“Pundit” is one of those words we get from India, like “bungalow” and “thug.” It comes from pandit, meaning “scholar,” “learned person.” The first premier of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, was often referred to respectfully as “Pandit Nehru.”
In English it has come to refer to opinionated commentators on public affairs, but it is often mispronounced and misspelled “pundint” or “pundant.”
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The gland men have is called the prostate. “Prostrate” is an adjective meaning “lying face downward.”
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“Prone” (face down) is often confused with “supine” (face up). Some people use the phrase “soup in navel” to help them remember the meaning of the latter word.
“Prostrate” technically also means “face down,” but is often used to mean simply “devastated.”
See also “prostate/prostrate.”
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For most purposes either form is a fine past participle of “prove,” though in a phrase like “a proven talent” where the word is an adjective preceding a noun, “proven” is standard.
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“Problematic” has various traditional meanings: “presenting a problem,” “difficult to resolve,” “doubtful.” But among academics it has become a sort of all-purpose negative expressing disapproval: “the depiction of married women in early American comic strips such as Maggie in Bringing Up Father is problematic,” (i.e., I have a problem with this, I object to it). Not only is this not a traditional function of the word; it transfers a political or personal objection into the Platonic realm of Truth, allowing the speaker to avoid personal responsibility for the objection being made.
Similarly, “problematize” means “to make into a problem,” not “to consider as a problem.”
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Your progeny are your kids, though it would be pretty pretentious to refer to them as such. If your child is a brilliantly outstanding person he or she may be a child prodigy. In fact, anything amazingly admirable can be a prodigy. But a person that you take under your wing in order to help promote his or her career is your protégé.
Avoid misspelling or mispronouncing “prodigy” as “progidy.”
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A psychologist is a person who has studied the mind and earned a Ph.D. or Psy.D. Although some definitions state that psychologists have undergone clinical training but cannot prescribe medicines, there are research psychologists who are not engaged in clinical work at all, but merely do experiments to discover how our minds work. Some of their work can concern animal rather than human minds.
A psychiatrist is technically an M.D. specializing in the treatment of mental problems who can prescribe medicines. They are licensed medical doctors, and get irritated when they are called “psychologists” and when psychologists are called “psychiatrists.”
Psychotherapist is not a technical term, and may be used by anyone claiming to offer therapy for mental problems. That someone is called a “psychotherapist” tells you nothing about his or her qualifications. But qualified clinical psychologists and psychiatrists can be properly called “psychotherapists.”
A psychoanalyst is a very specific kind of psychotherapist: a licensed practitioner of the methods of Sigmund Freud.
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“Pronounce” is the verb, but the O is omitted for the noun: “pronunciation.” This mistake ranks right up there in incongruity with “writting.”
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It is common to proclaim “in our business, customer service is a priority,” but it would be better to say “a high priority,” since priorities can also be low.
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Many people disdain “prioritize” as bureaucratic jargon for “rank” or “make a priority.”
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