Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [41]
insofar is the normal American spelling. In Britain, it is normally in so far.
intense, intensive. Intense should describe things that are heavy or extreme or occur to a high degree (“intense sunlight,” “intense downpour”). Intensive implies a concentrated focus (“intensive care,” “an intensive search”). Although the two words often come to the same thing, they needn’t. An intense bombardment, as Fowler pointed out, is a severe one. An intensive bombardment is one directed at a small (or relatively small) area.
International Atomic Energy Agency. Not Authority.
international courts. Understandably, these sometimes cause confusion. The International Court of Justice, or World Court, in The Hague, Netherlands, is an offspring of the United Nations and deals with disputes between or among UN member states. The European Court of Justice, in Luxembourg, is a European Union institution dealing exclusively with disputes involving EU member states. The European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, France, addresses issues of civil liberties arising from the European Convention on Human Rights. It has no connection with the United Nations or the European Union.
International Olympic Committee. Not Olympics.
internecine. For more than two hundred years writers have used internecine in the sense of a costly or self-destructive conflict, even though etymologically the word signifies only a slaughter or massacre, without any explicit sense of cost to the victor. For this small error, we can thank Samuel Johnson, who was misled by the prefix inter- and defined the word as “endeavouring mutual destruction.” However, it has been misused for so long that it would be pedantic and wildly optimistic to try to enforce its original meaning. As Philip Howard has noted, “The English language cannot be regulated so as to avoid offending the susceptibilities of classical scholars.” He does suggest, however, that the word should be reserved for bloody and violent disputes and not mere squabblings.
interval. “The training period was still three years, an interval widely regarded in the industry as being unrealistically long” (cited by Gowers). An interval is the period between two events.
intrigue. Originally intrigue signified underhanded plotting and nothing else. The looser meaning of arousing or fascinating (“We found the lecture intriguing”) is now established. It is, however, greatly overworked and almost always better replaced by a more telling word.
invariably does not mean frequently or usually, as was intended here: “Supersede is yet another word that is invariably misspelled” (Chicago Tribune). It means fixed, constant, not subject to change—in short, without variance. Night invariably follows day, but no word is invariably misspelled.
inveigh, inveigle. Occasionally confused. The first means to speak strongly against (“She inveighed against the rise in taxes”). The second means to entice or cajole (“They inveigled an invitation to the party”).
irony, sarcasm. Irony is the use of words to convey a contradiction between the literal and intended meanings. Sarcasm is very like irony except that it is more stinging. Whereas the primary intent behind irony is to amuse, with sarcasm it is to wound or score points.
irregardless is not a real word, though one or two dictionaries do now, lamentably, acknowledge it. Make it regardless.
-ise/-ize. Since about the time of Noah Webster, American users have been strongly inclined to use -ize terminations on verbs such as recognize and conceptualize, while in Britain -ise endings remain more common, even though the Oxford English Dictionary and many publishers and periodicals favor -ize. Even under the -ize system, though, and even in America, certain verbs continue always to end in -ise, of which the following are the main ones: advertise, apprise, chastise, circumcise, comprise, compromise, demise, despise, devise, disguise,