Plaintiff is a noun meaning “the person who accuses someone else of a crime in court” (usually, the victim of the crime); this word is used only in legal contexts. Plaintive is an adjective meaning piteous—“expressing pain, sorrow, or troubles”: Kate adopted the cat who made plaintive cries for food outside her door. Jerry’s sympathy […]

e.g. and i.e. are both abbreviations for Latin phrases. i.e. is an abbreviation for id est, meaning “that is.” It introduces an alternative or additional way of describing something. You can think of i.e. as meaning “in other words . . .”: The greatest mystery in science is human consciousness, i.e., awareness. Pamela was controversial; i.e., she […]

These two adverbs have different, though related, meanings. Ostensibly means “in appearance, seemingly, supposedly” and almost always implies that the appearance is not entirely true: The Queen is ostensibly England’s ruler, but really, that’s Parliament. John is ostensibly wealthy but he owes more money than he has. In other words, ostensibly does not imply a lie, but rather a […]

Fair and Fare have multiple unrelated meanings, so let’s take them one at a time . . . Fair as an adjective (adverb fairly) has the following meanings: 1. just, as in justice (impartial, balanced): A 20 years in jail for selling marijuana does not seem fair. 2. meaning so-so: The quality of her writing is only fair. […]

Led and Lead each have multiple meanings, both as verbs and nouns. We’ll primarily focus on the verb forms, since these cause the most confusion. At the end we will review the nouns briefly. As verbs, led and lead are two different grammatical forms of the same verb, to lead, meaning “to guide or go first.” Lead is the present […]