Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [24]
disinterested, uninterested. “Gerulaitis, after appearing almost disinterested in the first set, took a 5–1 lead in the second” (New York Times). A participant in a tennis match might appear uninterested, but he would be unlikely to be disinterested, which means neutral and impartial. A disinterested person is one who has no stake in the outcome of an event; an uninterested person is one who doesn’t care. As with discomfit and discomfort (see above), the distinction is a useful one and well worth fighting for.
dispensable. Not -ible.
disposal, disposition. If you are talking about getting rid of, use disposal (“the disposal of nuclear weapons”). If you mean arranging, use disposition (“the disposition of troops on the battlefield”).
distrait, distraught. The first means abstracted in thought, absent-minded. The second means deeply agitated.
disturb, perturb. They can often be used interchangeably, but generally the first is better applied to physical agitation, the second to mental agitation.
dived, dove. Either is acceptable.
Doberman (British Dobermann) pinscher for the breed of dog.
dormouse for the small rodent, which isn’t actually a mouse at all. The name is thought to be a corruption of the Norman French dormeus, meaning sleepy. The plural is dormice.
dos and don’ts. Not do’s.
double meanings. Anyone who has written headlines for a living will know the embarrassment that comes from causing hilarity to a large group of people by writing an inadvertently two-faced headline. I have no doubt that someone at the Toronto Globe and Mail is still cringing at having written “Upturns may indicate some bottoms touched” (cited in Punch), as must earlier have been the author of the oft-quoted and variously attributed “MacArthur flies back to front.” It is always worth remembering that many words carry a range of meanings or function as both nouns and verbs, and consequently offer unexpected opportunities for mischief.
double negatives. Most people know you shouldn’t say, “I haven’t had no dinner,” but some writers, doubtless more out of haste than of ignorance, sometimes perpetrate sentences that are scarcely less jarring, as here: “Stranded and uncertain of their location, the survivors endured for six days without hardly a trace of food” (Chicago Tribune). Since hardly, like scarcely, has the grammatical effect of a negative, it requires no further negation. Make it “with hardly.”
Some usage guides flatly condemn all double negatives, but there is one kind, in which a negative in the main clause is paralleled in a subordinate construction, that we might view more tolerantly. Evans cites this sentence from Jane Austen: “There was none too poor or remote not to feel an interest.” And Shakespeare wrote: “Nor what he said, though it lacked form a little, was not like madness.” But such constructions must be considered exceptional. More often the intrusion of a second negative is merely a sign of fuzzy writing. At best it will force the reader to pause and perform some verbal arithmetic, adding negative to negative, as here: “The plan is now thought unlikely not to go ahead” (Times). At worst it may leave the reader darkly baffled, as in this memorably convoluted sentence from a leading authority: “Moreover . . . our sense of linguistic tact will not urge us not to use words that may offend or irritate” (Quirk, The Use of English).
doubt if, that, whether. Idiom demands some selectivity in the choice of conjunction to introduce a clause after doubt and doubtful. The rule is simple: doubt that should be reserved for negative contexts (“There is no doubt that . . .”; “It was never doubtful that . . .”) and interrogative ones (“Do you have any doubt that . . . ?”; “Was it ever doubtful that . . . ?”). Whether or if should be used in all others (“I doubt if he will come”; “It is doubtful whether the rain will stop”).
doubtless,