous
Incredible describes something you can't believe because it's so right, like an incredible double rainbow. Incredulous describes how you feel when you can't believe something because it's so wrong, like when someone tells you leprechauns left two pots of gold.
If you pay attention to advertising, we live in an incredible world: Your local team had an incredible comeback. The latest movie is an incredible adventure. Wash your hair with this new shampoo and get incredible shine.
It's enough to make you incredulous, or skeptical.
Incredible isn't just an empty modifier for some new product. The adjective means that what it describes is hard to believe. People use it to mean it's so awesome you can't even believe it. It's usually something good, but bad stuff, like earthquakes, can be hard to believe, too:
He is an incredible player: Hall of Fame talent combined with world-class relentlessness. (New York Times)
Japanese earthquake, tsunami causes incredible damage; effects felt in U.S. (North Jefferson News)
The brain drain out of rural America has been incredible. (Reuters)
Incredulous describes someone unable to believe something, someone being super skeptical. Put your fists on your hips and say "no way!"when you're incredulous. It comes from the Latin incredulous, meaning not believing. Incredulous describes people, and their reactions to things they can't believe:
Asked whether writing the book forced him to seize on moments that he might otherwise have passed over he looked incredulous. (New York Times)
"Do you mean," he began, and paused, scrutinizing her tortured face with disconcerted, incredulous eyes. (F.E. Mills Young)
Something incredible is not credible; it's unbelievable.People, rainbows, and other things can be described as incredible (just check that shampoo label), but only people can feel incredulous, or unbelieving and a little irked
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS indeterminate/indeterminable
Understanding the nuances of this word pair, indeterminate and indeterminable, hinges on understanding the words' parts. The root word, determine, means to establish something. The prefix in- in this case means not. Both –ate and –able create adjectives, -ate meaning having the characteristics of and –able meaning to be able.
Indeterminate, then, means not (in-) having the characteristics of (-ate) being fixed (determine): not fixed. Indefinite. Not determined. As in:
Prisoners on indeterminate sentences 'left in limbo' over parole dates
A man of indeterminate age peeks out of a cut-glass window.
For no discernibly good reason, I am back on Twitter for an indeterminate period of time.
Indeterminable means not (in-) able to (-able) establish (determine): incapable of being fixed or determined. Such as:
This equated to 1082 votes for and 102 against, with two ballots indeterminable.
However, there are those movies that fall into that rare category of indeterminable.
I said before how if B existed inside of the mold by itself, B's size would be indeterminable because it rests inside of infinity, which it can't be compared to.
Remember: if something isn't fixed, it's indeterminate. If it can't be fixed, it's indeterminable.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS indict/indite
Ex-General Electric Executives Indited in Muni-Bond Scandal
This particular man was only indited in his scam because he came clean about it with Google in a blackmail scheme.
Both of these examples use indite to talk about people being formally accused of lawbreaking. Unfortunately, the sentences themselves break a rule of good writing: choose your words with care (or perhaps a different rule: always have someone edit your work).
What those statements wanted was indict, a homophone of indite that means to formally accuse someone of lawbreaking:
Prosecutors Delay Indictment of Man Arrested in Harlem NYPD Shootout
Roger Clemens has now been indicted on charges he lied to Congress under oath.
Indite, an uncommon word, means to craft something, such as writing a sonnet or composing a musical score. Most instances of it in a Google search bring up results like our first ones or instances of language so mangled, one wonders why it was published at all:
Roger Clemmons is being indited for 6 counts of "lying to Congress".
I would declare you indite your own; some another artefact would be a writing ravishment and rattling unethical!
Occasionally, though, you can find an instance or two that use indite correctly, if in a consciously literary way:
I hold indited epistles of hurting, of rejection, of sentences.
Ofttimes musicians (especially in electronic music and hip hop) hit a hard time grasping this distinction because they indite music while they are producing it.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS inflammable/inflammatory
Inflammable and inflammatory can be confused with one another, but they also offer their own source of confusion with the prefix in-.
Inflammable refers to something that is easy to set on fire; something flammable. How can inflammable mean the same as flammable? True the prefix in- can mean not, as in inaccurate. But it can also be used as intensifier meaning in or into. It's that second prefix at work here. Something inflammable is something that's capable of not just being lit on fire but being easily lit on fire.
The fire created panic in the area as the spot is surrounded by dying units that produce highly inflammable chemicals.
However, we suspect that a spark in inflammable material or gas leakage might have caused the incident.
You can improvise your own personal ashtray by using an old tin of breath mints, or something similarly inflammable.
Inflammatory is also related to fire, although figuratively, and makes use of intensifier in-. Used literally, inflammatory describes something that is inflamed, that is, red, swollen, and hot. Muscle and tissue often become inflamed, and an inflammatory disease, such as arthritis, cause parts of the body to become so inflamed.
A novel treatment option for inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis seems to be underway.
Used figuratively, inflammatory describes something that incites anger or violence. It inflames people's emotions or responses.
This is false, inflammatory rhetoric.
The protestors have been known for their inflammatory remarks and signs.
The root of inflammable and inflammatory give you a clue to their meaning with the idea of fire. Inflammable is a literal fire: something that can be easily set on fire. Inflammatory is a figurative fire, whether with swollen joints or angry words.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS ingenious/ingenuous
Quiz time! Which example uses ingenuous correctly?
YouTube Marketing An Ingenuous Thing: What You Need To Know
Indeed, even an ingenuous child cries out with remorse when caught.
Joe Muench: Ingenuous plan for using those Asarco properties
If you picked the second one, give yourself a gold star. Ingenuous means innocent, artless, simple. It could be a compliment or an insult, but it does not somehow mean clever or creative. Our second example explains that even a innocent child will feel remorse about a thing if he's caught doing it (though, if he's "caught," doesn't that imply wrongdoing?).
The sad, ingenuous path of John Locke has been trumped by the machinations of Betty Draper.
If you refuse to take part in a game of corruption that everyone around you is playing, you're taken for an ingenuous fool.
Both the first and third examples wanted ingenious, meaning something original, creative, inventive. As in:
Caffeinated Marshmallows?! Ingenious!
YouTube marketing might be just thing clever thing to sell your product. And though you might have an innocent way of using those Asarco properties, it's not something worth bragging about. A creative use is another story. So are caffeinated marshmallows. Just don't give them to ingen
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS insidious/invidious
Neither insidious nor invidious are happy words: insidious describes something that lies in wait to get you, and invidious is something offensive or defamatory. Cancer can be insidious, lurking in your body without your knowing it. Invidious doesn't hide; it's hateful right away.
Insidious didn't fall too far from the tree – it comes directly from the Latin word insidiosus meaning "deceitful, cunning, artful," from insidiae "plot, snare, ambush." Something insidious can even be attractive while doing harm, like an insidious plot to befriend your crush's girlfriend, so you can break them up. But often it's not attractive, just sneaky:
Storms like Agnes and Irene are insidious, often striking slowly over time in ways that can be unpredictable and far more damaging than anticipated. (Salon)
An insidious new email virus infiltrated high-profile US companies Thursday. (Toronto Star)
Rather, it is the insidious silence and insensitivity that surrounds so many of the most excruciating diseases of the mind that so often trigger suicide. (CNN)
Invidious comes from the Latin for ill will or envy. Some bouncers probably love the invidious task of not letting good-looking people into their clubs. It's often paired with segregation, but other things can be invidious as well:
Arnold is in an invidious position, and has tried to create a very different type of museum on the proverbial shoestring. (New York Times)
"After an old-fashioned, all-round team performance ... it might seem invidious to single out one player," admits the paper before singling out one player. (Guardian)
The cheap shots against the Democrats and Obama at the beginning were unnecessary and invidious. (Washington Post)
Joining the cheerleading squad so you can poison the football team is insidious. Yelling, "Teams like yours always lose!" at the game is invidious.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS instant/instance
Around the Vocabulary.com office, we might like an instance of tea, but we vehemently oppose instant tea.
That's because instance means an example or an occurrence:
Police investigated five instances of criminal mischief to motor vehicles on Forest Avenue
A student in the engineering academy, for instance, would have to take three engineering-specific electives.
There was an instance in a game in August where the catwalk came into play.
Instant, on the other hand, mean immediately or urgently:
Easy Reader: Philip Roth's Nemesis an Instant Classic
Starbucks announced last summer it would start retailing flavored instant coffee, and here it is.
Now think about the times when you fell victim to the instant desire to buy that new shinny thing.
Oddly enough, the two are related. Instance dates back to 1380 as meaning the current time, but it comes from the Medieval Latin (through Old French) instantia, which refers to both presence and urgency. Instant dates to about the same time, prior to 1398, as meaning a specific moment. It comes from the Medieval Latin instantem, meaning present and urgent. Instant picked up its modern meaning of immediately around 1443 from its English definition and instance seems to have never meant urgency, creating a distinction between the two.
But instant tea is still disgusting.
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS intense/intensive/intent
If your teacher offered you a choice between an intense course or an intensive one, which one would you choose? And would you wonder what his intent was?
Intense means of severe strength or force; having strong feelings. An intense course, then, would be an extremely tough course, such as advanced nuclear science. Intensive means focused on one subject or area for a short time; extremely thorough. So an intensive course would be very focused on one topic and would last short time, as with summer courses. The teacher's intent, his purpose or intention, might be to guide you to the best course for you. Or it might be to fill his summer course.
Searching online, you'll find that in particular intensive is used instead of intense:
Michigan Solar Panel Factory's Labor-Intensive Assembly Tasks
These hiking-intensive trips can, of course, be strenuous.
Implementation can be a time-intensive process in terms of training, data input, data conversion, and down time.
Some dictionaries point out that intense is usually connected with a subjective response, while intensive is generally connected to an objective description. Here are a few examples that get it right:
Intense heat sears Southern California for 4th day
Seaton's intent to lie, cheat is as serious as a felony
Professional mountain bike rider in intensive care after hit-and-run
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CHOOSE YOUR WORDS laudable/laudatory
Choose your words:
Acclaimed playwright-actor returns home for a laudable/laudatory cause
When it was published, the most laudable/laudatory review came from the novelist Anthony Burgess.
In the first sentence a playwright-actor comes home for a good cause, a praiseworthy cause. That's laudable. Though a positive word, laudable many times precedes a negative follow-up statement.
I soon realized that the efforts, though laudable, have a ways to go to meet the standard being set in my hometown.
Cutting taxes laudable, but some city needs must be addressed
In the second sentence, Burgess gave a positive review of the it mentioned. The review itself isn't being described as praiseworthy, the review was doing the praising. We want laudatory here.
A trio of laudatory articles on Amazon in recent days compelled one to take another look at the company's performance.
Thomas Keneally wrote a laudatory biography of Hasler in 1993 titled Utility Player.
The difference to watch for between these adjectives is who or what is receiving the praise. If the noun that the adjective modifies is receiving the praise, such as a worthy cause, then choose laudable. Think able to be praised. If the noun is giving the praise to something else, such as a positive review of a book, then choose laudatory.
9 loath vs loathe
Confusion between loath ("unwilling or reluctant") and loathe ("to hate") is a growing trend.
What do the following sentences have in common?
But Saudi Arabia isn't the only Muslim country that seems to loath Iran.
Broadcasters are loathe to relinquish control of lucrative cable package services to third party providers.
I'm loathe to put up another Netbook, so let's try this.
Deep Down inside Bud Grant loaths the state of affairs in Minny.
All of them use either loath or loathe incorrectly and all are from trusted publications. The error is a growing trend. Garner's Modern American Usage puts this error at stage 3: "commonplace even among many well-educated people but is still avoided in careful usage."
Loath means to be unwilling or reluctant about something:
For-profit education institutions have been loath to put out that kind of information.
Coalition upper house leader David Davis was loath to speculate on the final outcome in the 40-seat Legislative Council.
Loathe, on the other hand, means to strongly dislike someone or something or find it disgusting:
Love it or loathe it, there's no denying that the holiday season is upon us.
And if voters in general dislike Obamacare, Republican voters positively loathe it.
When it comes to loath and loathe, choose your words with care and avoid a common error.
1 luxuriant vs luxurious
No doubt advertising affects language. Where would we be without the free gift, new and improved, or supersize? (Perhaps writing more grammatically and eating more healthily...) In yet another attempt to reduce English to features and selling points, advertisers often use luxuriant to describe their products or services:
Luxuriant Cracked Heel Repair
Luxuriant Christmas Tree Wallpaper
Miralux Luxuriant Mattress
Problem is luxuriant means lush growth; thick and rich. As in a luxuriant growth of leaves in the spring. What those advertisers really want is luxurious, as in self-indulgent; comfort, elegance, or enjoyment in the extreme:
Mediterranea ... is a luxurious community situated adjacent to the sea, boasting stunning views of the Mediterranean.
This luxurious penthouse at the One Hyde Park development in the Knightsbridge of London just sold for a record-breaking £140 million or $220 million.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy orders brand new, luxurious presidential jet to rival Air Force One
As a society, we tolerate a lot of bent or outright broken language rules in advertising. We tune a lot of it out, anyway. But the careful writer should not emulate advertising-speak and should be wary of copying its word usage. Using luxuriant for luxurious is very much considered an error and is to be avoided.
2 marital vs martial
Marital and martial look almost alike, but the only time they overlap is when you declare war on your spouse. Marital has to do with marriage, and martial is concerned with fighting.
Marital comes from the word marriage. It means either related to marriage or to a husband and his role in a marriage (usually the first). It comes from the Latin marītalis, used to describe something belonging to married people. Although it's not very romantic, being married is a legal status, so the word marital shows up in court all the time:
New Hampshire's House plans to investigate whether grounds exist to impeach a marital master, a court officer that handles family court cases. (Boston Globe)
Overall, the pre-marital contract can prevent a bad divorce experience. (FiGuide.com)
On the other fist, martial is related to war; related to the profession of war; or the characteristics of a warrior. These meanings come from the Latin martialis, which is from Mars, the Roman god of war. Martial law is when the military takes over, and a martial art is something like karate or judo, as in these examples from the news:
Last week Bahrain called in troops from its fellow Sunni-ruled neighbours, declared martial law and launched a crackdown that drove the protesters from the streets. (Reuters)
An off-duty Houston police officer used a martial arts move to kill a man who had asked a bartender for her telephone number. (Houston Chronicle)
With marital, remember the connection to marriage in sound and spelling: mari- and marri-. When looking at martial, think of Martians from Mars, the Roman god of war. People in divorce court like to move the "i" to the other side of the "t."
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mean/median/average
Wordsmiths sometimes dislike numbers, or at least have a hard time grasping them. These words offer us an opportunity to better understand numbers and use their terms more precisely in writing and speaking.
Let's say we have a set of numbers:
11
23
30
47
56
The mean, sometimes called the arithmetic mean, of this set is 33. The mean is the sum of all the numbers in the set (167) divided by the amount of numbers in the set (5).
The median is the middle point of a number set, in which half the numbers are above the median and half are below. In our set above, the median is 30. But what if your number set has an even number of, er, numbers:
11
23
30
47
52
56
To calculate the median here, add the two middle numbers (30 + 47) and divide by 2. The median for our new list is 38.5.
So far, so good. But what about average? The average of a set of numbers is the same as its mean; they're synonyms.
Let's see our terms in action:
Performance is calculated by the arithmetic mean of the returns in an equally weighted portfolio of individual stocks, on a quarterly basis.
The median single-family homeowner in town will pay $175 more in property taxes this year.
Average retail gas prices in California fell 1.3 cents in the last week, putting the average tank of gas at $3.13 per gallon.
While we wordy types may still struggle to understand what an "equally weighted portfolio" is, wonder whether we are median single-family homeowners, or continue to look for lower-than-average gas prices, at least we know how the mean, median, and average were calculated.
3medal/meddle/mettle
Here we have a trio of words that sound the same (at least in American English) but mean very different things: medal, meddle, and mettle.
A medal is a disc made of metal with an inscription or image. It is generally used as an award or a commemoration of an event:
Maplewood Officers Receive Medal Of Valor
Special Olympics duo wins gold medal in golf
To meddle is to interfere with someone or something:
Belarus will not let any other country meddle in its December presidential election.
Politicians meddle with existing taxation arrangements at their peril.
Finally, mettle is a quality or qualities that help a person in a difficult situation. Those qualities might include courage, ardor, and stamina:
Madison native tests his mettle in "Hell's Kitchen"
Test of mettle: How the Steelers can win without Roethlisberger
If you don't speak American English, you might be wondering why mettle makes this list. In American English, when a t appears in an unstressed syllable between two vowels—or between a vowel and an l, as is the case here—that t is said with a flap of the tongue similar to how we say d. Linguists call it a "medial flap." The same thing happens in betting, metal, noted, writing and many other words.
4 moral vs morale
Moral/Morale of the story: If you became a middle school football coach so you could trick little kids, shame on you.
Posh needed a moral-/morale-boosting win after a couple of insipid home displays and credit to the players for providing it.
In our first sentence, we want a word that means the lesson of the story, especially a lesson of right and wrong. That word is moral. In the plural, it refers to the rules by which one conducts one's life. Some more examples that use moral:
However, here are 10 moral character failings destroying our nation that I feel, like the mayor, we ought to be up in arms about addressing.
Saudi Arabia Blocks Facebook on Moral Grounds, Promptly Unblocks It
The second sentence describes a win that will make the team feel more confident and enthusiastic. Here the choice is morale. If your department or team has a strong sense of common purpose or dedication, your morale is high; if there's a lot of bickering going on and people are quitting the company or just not doing their jobs, morale is low.Some more examples:
Perks keep morale high at Michigan's top workplaces
To improve officer morale, Sheppard said he will repair union relations, address concerns that officer discipline is handled unfairly and solicit more officer input while improving training..
4 morbid vs moribund .Morbid describes something gruesome, like smallpox or Frankenstein's monster. Moribund refers to the act of dying. Goths love both. What fun!
Morbid and moribund are both dark and popular around Halloween, but if you dig up their graves, you'll find their Latin bones are different: Morbid comes from morbus, for disease, while moribund comes from morī, for dying.
Morbid is a busy adjective, going from dark to darker describing terrible things such as anything related to disease -obesity, insanity, the plague - or unwholesome thoughts. Morbid pops up all over the place, such as in
The Morbid Imagination, a Website about Gothic Horror and the Arts.
Or in this quote from a book about country life:
And the slender, undersized, morbid girl needed just such tonic. (Lillian Elizabeth Roy)
You can be morbidly obese or morbidly thin, as long as you're sick in some way, even in the head, you're morbid. Appropriately, Morbid is the name of a Swedish death metal band.
On the other hand, moribund means dying, literally or figuratively. It can refer to a person about to leave this world behind or to something that's almost obsolete. In both senses, moribund does not mean death but dying. It refers to the action, not the outcome, like in this example from an old medical book:
This heart was taken from a man who came into the hospital in a moribund condition.
The word also shows up in the news, all too often describing an economy:
But the domestic economy remains moribund, while the fragile export recovery could be sabotaged by slowing in the global economy. (New York Times)
The hermit crab that hasn't had water in three days is a moribund pet. The kid with the black lipstick who wants it to die is morbid.