Let’s not waste time, I’ve been advocating in recent posts, on shibboleths and meaningless distinctions. What is implicit in that argument is that there must be meaningful distinctions, and indeed there are.

One of the most valuable admonitions from Henry Fowler in Modern English Usage is that when the language has produced a useful distinction in meaning, a careful writer or editor will strive to preserve that distinction.

Some of these distinctions arise when words undergo differentiation in meaning, taking on new senses. "Most differentiations," Fowler says, "are, when fully established, savers of confusion and aids to brevity and lucidity. …" Other distinctions become necessary when uneducated or inadequately educated writers blur long-established distinctions. Let’s look at some examples.

You can find in dictionaries, which record how people actually use language rather than how they ought to use it, that imply and infer are often used interchangeably. But to hint at a meaning and to reach a conclusion based on a hint are opposite actions. You might as well say that wrapping a present and unwrappiing a present are the same thing.

Many people conflate loath and loathe, though to be reluctant to do something (loath) is substantially different in intensity from despising something (loathe).

One of my learned colleagues in the American Copy Editors Society has suggested that it is time to abandon a fussy distinction between persuade and convince, but I am not persuaded. It still seems to me that convince, given its association with conviction, carries a stronger charge. After all, I can be persuaded to do something even if I am not convinced that it is the right thing to do.

We may be forced to abandon the sense of disinterested as impartial, not having an interest in a conflict — no dog in this fight. But uninterested does the job nicely.

So few, apart from my daughter, have been taught Greek that they do not recognize that the first syllable in dilemma means two. A dilemma is a situation in which one has two equally disagreeable choices — Odysseus caught between Scylla and Charybdis. For other fixes, we have difficulty, problem, predicament, plight, scrape, quandary, jam and others. Let’s leave dilemma to its specific context.

The ignorant confusion of literally with figuratively or metaphorically has become so prevalent that there is a Web site devoted to mocking people who make this mistake. Have a look at

A cousin to that error is the use of ironically in circumstances that plainly involve coincidence or incongruity rather than irony.

It is no waste of time for copy editors to focus attention on legitimate distinctions of meaning, on preserving what Fowler calls "a serviceable distinction." Readers will benefit from precision, provided that we can distinguish what is genuinely useful from superstitions, shibboleths and the arbitrary and idiosyncratic pronouncements of long-gone editors.