Words for Quantity and Degree
There is a mistake that costs readers more than any other when they meet a degree word: they judge how strong the word is before checking what it is measuring. Strong on the wrong scale is still wrong. Abundant, acute, approximate, excessive, marginal, and negligible illustrate the problem well, because they cover four different scales […]
Words for Personality, Behavior, and Emotion
Someone leaves a gate unlatched twice after being reminded. Were they careless, negligent, forgetful, or reckless? All four are unflattering, and all four describe roughly the same afternoon. They are not the same word, and a sentence that gives you a motive will only accept one of them. Vocabulary about people is difficult for a […]
