Protege and protegee, originating from French, are a masculine/feminine pair with the same meaning. A protege (male) or protegee (female) is a person who is trained, protected, supported, or promoted by another person of talent, fame, power, or influence: Bruce Lee was the protege of the great martial arts master Yip Man. A protegee is often given opportunities […]

These two adjectives have very different meanings. Sanguinary means bloody, or blood-thirsty (desiring bloody violence), while sanguine means optimistic, confident: Putin’s sanguinary invasion of Ukraine angered many people. (bloody) However, many people were sanguine that he would not succeed. (optimistic) Both words are based on the French word for blood, sang. The meaning of sanguine changed from […]

Of these two nouns, repertoire is much more general, while repertory has a related, narrower meaning. The origin of these words, Latin re-parare, means to “re-produce” (to produce again), and both words concern creative works that can be performed again and again. Let’s look at each word in more detail. Repertoire means “a collection of works in the […]

These words (adverbs) overlap in meaning: both describe actions which are right, or correct, in either a moral or logical sense, usually moral. The difference is that rightfully refers to people’s rights (human rights, legal rights, etc.) and other matters of justice, or what is appropriate—while rightly applies more generally to matter of correctness: Rightfully/*rightly, she does […]

Retch, a verb, describes what your body does when you try to vomit (‘throw up’). It does not mean to vomit. When you vomit, you usually retch, but you can retch without vomiting: Gregory retched several times trying to throw up the poison, but nothing came out. Wretch, a noun, is a person in a wretched […]