Separating Flotsam and Jetsam in Sea of Confused Words

What is the difference between a seesaw and a teeter-totter? None.

What is the difference between a ship and a boat? A boat is a small vessel propelled by oars, sails or an engine; a ship is a large deep-water vessel propelled by engines. (The Love Boat is a ship.)

What is the difference between jam and jelly? Jam is a thick spread made by boiling fruit pulp and sugar; jelly is made by boiling fruit juice with sugar, is resilient, partly transparent and gelatinous. (Or, as Fats Waller used to sing, “It must be jelly cause jam don’t shake like that.”) These distinctions and many others can be found in “When Is a Pig a Hog? A Guide to Confoundingly Related English Words” (Prentice Hall), by Bernice Randall, author of Webster’s New World Guide to Current American English.

Randall seeks to define and explain the differences between words that don’t mean the same thing but are often confused with one another. Thus, she points out that garbage means food scraps, while trash is any other kind of refuse small enough to be stashed in trash cans.

She straightens us out on some words that are almost hopelessly confused in the public mind. For instance robbery and burglary. Robbery is theft from a person, at gunpoint or by other means of intimidation. Burglary is theft from a premises--a house, an office, a stable, a car. I was myself glad to learn the difference between mortal sin and venial sin, though of course I have never committed either. A mortal sin, she tells us, is a willful transgression against the law of God and is serious enough to deprive the soul of divine grace. A venial sin is not that serious.

Although I did not find the distinction entirely clear, Randall explains that an insect is any of a large group of small invertebrate animals like butterflies, grasshoppers, ants, bees, beetles, cockroaches, flies and mosquitoes. A bug is one of a special group of insects characterized by beaklike sucking mouthparts and partly membranous forewings. For example, water bugs, squash bugs and bedbugs. I’m afraid, though, that in the crisis of finding either in my bed, I would not take time to make the distinction.

Randall also notes that bug is often used for those microscopic germs that cause disease, an interesting example of how words may be transferred from one meaning to another.

In several instances Randall is more liberal in honoring popular usage than I would be. To me, a house is a structure (not necessarily occupied), while a home is a lived-in house, usually sheltering a family and connoting comfort and pleasure. Randall notes that distinction but points out that others use home in either case because it seems more elegant. (This is standard practice by real estate agents.)

Randall seems to have caved in to those persons (often the program chairmen of women’s clubs) who say podium when they mean lectern . A podium is what a lecturer stands on (note pod , meaning foot ); a lectern (from lectus , meaning read , is the stand on which he places his notes. Randall says, “Lectern and podium are used interchangeably for a stand a speaker might use for holding notes. . . .” My dictionary allows podium no such meaning.

One can survive in modern society without knowing the distinction between flotsam and jetsam, but the terms have a poetic history in our language and are often used today as metaphors for those who are adrift. Flotsam, she points out, is the wreckage of a ship or its cargo found floating at sea; jetsam is part of a ship’s equipment that is tossed overboard (jettisoned) to lighten ship in a storm or other emergency. When they are used in tandem, though, the distinction is of no importance.

Randall also acknowledges the slipping of distinction between libel and slander. Technically, to libel a person means to defame him in print; to slander him means to defame him by the spoken word. “In popular use, however,” she says “libel encompasses slander.”

Surely most of us have seen enough cop dramas on TV to know the difference between homicide and murder. Homicide means the killing of one human being by another, whatever the circumstances; murder is homicide committed with malice and premeditation or during the commission of another felony. Second-degree murder and manslaughter lack those defining elements and carry lighter penalties.

By questioning a few of her judgments, I do not mean to disparage Randall’s book. There is much fun and much scholarship in it, and it will solve many everyday dilemmas that most of us encounter.

By the way, a pig is a hog when it weighs 120 pounds or more.