Biannual and Biennial, both adjectives, have meanings you can probably guess. Biannual means “twice a year” and biennial means “every two years”: In New Orleans we miss Mardi Gras for most of the year, so we made it a biannual event; we have regular Mardi Gras in February, and Midsummer Mardi Gras in August! Some academic conferences […]

Baloney originally was a misspelling of bologna, based on its pronunciation;  Bologna is the name of a town in Italy, that sounds like ‘baloney’ to English ears.To people outside of Italy, bologna is a kind of very fat sausage; one slice can cover a piece of bread. Usually in America, where it is quite popular, one does […]

Axel and Axle are two different nouns, although you are more likely to see axel as a misspelling of axle, than as its own word, because the real word axel has a very specific meaning.Axle, the more common word, refers to a (usually metal) shaft—shaped like a straight pipe or rod—that goes through the centers […]

Aural and Oral are unrelated even though they both concern sound. They come from different roots.  Aural means “related to ears or hearing” and oral means “related to mouths or speaking”. Let’s take a look at the usage of aural and oral in a sentence: I hope you don’t get an aural (ear) infection from swimming.Living […]

Arrant and Errant have very close but different meanings. They began as different spellings of the same word, with the meanings of errant—(1) wandering and (2) wrong, as in sinful, mischievous, or disobedient—and these are still the meanings of errant; to err means “to make a mistake” and it also meant “to travel” long ago, […]