Just recently I was in a conversation with a number of UK mainlanders and we had a debate over what “tories” meant, apparently disproportionately ordinarily it refers to a political party and it’s not usual to use it as short for “territories” as I’ve used it (according to how the debate ended, it was half and half between them). And once again I’m reminded of how people feel to look back at their usage of a word/phrase over the years and cringe.
More tragically, me and a friend were embarrassed once upon realizing everyone was confusing “encephalitis” with “hydrocephalus” when talking to someone about their kid with hydrocephalus. Awkward because encephalitis is caused by HIV.
I didn’t realize “effect” and “affect” were different words for a long time.
It’s freeing to just use whatever one you want with zero effect.
What about æffect?
You just summoned a dæmon.
cræp
ÆØÅ
I always used the two as different tenses of the same word except for the fact that “affect” can also be the verb form of “affectionate”.
The arrow affected the aardvark.
The movie had great special effects.
Somewhat grim for the poor aardvark, I suppose. It’s useful though.
That’s a good way to remember it.
Honestly, you can pretty much always use effect unless you’re affecting a fancy manner.
I am strongly in favor of depreciating affect.
You may find you mean deprecating.
Depreciating is reducing in value due to time, deprecating is disapproving of (or in software, marking as obsolete)
Sigh, that one I can legitimately blame on autocorrect and adhd.