Pedants' corner: discreet and discrete are not interchangeable

[FuzzyPuffling]

Several times today on MN I have seen "discrete" being used instead of "discreet".

Different words, different meanings. Very irritating.

@upinaballoon , I was joking BTW. The comments are the sort of ones you get if you dare mention poor English.

@FuzzyPuffling , on MN you are advised to speak to a councillor. Not sure how a chat with Mark or Maryam from the Borough Council can help but ...

'Loose' and 'lose' drive me nuts.

Affect and effect are clearly not the same either

Alluded and eluded.

Don't get me started on practise/ practice. I'm a teacher & the amount of times this year alone I have seethed inwardly reading emails/ policies/ powerpoints, or sitting looking at presentations on inset days & wanting to scream at management is beyond the pale . It's a school, they should know (and no I don't care if your subject is PE/ Art/ HFT/ whatever, you're getting paid to lead!).

An example thread seems to be trending: Page 2 | To point out that it's "etc" not "ect" | Mumsnet

Antisocial v unsociable
Big big difference.

My DH is antisocial and won't come with me to dinner parties (good, because he'd fart and belch loudly, talk with his mouth full...)
My DH is unsociable and won't come with me to dinner parties (He is very shy)

My XH is disinteresed in my children (because you divorced him before having kids)
My XH is uninteresed in my children (because he's a useless dad)

Stationery and stationary.
It's "e" for envelope.

Well, I did think you were probably joking, but you can never be too sure.

Stationery cupboards are usually stationary, but stationary cupboards aren't stationery.

And lose and loose.

I’m a teacher and when phonics came in as a separate subject (rather than as part of literacy, as we used to teach it), the LA talked a lot about ‘discrete’ phonics. We would laugh and say it meant you couldn’t tell anyone about it 😂

The car is stationary and the stationery is made of paper.

I'm defiantly definitely sure that's correct.

Or counselling, even.

Place marking to read properly later.

Number of times. This drives me mad, and it is so common now. Amount refers to something bulk that cannot be numbered. The amount of barley, the number of times.

There’s a thread just now about someone telling someone they’d had a period leak and someone is complaining that she didn’t tell them discretely.

I once corrected my boss’s written use of discrete when she meant discreet and it really mattered to the sense of the sentence. She was offended and said we didn’t all go to a posh school. (I didn’t either).

🤣 I’ve seen positive reviews saying this

I used to have an interest in Luton Town winning their matches because I held shares, but now I've sold those shares I am disinterested in Luton's fortunes. In fact I no longer follow football - I am uninterested* in it.

• not really!

The wrong one crept into The Spectator recently 😱

@FuzzyPuffling , that's true. It's not always obvious if the 'weight and sea' type comments are jokes or not.

@GreenCandleWax , see my pp about councillors. I'm a pedant sick of reading 'councilling' on here.

I get very irritated by the "but language evolves" as a poor excuse for getting it wrong.

That’s similar to the ‘gotten’ issue. It’s old English which ‘we’ dropped but the Americans continued. Is it now wrong we take it back and use it again?

Yes, though in this case looking at the etymology it seems as though the existence of ‘discreet’ is itself an example of ‘getting it wrong’ evolution!

https://www.etymonline.com/word/discreet