The Assonance Syndrome

“I’m trying to think of a limerick,” said Eustace. “Something like this:
Some kids who played games about Narnia
Got gradually balmier and balmier—”
“Well, Narnia and balmier don’t rhyme, to begin with,” said Lucy.
“It’s an assonance,” said Eustace.
“Don’t ask him what an assy-thingummy is,” said Edmund. “He’s only longing to be asked.”
—C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Recently I came across a row of motivational posters on an office wall. One of them exhorted the aspiring business high-flier to “Clear your mind of can’t”. The quote was attributed to Samuel Johnson (1709–84).

“Can’t”? Well, why not? “Whatever”, as the manager would have said, had I bothered to draw the solecism to his attention. It is obvious that the apostrophe as a species is doomed—moribund, if not yet quite extinct. That being the case, isn’t it captious to complain that can’t is not the same as cant? After all, the words look and sound almost the same. They are assonant.

The current tendency to confuse words of similar appearance and/or pronunciation is attributable to a number of factors.

The first is a combination of the speaker’s having misheard the word, and never having seen the word in print. This explains the footballer in the television interview who warned his team not to rest on their morals, and the substitution of all goes well for augurs well, as in, “This rain all goes well for a good crop.”

The second reason is simple laziness, inattention, and lack of concern for linguistic precision, a sloppiness which most of the speakers would deplore in their personal spheres of expertise. It is difficult to imagine much tolerance in the world of technology for the interchangeability of the terms sprocket and rocket, for example.

Here are some common cases of vaguely similar words which are commonly confounded:

enormity, wickedness, is used instead of immensity, size

deprecatory, disapproving (particularly in the expression self-deprecatory), instead of depreciatory, estimating at a reduced value

antidote, counteractive medicine, instead of anecdote, story

protestation, solemn affirmation, instead of protest, expression of opposition

pretension, assertion of a claim, instead of pretence, make-believe

reign in, instead of rein in

reticence, verbal reserve, instead of reluctance, disinclination

insidious, proceeding secretly, instead of invidious, likely to give offence

flaunting the law, instead of flouting it

everyday, adjective, instead of every day, adjective plus noun

disinterested, impartial, instead of uninterested

torturous, involving torture, instead of tortuous, twisting

crutch instead of crotch

expand instead of expound

discomfit, baffle or thwart, instead of discomfort, make uneasy

exasperate instead of exacerbate

Who, when whom is required, could also be cited, but this is probably another irrevocably lost cause, like that of the apostrophe.

The foregoing examples can be heard or read on an everyday basis. Here are some further offences encountered in the writings of academics and journalists who should know better.

Evangelical, an adherent of classical Protestant doctrine, was mistaken for evangelist, a gospel preacher. All evangelists are evangelicals, but not all evangelicals are evangelists. Others were contending for contesting; infiltrate for insinuate; histrionic, to do with acting, for hysterical, morbidly excited; and precipitous, steep, for precipitate, hasty.

A third and final reason for muddling words of similar sound and appearance is the exigencies of the language. Sometimes the absence of a suitable English term leads to an existing, nearly homophonic word being co-opted to fill the gap.

Take turgid, for instance. Strictly speaking, it refers to pompous and bombastic language, but it is commonly used to describe stodgy, boring, impenetrable speech, which is not necessarily the same thing. A pompous and bombastic orator can be quite entertaining, however inadvertently. This new usage of turgid is almost certainly a result of its similarity in sound to turbid, meaning thick and muddy.

Then there are the terrible twins parameter, meaning a characteristic, and perimeter, meaning an outline or boundary. It would be correct to write that a parameter (feature) of a particular profession was a salary of between fifty and sixty thousand dollars, but not that the parameters (upper and lower limits) of the salary were fifty thousand and sixty thousand dollars. This latter usage of parameter has become common, however. Not only does it serve a useful purpose, but it is seen as legitimised by the meaning of the almost identical-sounding perimeter.

The issues raised here involve the old question of whether treatment of the English language should be prescriptive or descriptive, a controversy at least as old as Dr Johnson’s famous Dictionary. In the preface to that work, Johnson deplored the fact that English had “spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance”. At the same time, he admitted that no “lexicographer … shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay”.

We might wish that we could reverse some of the barbarisms listed above, while being aware that we probably can’t. But, as Dr Johnson said (according to the poster on the office wall, at any rate) can’t is what we are to clear our minds of.