Caroline Taggart

That blue dress really complements your eyes. That remark is, of course, a compliment, which That red dress really complements your eyes probably isnt.

1762, an Oxford professor called Robert Lowth produced a prescriptive text titled A Short Introduction to English Grammar, a publication so influential that it dominated grammar teaching into the twentieth century

In these commonly confused noun/verb pairs, the noun has a c and the verb has an s.†7

Noun

Verb

advice

advise

practice

practise

device

devise

prophecy

prophesy

licence

license

Webster was an orderly-minded man who disapproved of a lot of the spelling that Johnson had recorded (indeed, he disapproved of a lot about Johnson, saying that he was ‘naturally indolent and seldom wrote until he was urged by want. Hence… he was compelled to prepare his manuscripts in haste.’).

Webster’s dislike of words that weren’t pronounced the way they looked led him to decree that words such as centre and theatre should be spelled center and theater; he also dropped the silent u from words such as colour, favour and honour. In fact, Webster was single-handedly responsible for most of the differences between British and American spelling that survive to this day.

To abuse something means to treat it so badly that you damage it.

To misuse something means to use it wrongly.

To disabuse someone of something means to show them that their thinking is wrong.

Something looks like something else – they physically resemble one another.

He looks like his mother and she looks like Margaret Thatcher.

However:

It looks as if a storm is coming.

complement/compliment
May I compliment you on your new hairstyle? The colour complements your dress beautifully.

Continual means ‘happening over and over and over again’; continuous means ‘happening constantly without stopping’. You may continually receive unwanted telephone calls from telesales people. However, if this were happening continuously, you would never be able to put the phone down.

due to/owing to
This is another of those ‘strictly speaking’ problems. Chambers Dictionary says that due to means ‘caused by’ with a second definition of ‘owing to, because of’, which, it adds, is ‘a use still deprecated by some but now almost standard’. So, for the benefit of the pedants among us:

Due to means ‘caused by’.

Owing to means ‘because of’.

To determine which to use, decide whether you would replace due to or owing to by caused by or because of.

hanged/hung
Pictures or meat are hung; criminals used to be hanged.