vocabulary

Compliment or Complement

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Question

Two commonly confused words are compliment and complement. It’s easy to see why. After all, they sound the same.

Use compliment when you are talking about an expression of admiration or praise. For example:

  • When I wear my new jacket, I frequently receive compliments.
  • My boss complimented me on my punctuality and orderly approach to my work.
  • When someone pays you a compliment, try not to blush. Just enjoy it!

A complement is something that completes something else. You might go to a restaurant. The food was delicious, but the combination of the food and wine made the meal memorable. So you might say that the wine was a perfect complement to the food. Perhaps the confusion is caused because a complement expresses the idea that things are better together, and that intuitively seems as if one is praising the other! Other examples are:

  • Her jewelry really complements her new outfit. (Each looks good on its own, but the combination really works.)
  • I don’t view elearning as an alternative to instructor-led training, but as a complement. (Our program needs both components to be complete.)
  • Michael’s skills as an analyst complement Latifa’s skills as an articulate advocate for the company. Together they provide ideal leadership for the company. (Both Latifa and Michael are great, but in very different ways. Their combined strengths give them real power.)

 

 

 

 

 

Where Are Your Principles?

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principal

Two words in English often cause confusion: principal and principle. After all, they have exactly the same pronunciation! You can easily figure out which one to use like this. See if the word, chief, would also work. Let’s think about a few sentences:

  1. The principal investigator is responsible for submitting the final report.
  2. I wouldn’t do that because it’s against my principles.
  3. The principal cause of the failure was a design error.
  4. We used proven principles of instructional design to create this class.
  5. I agree with you in principle, but I need time to think about it.
  6. The board chose Mrs. Desai to be the school’s new principal.
  7. The Peter Principle states that an employee will rise to his or her level of incompetence.

It’s easy to see that chief would work in the first, third, and sixth sentences. Perhaps it’s not exactly the word you’d want to use, but the sentence makes sense:

  •  The chief investigator is responsible for submitting the final report.
  • The chief cause of the failure was a design error.
  • The board chose Mrs. Desai to be the school’s new chief.

As they sometimes say, the chief is your pal. Use principal when it means chief; otherwise use principle.

And when it comes to a loan, remember that the chief thing you tend to think about is the money you borrow rather than the interest. That’s why financiers talk about principal as opposed to interest.

Tenet or Tenant

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Dictionary

If you annoy your reader when you write, your credibility can suddenly evaporate. The fastest way to do this is to confuse words. Although you might be making an important point, a small mistake can make your reader unfairly jump to the conclusion that you’re ignorant and that the rest of your prose is not worth considering.

Two commonly confused words are tenet and tenant. Although both these words come from the same Latin root, tenere, the verb meaning to hold, they mean different things:

Tenant:  A holder of a lease. Someone who occupies a property as part of a rental agreement.

The landlord had to evict the tenants because they stopped paying the rent.

Tenet:  A principle or belief.

The idea that there is only one God is a basic tenet of Islam.

 

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