There are a lot of menus, signs, and recipes out there featuring “chrispy chicken.” Is this misspelling influenced by the “CH” in “chicken” or the pattern in other common words like “Christmas”? At any rate, the proper spelling is “crispy.”
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“Chalk it up” is a very old expression that goes back to the custom of writing a customer’s outstanding charges on a chalkboard, especially in a bar. Today it means to give credit in a more general sense, as in the expression “chalk it up to experience” (credit it to experience, add it to your account of experiences).” A successful team may chalk up another win.
You chock a vehicle parked on a slope by slipping a wedge called a “chock” behind its wheels.
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“Chicano” means “Mexican-American,” and not all the people denoted by this term like it. When speaking of people living in the US from various other Spanish-speaking countries, “Chicano” is an error for “Latino” or “Hispanic.” Only “Hispanic” can include people with a Spanish as well as with a Latin American heritage; and some people of Latin American heritage object to it as ignoring the Native American element in that population. Only “Latino” could logically include Portuguese-speaking Brazilians, though that is rarely done.
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When English speakers want to be elegant they commonly resort to French, often mangling it in the process. The entrée, the dish served before the plat,usurped the latter’s position as main dish. And how in the world did French lingerie (originally meaning linen goods of all sorts, later narrowed to underwear only) pronounced—roughly—“lanzheree” come to be American “lawnzheray”? Quelle horreur! “Chaise longue” (literally “long chair”), pronounced—roughly—“shezz lohng” with a hard G on the end became in English “shayz long.” Many speakers, however, confuse French chaise with English “chase” and French longue with English “lounge” (understandable since the article in question is a sort of couch or lounge), resulting in the mispronunciation “chase lounge.” We may imagine the French as chasing each other around their lounges, but a chaise is just a chair.
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Pronounce the name of the country which broke away from the former Czechoslovakia to form the Czech Republic as “check,” but don’t spell it that way. Its citizens are Czechs.
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Nicolas Chauvin of Rochefort became a laughingstock in Napoleon’s army for his exaggerated nationalism, and his name gave rise to the term “chauvinism,” which characterizes people who wildly overestimate the excellence and importance of their own countries while denigrating others. The word was then broadened to cover an exaggerated belief in the superiority of one’s own kind in other respects.
Following this pattern, feminists in the 1970s invented the term “male chauvinist” to label people who considered women inferior to men. Unfortunately, this was the context in which many people first encountered “chauvinism” and not understanding that it had a broader meaning, dropped the “male,” thinking that “chauvinist” was a synonym for “sexist.” This misunderstanding is so widespread that only occasionally will you encounter someone who knows better, but in formal writing it is wise to avoid the abbreviated form in this restricted meaning.
However, if you do intend the older meaning of the word, it’s also a good idea to make that clear from your context, for a great many of your readers will assume you are talking about sexism.
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Champaign is the name of a city and county in Illinois.
Champagne is a region of France that produces the sparkling wine of this name.
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“Center of attraction” makes perfect sense, but the standard phrase is “center of attention.”
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Two perfectly good expressions—“center on” and “revolve around”—get conflated in this nonsensical neologism. When a speaker says his address will “center around the topic of” whatever, my interest level plummets.
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To censor somebody’s speech or writing is to try to suppress it by preventing it from reaching the public. When guests on network TV utter obscenities, broadcasters practice censorship by bleeping them.
To censure someone, however, is to officially denounce an offender. You can be censured as much for actions as for words. A lawyer who destroyed evidence which would have been unfavorable to his client might be censured by the bar association.
A device which senses any change like changes in light or electrical output is a sensor. Your car and your digital camera contain sensors.
A censer is a church incense burner.
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