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Thursday, June 3, 2010

Criminal Sentence 398: Not Loath to Loathe

From a book I read recently:

"The extraordinary thing about inventing a persona is that one is loathe to give it up."

I would like to announce the retirement of the error-prone word "loath," which means "hesitant or reluctant." It gets confused so often with "loathe," which means "despise," that it's time for it to go.

Or, people could remember the difference.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So it's just a difference of an "E"?

One's a verb; the other, a noun?

Right?

The Sentence Sleuth said...

So it seems!

frogprof said...

I am loath to loathe these words, but people who mis-use them are loathesome.