Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors - Bill Bryson [100]
preventive, preventative. “One way to ease their difficulties, they decided, was to practice preventative medicine” (Economist). Preventative is not incorrect, but preventive is shorter.
Pribilof Islands, Alaska.
PricewaterhouseCoopers. Accountancy company.
“Pride goes before a fall” is wrong. The quotation, from Proverbs, is “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
prima facie. “At first sight,” on the face of it.
primeval. Not -evil.
primogeniture. The practice by which an entire inheritance passes to the firstborn male child.
primus inter pares. (Lat.) “First among equals.”
Princes Street, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Princes Town, Trinidad.
principal, principle. Principle means fundamental and is usually applied to fundamental beliefs or truths (“It’s not the money, it’s the principle”) or to fundamental understandings (“They have signed an agreement in principle”). It is always a noun. Principal can be a noun meaning chief or of first importance (“He is the school’s principal”) or an adjective with the same meaning (“The principal reason for my going…”).
pristine does not mean spotless. It means original or primeval or in a state virtually unchanged from the original.
privilege.
prix fixe. (Fr.) Fixed price; pl. prix fixes.
Prix Goncourt. Preeminent French literary award.
p.r.n. Short for pro re nata (Lat.), “as necessary.” Used by doctors on prescriptions to indicate that a drug should be administered as necessary and not on a fixed schedule.
proboscis. An animal’s trunk, long snout, or feeding tube; pl. proboscises.
proceed, but procedure.
procrastinate, prevaricate. The first means to postpone doing; the second means to be untruthful.
Procrustean. Producing or striving to produce absolute conformity, usually through severe or absolute means; from Procrustes, a mythological Greek robber who made his victims fit a bed by stretching them or cutting off their limbs.
Procter & Gamble for the household products company. Often misspelled Proctor.
prodigal does not mean wandering or given to running away, a sense sometimes wrongly inferred from the biblical story of the Prodigal Son. It means recklessly wasteful or extravagant.
progenitor. Ancestor.
prognosis, pl. prognoses.
Prohibition (cap.) lasted from 1920 to 1933; it was brought in by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act, and repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment.
Prokofiev, Sergei. (1891–1953) Russian composer.
Promised Land, the. (Caps.)
promissory note.
prone, prostrate, recumbent, supine. Supine means lying faceup (it may help to remember that a supine person is on his spine). Prone and prostrate are regarded by most dictionaries and usage authorities—but by no means all—as meaning lying facedown. (A few say that they can also apply to a person or thing lying faceup.) Prostrate should, in any case, suggest throwing oneself down, either in submission or for protection; someone who is merely asleep should not be called prostrate. Recumbent means lying flat in any position, but, like repose, it should indicate a position of ease and comfort. For the other sense of prone, see LIABLE, LIKELY, APT, PRONE.
pronunciation. Not pronoun-.
propaganda.
propagate.
propellant is the usual spelling, but propellent is also accepted.
proper nouns. Many writers stumble when confronted with finding a plural form for a proper noun, as in the two following examples, both from The Times of London and both wrong: “The Cox’s were said by neighbors to be…happily married” “This is the first of a new series about the Rush’s.” The rule for making plurals of proper nouns is precisely the same as for any other nouns. If you have no trouble turning “one fox” into “two foxes” or “one church” into “two churches,” you should have no trouble making “the Rush family” into “the Rushes” and “the Cox couple” into “the Coxes.” In short, for names ending in s, sh, ch, or x,