8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words

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A short while ago I wrote a column on words we always mix up with other words, where I drew shoddy pictures of things like Superboy being shot out of a Superman-shaped cannon. This completely made sense in the context of the article.

Since everyone knows online humor columns by obscure writers are extremely effective in changing society, I'm sure misuse of those words is no longer a problem. However, there are still a lot of other rogue (not rouge) words out there mixing with their homophonic or lookalike cousins and wreaking (not reeking) havoc on news articles, blogs, and forums everywhere. Words like ...

Regimen/Regiment

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words

Members of the 401st Exercise Regiment on duty.

A "regimen" is a routine or course of treatment for improving health, while a "regiment" is a military unit. While regiments do get a lot of exercise, that isn't their sole duty, or at least if it is, I'm going to write a sternly worded letter to my Congressman about where my taxes are going.

Entering his second season with the Pirates, the 52-year-old McNeill has committed to losing weight, implementing a strenuous exercise and diet regime
The Charlotte Observer

There has been a lot of controversy over how much college football coaches are paid, and I know there are points to be made for both sides, but when you can afford to have an entire military regiment train with you daily, that seems like it might cross a line.

lish flexibility. Fetto suggests follow- ing an exercise regiment which can
The Lakeland Ledger

This seems like dangerous advice. I have a feeling military types might be kind of prickly about being stalked.

Weary/Wary

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words

Always be weary of danger. It makes you look cool.

"Wary" means cautious, you know, like the ware in "beware." "Weary," on the other hand, means tired. So this person...

At First, I Was Weary About Blogging, But Opportunity Won Me Over
The Social Marketing Project

...was somehow sick of blogging before she even started. But I guess she stopped being tired of it after she started, so perhaps she lives backwards through time like T.H. White's Merlyn.

Meanwhile, these teams are fucking sick of playing each other.

Swans stay weary of Bombers Updated: 05:51, Tuesday August 2, 2011
Sky News Australia

And this one actually makes a little bit of sense:

course, there's a good chance they will meet a third tima in October, in another NLCS. Yet after the first meeting of 2011. and after San Francisco'e
Yahoo Sports

He might very well be weary of the Giants. My fiance (only one "e" for a man apparently) is a Philly fan living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I've noticed he is almost homicidally tired of hearing about the Giants winning the World Series. Hey, Mike!

S RRIES
Getty

Ha ha! All in good fun! Moving on.

Epitaph/Epithet

9ASON AQUNO ASIANIPA CIRIC ANDER A SIMMES CASIAN NM EDWARD TORH DUARTI 972 CAT CSta TATINO 011 1948
Getty

Racial epitaphs.

An epithet is a descriptive word or phrase, and is usually used to mean a negative one, like "asshole" or "Raiders fan." News articles have to use the phrase "racial epithet" a lot to describe words they can't print in their family paper and that I can't type in this column.

An epitaph on the other hand, is something written about you when you are dead, most likely on your gravestone. When they get mixed up, racism becomes very morbid.

When L was growing up, L was always taught to stay away from racial clurs... and epitaphs, Pasternak said. This kind of conduct, from a supervisor w
FoxNews.com

Pasternak, who is white, won a civil suit alleging racial discrimination. I assume he had been harassed by co-workers shouting: "Stupid polack, taken too soon" and, "Dumbass cracker touched the lives of many."

Luis told police he and a handful of people were hanging out at a residence OD Main Street when a man. identified aS David Wayne Baize according to co
Helena Independent Record

He just out of nowhere started screaming "Calvin Running Bear Higgins, beloved husband and father!" and "Janice Hungry Wolf, an inspiration to all!" at random people at the party. Kind of creepy.

NAACP less than three weeks ago that occurred in Polk County. O that unfortupate circumstaoe cinder blocl. inscribed with racial epitaphs warning the
The Chattanoogan.com

Here is that cinder block:

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words

Per Se/Per Say

"Per se" is a Latin term meaning "in itself" or "by itself." For example: "I'm not calling my neighbor a crazy cat lady because of the high number of cats she owns per se, but because her kitchen is six inches deep in cat poop and she sits on the porch with a rifle taking potshots at animal control whenever they try to visit."

A
Getty

"Also I'm a little worried there might be something sexual going on."

"Per say," while being made of two legitimate English words, is not really a meaningful phrase, but I guess it could mean something that happens upon each "say." As a noun, "say" means an opinion, or an opportunity or turn to speak.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS WRONG WITH OTHER PEOPLE? S $ 900290 CURRENT TOTAL 040 PER OPIMON

I wouldn't mind politicians being charged "per say."

So these athletes:

Butler doesn't believe he's D a one-on-one battle with Prater per say and isn't afraid of being typecast. He knows regardless of particular traits. ro
FoxSportsWest.com

are apparently seen by some (but not Butler) as being in a one-on-one verbal battle, where each line counts as one round of the fight. Despite his strong reliance on "yo mama" jokes, Butler feels people are familiar enough with his varied repertoire of one-liners that he won't be typecast in the future as a one-note comic.

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words
AdamCarolla.com

Be careful, dude, you don't want to go down this path.

OK, so a simple misspelling is no big deal, but even overlooking the bad spelling, it's clear most people wouldn't even know how to use "per se" if the spellchecker handed it to them corrected. Like many Latin terms, people seem to feel entitled to use it to mean whatever they need a word for, in the same ways the Smurfs use the word "smurf."

Apparently sometimes people think it means "so to speak":

members. They operate under different rules, said Kaufman. Their missions are to get things done and 'take things out' per say.
News10.net

And some people think it means "for example" (probably confusing it with "let's say"):

I have tried project after project, attempting to use this hierarchy idea and have alway's come to a dead end I have read several books. and they go a
GameDev.net

And some people think it means "exactly" or "actually":

not a false positive oer sav but rather annoying e on: July 08, 2011, 02:48:42 AM 3

So sure, why not. Let's just per se the term per se for whatever per se we per se. That's smurfy.

Principal/Principle

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words

"This! This, my friends, is what we are fighting for!"

A principle is a basic truth or a guiding belief, and a principal is a dude that runs a school. These are very different things, so you'd think we could easily tell them apart, but no.

Western democracies run the danger of dying because political activity is not based on principals.
Pakistan Christian TV

Well, of course not. If our political system was based on principals, our top issues would be "gum control", the right to skateboard on government property, and whether you have to wear a flag pin to prove you've got "spirit". Also, criminals would only have to go to jail for an hour after work. But they would have to call their parents.

race. A few basic principals make sense to me. an average American, that apparently are lost by all parties
USA Today

It really is the basic principals that make sense to us simple folk. All those newfangled experimenting principals with their "magnet programs" and acronyms and "cooperative classroom designs" and having Jamie Oliver come in and cook healthy lunches - they are just confusing the hell out of our average American brains.

It truly does match what has been happening in this country. People who stand on principal Whe have thought that they had no power. Now have come int
Fox5Vegas.com

This is just mean. No matter how much you need to have your voice heard, this isn't the right way to do it.

NO BLOOD FOR OIL

"Principal" has some other meanings, one of which is "a sum of money." Standing on that would be a little kinder than standing on a school principal, but I think you might send some mixed messages.

NO BLOOD FOR OIL Go

Hanger/Hangar

OK, so you know what a hanger is. It is, as the name implies, something to hang things on. Like so:

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words
Getty

So here's a really confusing news story. It starts out like this:

A proposed new hanger at the Beverly Airport that would be built near a Danvers' wetland will likely receive environmental approval on Wednesday night
Boston.com

What? Environmental approval? Why?

Danvers planner Kristen Farr said the Danvem Conservation Commission will likely approve the hanger during its meeting on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the T
Boston.com

Well, yeah, it's just a fucking coat hanger.

Almost half of the airport is on Danvers land. The 8o-by-115-square-footh hanger would be built off Old Burley Street and would also include office sp
Boston.com

OK, that is a big coat hanger.

Obviously they meant "hangar," which is something airplanes are stored in. I guess you could store an airplane on a hanger too but it would need to be reaallllly big.

B

What do you supposed the hangers are hanging on?

Tack/Tact

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words

"Tact" means the ability to sense what's OK to say in a social context, like checking the racial makeup in a room before you start making minstrel jokes. A "tack" is a pin for putting posters on walls, or gear for riding horses, or - and this is where it gets mixed up with tact - a way to change direction in sailing.

A sailor who is heading straight into a kraken's mouth might try "a different tack," to steer himself toward a not-kraken's-mouth somewhere. Somehow, people everywhere keep thinking the expression is "a different tact", possibly because they think "tact" is short for "tactic," and "a different tactic" makes sense. And a lot of the time, they're trying to fix a communication problem, so the word "tact" seems like it would be connected to fixing that somehow.

And that's why you get this everywhere:

about today. I'm afraid in 1973 the Supreme Court took different tact. If fetuses had been allowed a to
The Huffington Post

TROY - Troy coach Larry Blakeney isn't disputing his squad is considered the most-hated team in the Sun Belt Conference, and, if players or fans hav
The Montgomery Advertiser

Though that's the most common mixup of these words, it's a lot more fun the other way.

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words
Fangoria comments

I like to think this poster is asking any critics of the actress to show their manhood, and at the same time implying it will be very small.

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words
LinksysInfo.org

I guess it is like some kind of secret token you have to show to be accepted on that forum.

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words

"That tack is much too big! You're an impostor!"

Bare/Bear

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words

This bear is bare.

I would never dream of insulting you by explaining the difference between bare and bear. Third graders know this. Nevertheless, people mix them up all the damn time.

Take this story on an elementary school:

We hope that the student and faculty will bare with US over the next few weeks, said Sodexo representative Joe Majka. However, l can
Pacific Daily News

That just seems really inappropriate.

be talking about pav raises. People need to bare with us and be grateful they have a job.
The Hattiesburg American

That seems like a subtle threat that employees who don't strip for their bosses might get fired. That is also inappropriate.

favourites Germany, while the prospect Or a Deco, Ronaldo and Nani partnership in an impressive Portugal team is almost too much to bare.
TVNZ.co.nz

Clearly these three athletes are so well-endowed that if they were to strip at the same time, the world's eyes would explode.

PI YING FOR THFOV a
Vanity Fair

Even the top halves of soccer players are pretty dangerous.

Bush should cool off before going further Terrorists burden to bare are a in any country, and they don't
The Albany Herald

Yeah, it's hard enough to get a regular passenger to agree to a strip search, so I'm pretty sure a terrorist carrying an actual bomb would be hanging onto his clothes like a madman.

8 Words the Internet Loves to Confuse With Other Words
The Irish Independent

This mixup goes the other way and seems to imply that Ireland requires a certain number of bears in its government at all times.

AS for the argument that live women should be able to bear their breasts in public if they see fit, well. that's far less persuasive.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I can understand not letting women show breasts in public, but not letting them even carry them out of the house, I mean, how would that even work? He knows they are not detachable, right?

So yeah, type safe out there, kids, or next thing you know you'll be trying to remove women's boobs or follow a regiment back to base, and that never turns out well.

For more from Chrstina, check out The 6 Biggest Badasses Who Lived As The Opposite Sex and The 6 Most Statistically Full of Shit Professions.

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