Wrong Word of the Day

Each day The Muse Of Language Arts features a word, phrase, clause, short quotation or the like that has actually been used by someone somewhere, but is nevertheless a flagrant or grotesque misuse of the English language.

Today's wrong word of the day

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About This Feature

Wrong Word Of The Day is a feature about words or expressions misused in formal expository, written English prose. It is also about words used in everyday speech, slang, the arts, and informal written prose communications.

Sadly, many of these mangled words are frequently encountered in places they shouldn't be. They pop up too often in all walks of life and in all kinds of publications and speaking situations ranging from chance conversations at bus stops to television broadcast news programs to formal speech making. Gladly, examples of misused words are in the tiny minority compared with the number of occurrences of correctly used words we meet up with in everyday life.

Some of the Wrong Word entries you'll see here are not offered because they're mangled; instead, they actually may be correct names for words whose correctness you're unsure about. Entries like these are unscrambled here to confirm your suspicion that a word or expression is correct even though you may be wondering whether it is.

For example, is a porpoise the same thing as a dolphin? Is it a fish or a mammal? The answer is yes or no, depending on how you look at it. Some fish porpoises are also called dolphins; some mammal dolphins are also called porpoises.

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