Originally a person or thing stuffed to the point of choking was “choke-full.” In modern speech this expression has become “chock-full,” or in less formal American English, “chuck-full.” Chalk has nothing to do with it.
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People in the building trades distinguish cement (the gray powder that comes in bags) from concrete (the combination of cement, water, sand, and gravel which becomes hard enough in your driveway to drive your car on). In contexts where technical precision matters, it’s probably better to speak of a “concrete sidewalk” rather than of a “cement sidewalk.”
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On a sign displaying a cost of twenty-nine cents for something the price can be written as “.29,” as “$.29,” or as “29¢,” but don’t combine the two forms. “.29¢” makes no sense, and “$.29¢” is worse.
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Chai is simply the word for “tea” in Hindi and several other Asian languages. The spicy, milky variety known in India as masala chai is called “chai” in the US. Since Americans likely to be attracted by the word “chai” already know it’s a tea-based drink, it’s both redundant and pointless to call the product “chai tea.”
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“Ceremonial” and “ceremonious” are often considered synonyms, and can indeed be used interchangeably in many contexts. But there are some cases in which one is better than the other.
If you are talking about the performance of a ceremony, the word you will usually want is “ceremonial” as in “ceremonial offering,” “ceremonial garb,” or “ceremonial dance.” Sikhs traditionally wear ceremonial daggers.
“Ceremonious” is mostly used to describe formal behavior which often has little or no connection with a literal ceremony: “ceremonious manners,” “ceremonious welcome,” or “ceremonious speech.”
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Because the Boston Celtics basketball team pronounces its name as if it began with an S, Americans are prone to use this pronunciation of the word as it applies to the Bretons, Cornish, Welsh, Irish and Scots; but the dominant pronunciation among sophisticated US speakers is “keltik.” Just remember: “Celts in kilts.”
Interestingly, the Scots themselves often use the “S” pronunciation, notably in referring to the Glasgow soccer team, the “Celtic Football Club.”
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Believe it or not, you can be celibate without being chaste, and chaste without being celibate. A celibate person is merely unmarried, usually (but not always) because of a vow of celibacy. The traditional assumption is that such a person is not having sex with anyone, which leads many to confuse the word with “chaste,” denoting someone who does not have illicit sex. A woman could have wild sex twice a day with her lawful husband and technically still be chaste, though the word is more often used to imply a general abstemiousness from sex and sexuality. You can always amuse your readers by misspelling the latter word as “chased.”
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The classical Latin phrase carpe diem—usually translated as “seize the day”—means “act now,” “there’s no time like the present.”
It has to do not with ceasing, but with acting.
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Did you know that German “Kaiser” is derived from the Latin “Caesar” and is pronounced a lot more like it than the English version? We’re stuck with our illogical pronunciation, so we have to memorize the correct spelling. (The Russians messed up the pronunciation as thoroughly as the English, with their “Czar.”) Thousands of menus are littered with “Ceasar salads” throughout America which should be “Caesar salads”—named after a restaurateur, not the Roman ruler (but they both spelled their names the same way).
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“CD-ROM” stands for “compact disc, read-only memory,” so adding another “disc” or “disk” is redundant. The same goes for “DVD” (from “Digital Video Disc” or “Digital Versatile Disc””—there are non-video versions). Don’t say “give me that DVD disk,” just “give me that DVD.”
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