Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Easily Confused

There are two sets of words that confuse me. I know what they mean, don't get me wrong, but it's easy for me to use the wrong one at the wrong time.

Prostrate vs Prostate

Simulate vs Stimulate

One little consonant is the difference in them, and oh what a difference it is!

Once I was giving a talk in church and was reading the account from Alma about when the angel visited him and gave him a stern talking-to. I kept telling myself, "Don't use the wrong word. Don't use the wrong word," so naturally I used the wrong word and according to my account, Alma was prostate on the ground.

Whoops.

Today in a meeting we were talking about doing some system testing and where we could get some data in the test environment that would mimic the production environment.

But not to stimulate it. That's a different job.

I kept that one to myself and had giggled quietly.

1 comment:

  1. At church lately I've heard a few misused words; one lady said that she never understood the concept of the Trilogy, and then someone else referred to the hundred-plus year old man who just passed away as a Centurion. Good stuff.

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