Of all the crimes against good writing, the worst is using the wrong word. A grammatical error looks sloppy, but as long as it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence, people will get what you mean. Use the wrong word, though, and you fail to convey what you’re trying to say. That amounts to failing as a writer.
Usage errors fall into several categories. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it includes the types of errors that annoy me the most.
Homophone errors
A common mistake is using a word which sounds like the one you intended but isn’t spelled the same. Favorites include its/it’s, accept/except, rein/reign/rain, review/revue, compliment/complement, and principle/principal. When I get these wrong, I blame my fingers. I knew which word I wanted, but my stupid fingers garbled it!
Sometimes writers actually don’t know the difference, sometimes it’s a typing error, Either way it looks bad.
Pretentious words
There’s no good reason to use a ten-dollar word when a one-dollar word works just as well. If the fancy word means the same thing, it isn’t a disaster, but if it’s less exact or just wrong, it looks ridiculous. Use “utilize” if you must. Using “critique” when you mean “criticize” grates on me, but it’s not likely to be misunderstood.
Stay away from “fulsome.” If you don’t mean that something is insincere or disgusting, it’s a poor word choice. If you do mean it, use a less confusing word.
“Decadent” simply means “in decline.” “Decadent chocolate” is stale chocolate. I don’t want it.
Pretentiously misused foreign (usually French or Latin) words and phrases are the worst. If you say “It has that je ne sais quoi,” you’re saying you don’t know what it has. Not very informative. “Déjà vu all over again” was funny the first time, but using it over and over again as a cliché is just silly.
“Rise to a crescendo” rarely makes sense. A crescendo in music means a gradual increase in volume. The Italian word “crescendo” means “increasing.” Rising to a rise in volume is possible, but then why not call the whole thing a crescendo?
Many foreign words just have a different meaning in English. That’s not a problem. “Angst” simply means “fear” in German, but in English it’s specialized into a kind of existential fear. Using it according to its accepted English definition is fine.
Inexact words
Mark Twain wrote: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ‘Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” This is especially an issue when you’re writing in a technical field, but ordinary discussion has its pitfalls as well.
To “beg the question” means to assume the point which is in question. For example, saying “The Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true” is begging the question. It doesn’t mean “suggest the question.”
“Flounder” and “founder” as verbs often get confused, probably because they both mean moving in an undesirable way. “Floundering” means flopping around. “Foundering” means sinking.
“Irony” and “sarcasm” are another confusing pair. Irony is either unexpected congruency or the use of a word to mean its opposite. In its second meaning, it’s often used sarcastically, but you can have irony without sarcasm or vice versa. “Badass” is an ironic compliment which usually isn’t sarcastic. Sarcasm usually involves irony, but you can convey it just with tone of voice. “Oh, reeeally?”
OK, that’s enough of a dump for one article. It’s obligatory for every article of this type to contain at least one usage error. If you find it, let me know in the comments what it is.
The Oxford English Dictionary does list “Luxuriously self-indulgent” as one of the definitions of “Decadent”.
I’ve never encountered in that sense except in advertising, and then almost always to chocolate. It just doesn’t make sense in the context of its original meaning and etymology.
I’ve seen the word “decadent” used in that meaning in other contexts; on at least one occasion I remember, I heard the organizers of an upcoming SCA feast say that it is going to be “very decadent”.
Note that the original meaning of “decadent” is not simply “in decline”; it is “in cultural or moral decline”. So “decadent chocolate” can’t mean stale chocolate; if you use the word in its original meaning, it has to mean chocolate that demonstrates cultural or moral decline by its manufacturers or consumers.
I don’t know the history of how “decadent” got its second meaning, but it makes sense in the context of a culture highly influenced by Christianity. If you believe that pleasure is sinful, then it makes sense that luxurious self-indulgence is a sign of cultural/moral decline. My guess is that the word “decadent” was first used not just to describe luxurious self-indulgence, but to condemn it; and then at some point lost the condemnatory connotation.
So it may be good advice to writers to avoid the use of “decadent” in this meaning; not because the meaning is wrong, but because it is based on a bad philosophical premise. (Same reason why I never use the word “disinterested”; if you use the word to mean “objective”, you are accepting the bad philosophical premise that self-interest conflicts with objectivity, and if you use it to mean “uninterested”, that’s just wrong, so either way it’s better to avoid this word and instead clearly express your meaning by just saying “objective” or “uninterested”, depending on which one you meant.)
Also, it lists “invite an obvious question” as one of the definitions of “beg the question”. And surprisingly to me, it even lists that as definition 1; “Assume the truth of an argument or proposition to be proved, without arguing it” is definition 2.
What OED lists as definition 2 is, of course, the original meaning of the phrase. But if I were not familiar with the phrase, and heard it and tried to guess what it means, the logical guess would be that it means suggesting a question so obvious that it feels like it is begging to be raised. So I can understand how this alternate meaning of the phrase became prevalent; by now it has clearly become a standard English idiom.