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Words in the Wild
When naturalists want to distinguish between two closely related species, they study both in the wild. You can do the same to understand correct usage for commonly confused words. For example, just how are the words capital and capitol being used on the Internet?
"While money is used simply to purchase goods and services for consumption, capital is more durable and is used to generate wealth through investment." —Investopedia
"The United States Capitol is among the most symbolically important and architecturally impressive buildings in the nation." —NPS.Gov
Your Turn Search the Internet for each word in the pairs below. Write down a sentence that you find that correctly uses each word, and indicate the Web site where you found the sentence.
- adverse/averse
- allusion/illusion
- ascent/assent
- amoral/immoral
- climactic/climatic
- discreet/discrete
- eminent/imminent
- immigrate/emigrate
- liable/libel
- precede/proceed
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Words in the Wild by Thoughtful Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at k12.thoughtfullearning.com/minilesson/words-wild.