Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > English Language Skills

Confusing Pairs

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Binoy:
pragmatic / dogmatic
বাস্তবসম্মত / একগুঁয়ে

If you're pragmatic, you're practical. You're living in the real world, wearing comfortable shoes. If you're dogmatic, you follow the rules. You're living in the world you want, and acting a little stuck up about it.

Pragmatic people have their feet on the ground and their heads there, too. No time for dreaming! They're realistic. A pragmatic approach to something is the sensible one. A pragmaticway to fix a bike is to use the tools you have rather than the ones you wish you had. Examples:

    "The academic and political atmosphere in the 1990s was decidedly pragmatic, rather than optimistic." (The Guardian)

    "Clinton, meanwhile, focuses on the pragmatic instead of the aspirational, using her experience as a guide to what can get done." (Salon)

    "Shoes were thick-soled, while bags were pragmatic large backpacks." (US News)

Dogmatic people are very firm their convictions, which usually come from some authority. The authority is often religious, but it doesn't have to be. Anything dogmatic is by the book. If you're dogmatic, you're 100% sure of your system despite evidence to the contrary. Dogmatic can also mean close-minded. Check it out:

    "That is, if they can get past the dogmatic denial of man-made climate change." (Washington Times)

    "We need more such balanced analyses, and fewer dogmatic opinions, on both sides." (Nature)

    "When I became a cardiologist 30 years ago, I was pretty dogmatic about the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet to prevent heart disease." (Washington Post)

Pragmatic people know what time it is. Dogmatic people tell you what time it should be.

Binoy:
parody / parity
হাস্যকর অনুকরণ / সমতা

They're different, but when these words are said out loud it's hard to tell them apart. A parody is a silly spoof and parity is equality, and that's no joke.

A parody turns making fun of something into an art form. Imitating the way someone talks or writes is a parody. Broken down into its Greek roots, it's para for "beside," and ode as in "song," which forms paroidia for a "burlesque song or poem." A parody isn't as risqué as a burlesque, but it's definitely supposed to be funny. Here are some examples of the word:

    "He's also a professed fan of the 1960s spy parody ‘Get Smart.'" (Washington Times)

    "The online parody shows a player pretending to be J.J." (Los Angeles Times)

    "From a Saturday Night Live hosting gig to a parody Twitter account, the ‘Girls' star is everywhere." (Time)

When there's parity, things are even-steven. Parity means equality. It even has Latin roots in par, which means, of course, equal. If a scale is balanced, there is parity.

It's used in finance:

    "She said she thinks the euro will fall below parity against the U.S. dollar in the coming year." (Wall Street Journal)

In social contexts:

    "None of this started out as a fight over gender parity, but now that it looks like one, you can be sure women will notice."

And sports:

    "In most seasons, parity usually expires some time around November as the league's usual suspects take control." (Wall Street Journal)

They word parody probably has more fun than parity, which just likes to even things out. But there is parity between these words; they are both awesome.

Binoy:
abhorrent / aberrant
ঘৃণ্য / ব্যত্যয়ী

Abhorrent describes something truly horrible like finding a dead rat in your soup, but something aberrant is just abnormal, like a cat in a pink fedora.

Abhorrent means disgusting or detestable. When you abhor something, you loathe it. Its Latin root means, "to shudder, recoil," which is what you do when faced with something abhorrent like a zombie, or in these examples: 

    She said sanitary conditions in the emergency room were abhorrent. (Seattle Times)

    If I thought monarchy abhorrent, for example, I would not seek British citizenship. (Washington Times)

Aberrant (no "h") means unusual, straying from a defined path. It's not necessarily nasty. It's from the Latin, aberrantem, "wandering away." It's related to err, a mistake, through Old French and Latin. If a behavior is aberrant, it's just not normal:

    Weeks ago the nation witnessed the culmination of aberrant fan behavior when Bryan Stow was beaten in the Dodger Stadium parking lot. (Newsweek)

    Upstairs the show gives way to delicious aberrant moments, like the gallery kitted out in beige walls and chunky red molding. (New York Times)

    Illinois citizens will be subjected to another round of descriptions of aberrant behavior by a governor who freely dropped the f-bomb. (Quad-City Times)

If you can remember that the err in aberrant indicates an error and that you abhor something that is abhorrent, your word choice will be neither aberrant nor abhorrent. Wearing a feather boa to a funeral? Aberrant. Stealing the body? Abhorrent.

Afroza Akhter Tina:
I enjoyed going through the pairs Sir.Thank you for sharing.


Afroza Akhter Tina
Senior Lecturer
Department of English, DIU

zafrin.eng:
Very essential information for both ELT teachers & students! :)

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