14 common pairs of words that everyone confuses

For better or worse, the English language has a lot of words that sound the same. When words sound exactly the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings, like “your” and “you’re,” they’re called homophones. But there are also plenty of pairs of words that don’t sound exactly the same, but sound pretty darn similar. And they’re just as easy to confuse. Some, like “inhibit” and “inhabit,” are words that we don’t use very often in our everyday lives. But some are! For instance, have you mixed up “loose” and “lose,” or at least took a second to ponder which to use? These pairs of words can be frustrating and tricky to keep straight no matter how much you use them. Here’s the difference between “affect” and “effect,” “further” and “farther,” and more pairs of similar words.

Here’s another perplexing one. Despite sounding the same, “accept” and “except” mean very different things, often leaving people wondering which is which. Well, wonder no more! “Accept” is a verb that means “to receive with approval or favour”. You “accept” a gift, and you also “accept” someone for who they are. “Except”, meanwhile, is most often a preposition, and it means “with the exclusion of”. You would say “I like all of these pizza toppings except anchovies.” There is a verb form of “except,” but it’s not very common. It means, unsurprisingly, “to exclude or leave out”.

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This is one of the most common, trickiest ones. Not only do “affect” and “effect” sound the same, but they also have very similar meanings. They both have to do with producing a change or result. But it’s their parts of speech that make them different: “Affect” is a verb and “effect” is a noun. If you “affect” something, you produce a change; an “effect” is a change.

Here are some more pesky homophones that you might get mixed up. “Allowed” is the past-tense form of “allow,” hence the “-ed” at the end. It means “permitted to do something”. So if your parents won’t let you have lollies before dinner, you’d say “I’m not allowed to have lollies”. “Aloud”, meanwhile, is not a form of a verb; it’s an adverb and means the same thing as “out loud”. “I try to do funny voices when I read aloud to my daughter” is a correct use of “aloud”.

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This is another challenging one, made all the more difficult by these words’ similar meanings. They both have to do with strong negativity. They’re both adjectives, too, complicating things further. “Adverse” means “unfavourable or harmful”. For instance, you could say “The town is still suffering from the adverse effects of the flood.” But it can also have milder uses, as in, “She received a lot of adverse criticism on her novel.” “Averse,” meanwhile, means “strongly opposed to”. So it’s kind of negativity directed in the opposite direction from “adverse”. So you could say “People seem frustratingly averse to wearing masks during a pandemic, even though there’s evidence that it keeps people safe.” A phrase you might hear a lot is “risk-averse,” which means “taking care to avoid risk”.

Seriously…why is English so hard?! Between these two, the word you’re probably most familiar with is “discreet,” which means “subtle or unobtrusive”. So if you whisper over the phone in a library, you’re speaking “discreetly,” not “discretely”. “Discrete,” meanwhile, means “separate,” or “composed of separate parts”. For instance: “Each of the counties is a discrete entity with its own constituents.” It’s much less common and often used in mathematical contexts.

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Both of these words are adjectives, but they describe pretty different qualities. If something is “eminent” – or someone, because “eminent” often describes a person – it’s high-profile, respected and distinguished. Many public figures are “eminent”. “Imminent,” on the other hand, means “about to happen” or “happening at any moment”. It’s often used with urgency, to describe something bad about to happen: “They found themselves in imminent danger!” a thriller novel might dramatically declare. But “imminent” doesn’t have to describe bad things. If you were excitedly awaiting a package, you could also say that the mail’s arrival was “imminent”.

Here’s another one-letter difference that causes serious confusion. “Further” and “farther” mean almost the same thing, but not quite. Use “farther” when you’re referring to a physical distance. For instance, you’d say “How much farther is it to Adelaide?” You’d also use “farther” to say “You can stretch your arms farther than I can”. “Further,” meanwhile, refers to metaphorical distance, as in, “How much further are you going to take this argument?”

When trying to decide between these two verbs, think of the word “habitat”. “Inhabit” means “to live or dwell somewhere”. This can refer to people, animals, really anything that can live in a place. If you want to get spooky, you’d also use “inhabit” to talk about ghostly possession: “He believed a spirit was inhabiting his body.”

“Inhibit” has a totally different meaning; it means “to prevent or hinder”. “Inhibit” is slightly different from “prohibit,” another word it’s often confused with. While “prohibiting” is specifically forbidding something, “inhibit” refers to a more general restraint or hindrance. A topical example: “Wearing a face mask inhibits the spread of COVID-19.” (“Inhibit” can also mean “to forbid,” but it’s a less common definition.)

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Finally, some similar-sounding words that can mean the same thing! You can use both “insure” and “ensure” when you’re talking about “securing or guaranteeing” something. You could say both “Take a water bottle to ensure you stay hydrated” and “…to insure you stay hydrated”. As you might have guessed, “insure” does have another meaning. This is the word you’ll want to use when you’re talking about insurance, as in “I insure my car with GIO,” not “ensure”. But “insure” doesn’t only refer to insurance. It can also mean the same thing as “ensure”.

On the other hand, here are some words that are their own opposites.