I thought it was time to hit you with a few more words that are often confused. I keep seeing them misused, so there must be a need for a review of at least some of them.
The mangled body was evidence of a particularly grizzly murder.
If you weren’t paying attention, you might think that a bear had killed the person, but what the author meant to convey was that it was a horrible murder, NOT one done by a grizzly.
What the author meant to say was:
The mangled body was evidence of a particularly grisly murder.
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Hangars or hangers?
The buildings that house airplanes are hangars. All others are hangers for hanging up things such as clothes or pictures.
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When someone calls a person or an idea “harebrained” they mean “not smart” as in a hare who might be easily startled or is doing something that is not too smart.
It has nothing to do with hair and is not spelled “hairbrained.”
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In the old days when gentlemen fought over a woman, one of the men might challenge the other by throwing down his glove, otherwise known by knights as their gauntlet (a glove with protection of the wrist as well as the hand).
But if you are forced to run down a path where your tormentors are lined up on either side, ready to hit you with sticks or other weapons, you are running a gantlet. I have always known it as running the gauntlet, but the original term is said to be a gantlet.
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Lastly, this is one that I must repeat because I keep seeing it misused over and over again.
Shear means to cut, as in shearing the wool off a sheep. Scissors are often called shears.
If you have diaphanous curtains on your windows, you might call them sheers.
Another meaning for pure, total, or complete might be sheer, as in sheer joy, sheer chance, sheer foolishness.
Now imagine how the meaning would be changed if you substituted the word shear for sheer.
It was shear foolishness could then mean that someone went crazy with the scissors. Shear joy might refer to a group of seamstresses having a great time cutting out fabric.
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After committing the grisly murder of a grizzly, I ran for the hangar. I hot-wired the small plane with a coat hanger and taxied down the runway. I felt as if I were running a gantlet as I looked at the police in their cars parked either side of the runway, wondering how to take me down. I threw my gauntlet out the window of the plane as a challenge and with sheer delight I looked forward to taking off into the sky. But the shears I had used for the murder had fallen out of my back pocket, and as I bent down to pick them up, the plane wobbled and crashed. I knew it was a harebrained idea to steal the plane, especially considering that I didn’t even know how to fly.
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