The adjectives, Urban and Urbane, both mean “city-like”—but in different ways. Urban can describe almost anything city-related. An urban environment is a crowded and artificial one, with many buildings and busy streets. We can talk about urban transportation, urban lifestyles, urban housing, urban culture, urban youth, etc. Urbane refers to qualities of people that live in cities—or rather, […]

Break and brake, pronounced the same, have many meanings, as both verbs and nouns. To break means to divide, to separate, or to damage. A break is a gap, space, or division. Break has many different uses: We will break the bread into pieces so everyone can have some. Everybody needs a break from work to recharge. There was […]

The adjectives, nauseated and nauseous, are very close in meaning. Both describe the feeling of being sick to one’s stomach—the feeling of needing to vomit (“throw up”).  The only difference is that nauseous simply describes the feeling, while nauseated is the past tense or past participle of the verb to nauseate, which means “to cause one to feel nauseous” […]