Phase or Faze?
And other words we confuse
“It didn’t phase him.” What? I found a similar sentence in a Medium story, when the author undoubtedly meant “faze,” to daunt or disconcert. Interestingly, this word only seems to occur in negative expressions. We all know the moon has “phases” and we can speak of “phasing out” something as well: “Our city is phasing out the use of plastic bags.”
Next to “its/it’s,” perhaps the homophone I’ve found misused the most, even in published books, is “pedal,” often confused with “peddle.” We pedal a bike but we peddle items from house to house. One good way to remember the latter term is to think of the word “peddlers.”
It’s funny that some of these pairs are frequently confused, while others aren’t. I have never seen anyone write “waist” instead of “waste” (or vice versa) or “horse” instead of “hoarse.” I confess that, as a kid, I was baffled the first time I heard someone apparently say, “I’m a little horse,” but of course, they meant “hoarse!”
Then, we’ve surely heard of children wondering why in the world adults spoke of “bear feet” when human feet didn’t look at all like those of bears!
A pair that is often confused is “compliment” and “complement.” We compliment people about their clothing, hairstyle, or grades. A couple may complement one another when they have different…
