All over and allover both mean “everywhere” but are used differently. All over is an adverbial phrase: The children ran all over the yard. However, all over is often used less literally, just to mean “a lot”: There were professors arguing all over the conference room. Allover usually acts as an adjective: I prefer a […]

The words its and it’s fit into a class of confused words called homonyms, which are words that are spelled the same or that sound the same, but have different meanings.  So how do you tell the difference between these words? Well, first remember that it’s (which uses the apostrophe) is a contraction for “It is,” […]

Adduce and Deduce are both verbs that come from the same stem, -duce, meaning “to lead,” which is seen in reduce, induce, and other words. The prefixes, ad- (“to”) and de- (“from”) suggest the meanings “lead to” (adduce) and “lead from” (deduce)— and these meanings are accurate, if you interpret them in a very abstract […]

Aherence and Adherents, two closely related nouns, are pronounced in exactly the same way—at least for the plural form of adherent(s), as shown above. Both words come from the verb adhere, which means “to stick to something”; the stem -here also appears in coherent, inherent, and other words. Adherents are indeed people who “stick to” […]