“Adultery” is often misspelled “adultry,” as if it were something every adult should try. This spelling error is likely to get you snickered at. The term does not refer to all sorts of illicit sex: at least one of the partners involved has to be married for the relationship to be adulterous.
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Some people seem to think that “adoptive” is just a more fancy word than “adopted” and write about “the adoptive child.” But the two words have different meanings. Parents who do the adopting are adoptive, children are adopted.
Don’t call people adopting children “adaptive,” though. Adaptive parents would be parents that could adapt themselves to changing circumstances.
When a city, club, or other organization adopts you, it also is adoptive.
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“Admission” is a much more common word than “admittance” and is a good choice for almost all contexts. You may gain admission or admittance to a college, but you’ll probably be dealing with its admissions office. When “admittance” is used, it’s most likely to refer to physical entry into some place or other, as is indicated by signs saying “No Admittance.”
In electronics, admittance is the opposite of impedance.
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Although it is very popular with administrators and others, many people scorn “administrate” as an unnecessary substitute for the more common verb form “administer.”
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You can minister to someone by administering first aid. Note how the “ad” in “administer” resembles “aid” in order to remember the correct form of the latter phrase. “Minister” as a verb always requires “to” following it.
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People who avoid redundancies tend to object to the extremely popular phrase “added bonus” because a bonus is already something additional. Speakers who use this phrase probably think of “bonus” as meaning something vaguely like “benefit.” The phrase is so common that it’s unlikely to cause you real problems.
More people frown on the similarly redundant “and plus”: “I was fired, and plus I never got my last paycheck.” Just say “and” or “plus.”
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You can adopt a child or a custom or a law; in all of these cases you are making the object of the adoption your own, accepting it. If you adapt something, however, you are changing it.
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Do you find beer nuts addicting or addictive? “Addicting” is a perfectly legitimate word, but much less common than “addictive,” and some people will scowl at you if you use it.
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Seeing how often ad nauseam is misspelled makes some people want to throw up. English writers also often mistakenly half-translate the phrase as ad nausea.
This Latin phrase comes from a term in logic, the argumentum ad nauseam, in which debaters wear out the opposition by just repeating arguments until they get sick of the whole thing and give in.
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