Commonly Interchanged Words

[Baburra]

There are a lot of English words that have similar meanings, but when being used for more specific purposes like debates and studies, might not be as acceptable to interchange. I'll start off with some examples I have observed and hopefully some of our members here will have more to contribute as I find these very interesting.

Rational and Logical

Normal and Typical

[AExAVF]

The words native and indigenous mean the same thing, but in the case of native, it usually refers to people living in communities, while the word indigenous usually refers to both people, animals, and other living organisms.  Also, native tongue is more appropriate than indigenous tongue, just as indigenous peoples has a more technical meaning than native peoples. 

[alanoww]

I hear people commonly misuse the words literally and figuratively. Literally is defined as "exactly" or "actually" whereas figuratively is defined as "metaphorically". Many times, I hear individuals say literally when they really mean figuratively.

An alternative way of looking at it is that these same individuals are using the word literally in a figurative sense. However so far of today, I haven't arrived to a conclusion of agreement or disagreement to that statement.

[linguaholic]

That's an interesting question alanoww. I never really thought about this. However I do agree, that literally is a word that gets used far too often and often not as it should be used.  :grin:

[Kektheman]

I hear people commonly misuse the words literally and figuratively. Literally is defined as "exactly" or "actually" whereas figuratively is defined as "metaphorically". Many times, I hear individuals say literally when they really mean figuratively.

An alternative way of looking at it is that these same individuals are using the word literally in a figurative sense. However so far of today, I haven't arrived to a conclusion of agreement or disagreement to that statement.

Exactly! So many people use the term "literally" wrong. I literally bang my head against the wall when I see it used incorrectly.