Five More for your List

morale/moral

Morale (accent on the second syllable) usually refers to the general mood of a person or group. Are they enthusiastic and encouraged, or are they discouraged?

Moral (accent on the first syllable) is a lesson, often learned in a story like a fable. How often have we heard, “And the moral of the story is….”?

flair/flare

If someone has a flair for doing something, they have a natural talent or special skill. For example, my friend has a flair for home decorating.

A flare could be a light spreading out in a fan shape, a blaze, or a device that produces that flash of light. It could also refer to the fan shape of a pantleg. In the ’70s, pantlegs flared out at the bottom.

lightning/lightening

A flash of light in a thunderstorm is lightning (no e).

If something gets lighter in colour or in weight, we could say the sky is lightening, or the load is lightening. Think of getting lighter, as in to lighten, therefore, it is lightening.

dice/die

Those cubes with dots are called dice. One of the cubes is called a die. But dice has been used as the singular for so long, that it is now accepted as meaning one or more cubes.

And now for the most fun one – how do you spell a teeny tiny thing?

It is minuscule.

I think I have always spelled this one wrong because I was thinking “mini,” when I should have been thinking “minus.”

There is only one i in minuscule, but there are two u’s.

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