Today we're focusing on pairs of words that may appear to have more in common than they actually do. In some cases, a word's history (or etymology) may offer a clue to its present-day meaning. But we need to be cautious: over the course of centuries, definitions can change significantly.

• Dual and Duel
  The adjective dual, which means "double" or "twofold," is a cousin of the noun duo: both are descendants of the Latin word for "two." So a person with "dual citizenship" has an allegiance to two countries at the same time. The noun or verb duel--which means "formal combat"--comes from a Latin word for "war." Duel is the title of an early Steven Spielberg movie--the story of a businessman who's terrorized by the driver of a massive tractor-trailer.


• Faint and Feint
  Our spell-checkers won't recognize the difference between these homophones, but we should be able to. Both words entered English by way of an Old French word meaning "feign," but their meanings have gone separate ways. As a verb faint means "to lose consciousness"; as an adjective it means "weak" or "timid." (Erma Bombeck once claimed that her "favorite household chore" was hitting her head on a bunk bed until she fainted.) Feint, as a noun or verb, involves tricking an opponent with a deceptive move. Boxers and politicians tend to indulge in this sort of feinting.


• Flair and Flare
  The noun flair comes from a Latin word that means "to give off an odor." Nowadays the English flair means "a natural talent or ability" (as in "a flair for decorating"). As a noun, flare denotes "a bright light" or "sudden outburst"; as a verb, it means "to blaze out." The origin of this flare is unknown.


• Flaunt and Flout
  Exactly where these two words originated is a bit of a mystery, but as discussed in our Glossary of Commonly Confused Words, their distinct meanings are worth keeping straight. To flaunt means "to show off." ("If you've got it, flaunt it" is the motto of the fashionista.) To flout means "to defy" or "show contempt for." ("Flout 'em and scout 'em and scout 'em and flout 'em: thought is free," sings Stephano in Shakespeare's The Tempest.)


• Interment and Internment
  The Latin word for "earth" is still buried in the noun interment ("the act or ritual of burying"), while the Latin for "internal" resides in internment ("confinement"). For interment, think "graveyard"; for internment, "prison."


• Livid and Lurid
  Both of these adjectives originally had something to do with color, but that's where the similarity ends. Livid (from the Latin word for "bluish") most commonly means "extremely angry." Lurid (from the Latin for "pale") generally means "gruesome" or "marked by sensationalism." In the tabloids, an irate person is frequently described as livid, while the details of a grisly crime may be characterized as lurid.

More About Word Histories:

• Introduction to Etymology
• Loanword
• Derivation
• Folk Etymology

For many of us, the toughest part of writing is getting started. After running through our rituals of procrastination (checking email, reading headlines, changing fonts), we still face the challenge of crafting an introduction--something smart, snappy, accurate, and attention-getting.

And often that's when our minds go blank.

The truth is, trying to compose a great introduction may not be the best way to get started on a writing project. Tinkering with syntax and worrying over words at this point could be just another distracting ritual. As author Leonard S. Bernstein suggests, getting started should be our first goal. Getting it right can come later.

As the tennis player rallies before the game begins, so must the writer. And as the tennis player is not concerned with where those first balls are going, neither must the writer be concerned with the first paragraph or two. All you're doing is warming up; the rhythm will come. The first moments are critical. You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something, perhaps something silly. It simply doesn't matter what you write; it only matters that you write. In five or ten minutes the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.
(Leonard S. Bernstein, Getting Published: The Writer in the Combat Zone. William Morrow & Company, 1986)

So don't just sit there: write something. Later you can revise and write something better.

More About Getting Started:

• Writers on Writing: Overcoming Writer's Block
• Getting Started With Freewriting
• Writers on Writing: The Myth of Inspiration

Though he once came in second to Sean Penn in a "meta-free-phor-all," political satirist Stephen Colbert, the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, is a master of metaphor. Or as he might prefer to call it, humaphor.

In fact, humor and metaphor have a lot in common: both make a point by drawing surprising comparisons. In The Act of Creation (1964), Arthur Koestler described this process as the "bisociation of ideas." Telling jokes and using figures of speech involve similar mental activities.

A professional ironist and wordsmith, Colbert knows a thing or two about uncovering concealed pairs--as revealed by these observations, drawn from his performances over the past few years.

1. Love is a full-length mirror.
   ("Battle of the Metaphors" on The Colbert Report, April 19, 2007)


2. Trail mix. I see this as a metaphor for Iraq itself. Well, you've got the nuts and the raisins, which could be the Sunnis and the Shiites--not the same, but they can mingle together--and in between, adding sweetness and peace, are the troops, which are the M&Ms.
   (The Colbert Report, June 10, 2009)


3. Yesterday the Senate Finance Committee approved their version of the health-care bill. . . . Folks, this bill is a nightmare. Thankfully, Kansas Republican Pat Roberts put the danger in terms we can all understand:

   I am terribly concerned that we are riding hell for leather into a health-care box canyon full of spending quicksand, cactus tax hikes, policy briar patches, complete with CMS regulatory rattlesnakes, scorpions, and bad-news bears. I yield back the balance of my time.

   Don't yield it! There's more to that metaphor [puts on a cowboy hat and starts chewing on a piece of straw]. You see, folks, we're on a run-away stagecoach of big government being chased by the coyotes of increased deficits and heading right into an ambush by the Comanche-in-Chief and his hope Hopis. Unless the marshal of fiscal responsibility arrives on the noon train of free-market principles to drive these saloon girls of new taxes out, the pick-up truck of high premiums will get eaten by the death-panel prairie dogs, and the Boot Hill tumbleweed sarsaparilla varmint six-shooter cattle-rustling you-think-you've-used-enough-dynamite-there fistful of dollars--yeow!
   (The Colbert Report, Oct. 14, 2009)


4. Jesse Jackson is here. The Reverend--a very challenging interview. You can ask him anything, but he's going to say what he wants at the pace that he wants. It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.
   (White House Correspondents' Dinner, April 29, 2006)


5. Stephen Colbert: Let's talk about meaning for a second. Okay, metaphors. What's the difference between a metaphor and a lie? Okay, because I am the sun, you are the moon. That's a lie--you're not the moon. I'm not the sun. What's the difference between a metaphor and a lie?
   Elizabeth Alexander: Well, that was both a metaphor and a lie, so the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A metaphor is a way of using language where you make a comparison to let people understand something as it relates to something else. That's how we use the language to increase meaning.
   Stephen Colbert: Why don't you just say what you mean instead of dressing things up in all this flowery language like the great Romantic poets--"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day"? Why don't you say, "You're hot--let's do it"?
   (The Colbert Report, Jan. 21, 2009)


6. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write, "Oooh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.
   (White House Correspondents' Dinner, April 29, 2006)


7. Talk of immigrants always makes me hungry. It's partly because of the term "melting pot"--the delicious racial fondue. Then a few years ago I started hearing people call America a "salad bowl," which is still a pretty good metaphor if you toss in enough bacon bits. Today our country is neither a melting pot nor a salad bowl. What is it? The answer is tonight's word: Lunchables. Yes, Lunchables. Like the vacuum-packed snack tray, America should be patriotically divided into sanitary compartments of like-minded citizens, and we're well on our way. We already know if we live in a red state or a blue state. Now you can know if you live in a God state or a gay state. Take the new town of Ave Maria, Florida, which is being built specifically to attract those who follow the teachings of the Roman Catholic church. . . .
   
   But Lunchables America doesn't have to be just for religious groups. There's a serving size for every lifestyle. For instance, it is now legal for gay couples to get married in Massachusetts but only if they stay in Massachusetts. . . . For all of us it's a win-win. Now, traditionally I've been against gay marriage, but by attracting all the gays to one state, we can protect the sanctity of marriage in 49 others. Massachusetts will become like a gay Israel--a Gaysrael. The point is, like crackers and juice boxes, Americans may have their differences, but I believe we can come together by living hermetically sealed apart. If you disagree with your neighbor, just find a new neighbor--one just like you. And eventually we'll each be in our ideal communities. And that's the word.
   ("The Word: Lunchables," The Colbert Report, May 15, 2006)


8. An accountant is a manila envelope yellowed with age that fell between the filing cabinet and the wall. Trapped, alone, parched.
   ("Battle of the Metaphors" on The Colbert Report, April 19, 2007)


9. It was a quaint little hamburger joint surrounded by a dozen or so idling semis, their great diesel lungs belting out a deep jazz riff through the horns of their smokestacks, exhaust caps flapping rhythmically like trumpet mutes. If one were so bold as to indulge in another truck metaphor, they could also be compared to a pack of dogs waiting patiently for their masters, their eighteen great rubber paws gripping the pavement, panting gouts of black diesel breath into the night sky.
   
   I'm sure other metaphors are out there as well. For instance, the trucks are wagons around an encampment, waiting for the Indians to attack from the strip clubs. I guess the exhaust would be smoke signals. Maybe one of the pioneers knows how to make smoke signals, and he's asking for a truce, or maybe there's a double agent. Hey, there's another one! The trucks are whales, the smoke is the waterspout and the truckers . . . are Jonah . . . coming back from a strip club.
   (Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, and Stephen Colbert, Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not. Hyperion, 2003)


10. Today is about you--you who have worked so hard to pack your heads with learning until your skulls are all plump like--sausages of knowledge. It's an apt metaphor, don't question it.
    (commencement address at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, June 3, 2006)

"Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche," Colbert once said, putting his own spin on an old metaphor. "And then applies an antibiotic cream."

More About Figures and Tropes:

• What Are Metaphors?
• What Is Irony?
• What Is Personification?
• House Calls: The Metaphors of Dr. Gregory House

Image: Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central

In this post we won't be exploring the mystery of the verbless sentence, or examining the difference between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs. Such scintillating syntactic topics as fronting, preposition stranding, and pied-piping will also have to wait for another day.

Instead, for the benefit of newcomers to the site, we're revisiting a few of the Big Questions about English grammar--with links to more extensive answers.

• What Is Grammar?
  Descriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as it's actually used by speakers and writers. Prescriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used. . . . Read more


• What Is Standard English?
  The following observations--from linguists, lexicographers, grammarians, and journalists--are intended to foster discussion rather than resolve the many complex issues surrounding the term Standard English. . . . Read more


• Why Does Grammar Matter?
  From the National Council of Teachers of English, a lucid and sensible position statement on the value of teaching grammar in American schools. . . . Read more


• How Many Kinds of Grammar Are There?
  Generative grammar, mental grammar, comparative grammar, universal grammar--and more. Consider some of the many varieties of grammar, and then take your pick. . . . Read more


• What Is Good English?
  Professor George Krapp's engaging response to the question "What is good English?" remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1909. . . . Read more


• What Is the Difference Between Grammar and Usage?
  Grammar is the rationale of a language; usage is the etiquette. . . . Read more


• What Is a SNOOT?
  After reading this article, decide if you are a SNOOT: one of "the Few, the Proud, the More or Less Constantly Appalled at Everyone Else." . . . Read more

Now if you have any language questions, large or small, please join us in the Grammar & Composition Forum.