A bolster is a large pillow, and when you bolster something you support it as if you were propping it up with a pillow. Thus the expression is “bolster your confidence.” People unfamiliar with the word sometimes say instead “boast your confidence.” They may also be confusing this saying with “boost your confidence.”
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Boarders are residents in a boarding house or school paying for their room and board (food), fighters who board ships, or more recently, people who go snowboarding a lot. You can also board animals, though usually only people are called “boarders.” All of these have some connection with boards: hunks of wood (the planks of a table, the deck of a ship, a snowboard).
All uses having to do with boundaries and edges are spelled “border”: border collies, Doctors Without Borders, borderline disorders, border guard.
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Some people mistakenly substitute the adjective “blunt” for the noun ”brunt” in standard expressions like “bear the brunt.” “Brunt” means “main force.”
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Few people will care which spelling you use, but there are some interesting points to observe about “blonde” and “blond.”
In the original French and in traditional English usage, “blonde” is female and “blond” is male: it’s “a blonde woman” and “a blond man.”
Hair itself has no gender in English, but we usually use the female spelling in the phrase “blonde hair.” Similarly, furniture made of light-colored wood is most often referred to as “blonde.”
When someone is referred to as “a blonde” we almost always think of a woman, even if the spelling used is “a blond.” Feminists point out that typically only women are reduced to their hair color in this way, and that it can be offensive. Note that there is a whole category of “blonde jokes” stereotyping these women as air-headed. However, when the word refers specifically to hair color in a useful way, no one is likely to object: “She is a blonde with very light skin, so she has to use a lot of sunscreen.”
Oddly, we rarely use the French masculine spelling brunet. Anyone can have brunette hair, although “brunettes” like “blondes” are usually assumed to be women.
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Ships used to chart their progress by heaving overboard a chunk of wood (the “log”) trailing a line and measuring how much of it unspooled in a given length of time. This allowed them to record the rate of the ship’s progress through the water. The resulting figures were recorded in a “log-book,” which was later abbreviated to “log.” The word’s meaning shifted from the device floating in the water to the book in which progress was recorded. “Log” also became a verb, referring to the process of making entries in a log-book. In modern times the word drifted away from seafaring matters to refer to any record of progress created out of periodic entries.
Around the turn of the millennium, keepers of journals on the World Wide Web began to shorten the term “Web log” to “blog,” and to refer to the activity of keeping a blog as “blogging.” The common term referring to a single entry in a blog is “post” (short for “posting”). But “post” is also a verb: you post an entry to your blog. Amidst all this overlapping terminology many confused people have begun to refer to the individual entries as “blogs,” writing ”I made a new blog today” when they mean “I put a new post on my blog today.”
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“Block” has a host of uses, including as the spelling in the phrase “block of time.” But for groups of people and nations, use the French spelling bloc: “bloc of young voters,” “Cold War-era Eastern bloc of nations.” Don’t be confused by punning names for groups and Web sites like “Writer’s Bloc.”
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When you are struck by surprise from an unexpected direction, you are blindsided, as if from your blind side. Do not be confused by the many punning titles using the deliberate misspelling “blindsighted” into using the latter spelling for this meaning.
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The classic meaning of “blatant” is “noisily conspicuous,” but it has long been extended to any objectionable obviousness. A person engaging in blatant behavior is usually behaving in a highly objectionable manner, being brazen. Unfortunately, many people nowadays think that “blatant” simply means “obvious” and use it in a positive sense, as in “Kim wrote a blatantly brilliant paper.” Use “blatant” or “blatantly” only when you think the people you are talking about should be ashamed of themselves.
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Technically, a biweekly meeting occurs every two weeks and a semiweekly one occurs twice a week; but so few people get this straight that your club is liable to disintegrate unless you avoid these words in the newsletter and stick with “every other week” or “twice weekly.” The same is true of “bimonthly” and “semimonthly,” though “biennial” and “semi-annual” are less often confused with each other.
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When Walter Brennan in To Have and Have Not asks “Was you ever bit by a dead bee?” the effect is to illustrate his folksy, semiliterate way of speaking. The traditional way to phrase this question would be “Were you ever stung by a dead bee?”
The simple past form of “bite” is “bit,” as in “Their dog bit the paper carrier.” But the past participle is “bitten,” as in “The paper carrier was bitten by their dog.”
In common expressions about becoming enthusiastic about something, like “bit by the genealogy bug” the verb should technically be “bitten,” but “bit” is so common that it’s not likely to be noticed. In other contexts where you are not sure which one works best, try “bitten.” If it sounds OK, go with it.
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