PublicWongery:Frequently misused words

The following is a list of words that are typically misused or misunderstood, applied to meanings at odds with and in some cases actually antithetical to their accepted meanings. While it's not inconceivable that popular use may someday turn some of these "misuses" into accepted alternate meanings, or even cause them to supersede the original meanings, as far as we're concerned it hasn't happened yet.

• Atypical. I've often seen "atypical" used to refer to things that are the perfect representations of their kind, that embody everything you'd expect from what they are. That's pretty much the opposite of what the word "atypical" actually means. The "a-" in "atypical" is a Greek-derived prefix meaning "not". Something "atypical" is therefore not typical—it is unusual, it is unique, it defies expectations, it is different from the norm. I think perhaps the misuse comes from confusion with "archetypal"—but while the words "archetypal" and "atypical" share many letters they are, of course, completely different words, with completely different, and close to antonymous, meanings.
• Hoi polloi. I've seen "hoi polloi" used to refer to the aristocracy, the upper classes, the elite. Actually, while it may seem like a high-falutin' word, its meaning is just the opposite. The hoi polloi refers to the common people, the masses. ("Hoi polloi" (οἱ πολλοί) means "the many" in Greek—the "polloi" part is from the same root as the prefix "poly-" as in polygraph and polygon. This also means that "the hoi polloi" is kind of redundant, since "hoi" already means "the", but that usage has been well enough established in English by now to be forgivable.)
• Latter. Latter is a comparative form, not a superlative. That is, "latter" is to "last" as "better" is to "best". You can refer to the latter of two items, but if there are more than two items in a list, then there isn't a latter; there's a last, just as if there are more than two items, you wouldn't call one of them "the better"; you'd say it was "the best". (The same goes for "former", incidentally, but that one seems to get misused less often.) Admittedly, this is a very common misuse that seems to bother nobody but me, but it does bother me, so don't do it here.
• Lest. "Lest" is used to introduce the consequences of not heeding a particular command or word of advice. In other words, it roughly means "or else" or "to avoid that". What it absolutely does not mean is "unless". I guess it sounds kind of like "unless", so a lot of people try to use it as a more flavorful synonym, but that's not what it means. If you mean "unless", use "unless"; "lest" has a different meaning entirely. For example:
  • RIGHT: "Enter not the Loathly Forest, lest you die a horrible death!" (Well, grammatically right, if rather melodramatic and silly.) This implies that the consequences of entering the Loathly Forest are that you will die a horrible death. That is, enter not the Loathly Forest, or else you will die a horrible death. Makes perfect sense.
  • WRONG: "Enter not the Loathly Forest, lest you want to die!" What the writer presumably meant here is "unless you want to die". But using "lest" completely changes the meaning; what the sentence is actually saying is "Enter not the Loathly Forest, or else you will want to die!" Which... I guess technically could make sense, if the Loathly Forest makes people suicidal, but when I've seen "lest" used this way before I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intended meaning.
• Literally. "Literally" means really, exactly what the words in question denote, without any figurative language or exaggeration. Strangely, people often use "literally" to mean the exact opposite of this. (Well, to be fair, no; they seem to use it as an intensifier, but they frequently use it to intensify figures of speech that are clearly not literally true.)
• Mesopotamia. "Mesopotamia" is not the name of an ancient civilization. It is the name of a place. Many cultures rose and fell in Mesopotamia over the years, including Sumer, Akkadia, Babylonia, Assyria, and Parthia. It therefore doesn't make sense, for instance, to say "in the days of Mesopotamia", in reference to some particular epoch in antiquity. Mesopotamia is still very much around; it's currently occupied mostly by Iraq, though parts of Mesopotamia pertain to Iran, Syria, and Turkey. It also doesn't make sense to refer to "the Mesopotamian language", "Mesopotamian mythology", or "Mesopotamian culture", as if these are unambiguous, monolithic entities. There are many cultures that occupied Mesopotamia, each of which had their own languages, mythologies, and cultures (though certainly some of them borrowed from each other, and there are notable commonalities); it makes more sense to refer more specifically to, e.g., the Sumerian language, Assyrian mythology, Babylonian culture, etc.
  • Nor, by and large, by the way, did the ancient inhabitants of the area call it "Mesopotamia"; this is a relatively recent term derived from Greek (and meaning "between rivers", referring to the Tigris and the Euphrates). The Babylonians and Sumerians no more called their homeland Mesopotamia than the pre-Columbian Apaches and Sioux called their homeland America.
• Paraphrase. To paraphrase is to reword something, keeping the meaning but expressing it differently (and often more simply). If you quote someone verbatim, you are not paraphrasing them. Also, if you make a reference to a known phrase, but change a few words to make it refer to something different, that is not a paraphrase, either. Paraphrasing is putting something in different words, not putting different words in something.
• Penultimate. The word "penultimate" is often misused as if it means really ultimate, better than ultimate, the absolute top whatever it can be. Actually, it's just the reverse: "penultimate" means not quite ultimate—literally, second-to-last. The penultimate is what comes just before the ultimate.

See also

• PublicWongery:Frequently Misspelled Words
• PublicWongery:Frequently Confused Words
• PublicWongery:Nonexistent Words
• PublicWongery:Plurals