Take Highway 1 south from Monterey to reach the charming seaside town of Carmel, of which Clint Eastwood was formerly mayor. Dissolve sugar in a little water and cook it down until the sugar turns brown to create caramel. A nationwide chain uses the illiterate spelling “KarmelkornTM,” which helps to perpetuate the confusion between these two words.
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“Caucasian” is an outdated term originally used to refer to some or all of the people of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Central and South Asia. It was invented in the early 19th century by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who felt the Caucasian “race” was best exemplified by people living in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia. It is widely misused today as a synonym for “white.” Although the concept of “race” is still widely popular, contemporary scientists have generally rejected the concept as simplistic and misleading.
The term is better avoided except in reference to people actually from the Caucasus.
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A carousal is a wild drunken party.
When you encounter a “carousal horse,” a “baggage carousal,” or a “carousal CD player,” what is meant is “carousel.”
If you’ve been invited to a “carousal party” don’t head for the liquor store until you’re sure you haven’t just been invited to ride on a merry-go-round.
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Most people are comfortable referring to “caring parents,” but speaking of a “caring environment” is jargon, not acceptable in formal English. The environment may contain caring people, but it does not itself do the caring.
See also “may/might.”
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A truck careening down the road is swerving from side to side as it races along, whereas a truck careering down the road may be simply traveling very fast. But because it is not often clear which meaning a person intends, confusing these two words is not likely to get you into trouble.
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“Carrots” are those crunchy orange vegetables Bugs Bunny is so fond of, but this spelling gets misused for the less familiar words which are pronounced the same but have very different meanings. Precious stones like diamonds are weighed in carats. The same word is used to express the proportion of pure gold in an alloy, though in this usage it is sometimes spelled “karat” (hence the abbreviation “20K gold”). A caret is a proofreader’s mark showing where something needs to be inserted, shaped like a tiny pitched roof. It looks rather like a French circumflex, but is usually distinct from it on modern computer keyboards. Carets are extensively used in computer programming. Just remember, if you can’t eat it, it’s not a carrot.
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People familiar with Joseph Heller’s novel are irritated when they see “Catch-22” used to label any simple hitch or problem rather than this sort of circular predicament: you can’t get published until you have an agent, and you can’t get an agent until you’ve been published. “There’s a catch” will do fine for most other situations.
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The standard past tense form of “catch” in modern English is not “catched,” but “caught.”
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A “capitol” is almost always a building. Cities which serve as seats of government are capitals spelled with an A in the last syllable, as are most other uses of the word as a common noun. The only exceptions are place names alluding to capitol buildings in some way or other, like “Capitol Hill” in DC, Denver, or Seattle (the latter named either after the hill in Denver or in hopes of attracting the Washington State capitol building). Would it help to remember that Congress with an O meets in the Capitol with another O?
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Video created by NBC:
“Capisce?” is American pseudo-Italian slang for “understand?” and functions rather like “know what I mean?” In Italian this form would be used only in a formal setting; the typically casual American-style contexts would require capischi.
Since American slang uses the wrong spelling by Italian standards anyway, it probably doesn’t matter that it’s often misspelled as “capeesh”; but “kapeesh” is really uncool: there’s no K in Italian.
In formal Italian, capisce is pronounced “cah-PEE-sheh,” but in slangy Italian and English it’s “cah-PEESH.”
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