A Word on the Words

I’M angry at all these news stories about historic crimes.

The crimes themselves are bad enough, but the wrong term is being used. These crimes are historical, which means “of or concerning history”. They are not historic, as that means “famous, memorable or important in history”.

The victims would not, I imagine, describe the crimes as famous.

Historic and historical are almost homophones (words pronounced the same that mean different things).

Then there are homonyms, words that have different meanings which sound the same but aren’t spelt the same. There is no excuse for writing sewn when you mean sown or discrete when you mean discreet.

Getting these wrong displays a lack of knowledge about spelling and the language.

Homographs are more difficult still. These are words which are spelt the same but have different meanings. You can have a bandage wound round a wound, or insurance policies made invalid for an invalid.

A careful writer uses phrasing and context to steer a safe passage around homographs.

Worst of all are polysemes. These have, at base, the same meaning, but are used slightly differently. You’re reading a polyseme. Newspaper can mean the actual paper with news printed on it or it can mean the institution that produces it.