Seven Pairs of Words That Don’t Mean the Same Thing
You might think these words are synonyms. They’re not.
If you’ve read many of my other articles, you’ll know that I usually write about software engineering and architecture. Why, then, am I writing an article about words?
Well for starters, I don’t only write about software. And in fact, one of my favorite and most popular articles is 10 Fascinating Words About Words, which has naught to do with slinging code.
But interestingly, the idea to write this article actually came to me directly as a result of performing a code review. I didn’t find a bug with the code itself, but rather a bug with the grammar being displayed in the user interface. This particular issue stemmed from the incorrect use of one word, when another word — which is often taken as an exact synonym of the first — should actually have been used.
Sure, it wasn’t a mistake that would’ve tanked the company or anything. But for the percentage of our user base that cared about grammar, it would’ve left us seeming a little less than professional.
So I thought this tale was worth writing about, along with some similar examples of non-synonyms.
