Gary was suffering with his skin and stomach and bowels and pain. “I HURT ALL OVER THE INFLAMATION INNERVATES ALL MY CELLS.”
“That word doesn’t mean what you think it does,” I said. “Enervate means to drain of sensation.”
“YOU ARE WRONG ALEXA WHAT DOES INNERVATE MEAN?”
Alexa, like Gary, was wrong, and so was Siri, until finally I took over and asked one of them what the word “E-N-N-E-R-V-A-T-E” means and finally got the answer I expected, “To drain of energy.”
I had no idea that “innervate” was even a word, based on the number of times I have smugly corrected people in my head.
4 responses to “TWIL: Homophones are a real problem”
… I’ve never heard someone use innervate (innovate, yes, but). Fascinating! (I have heard people use enervate but only correctly.)
Apparently we’re both about a century out of date (the people I am around who use the biggest words *are* chronic old-book readers, so it makes some sense over here? over there I have no clue…):
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=enervate%2Cinnervate&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=en&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false
KC – that graph suggests that in 1915 no one talked about their nerves.
Ehhh… https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=my+nerves%2Cmy+lungs&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=en&smoothing=3
(the key to Google ngrams is finding a comparable word or phrase so you can actually see all the chart)
(but yes, innervate and enervate do seem to be just about at equal use in 1915… but equal use is not no use?)
(it can be addictive. I probably should have warned you about that ahead of time.)
(but it’s be SUPER useful to us to know which of our words just… aren’t being used much anymore, especially as Spouse teaches college kids. At least, it’s useful to come home and look at ngrams and say “see! Curmudgeon is still in use! Even though an entire class of college students was unfamiliar with the term oh help…” but also for disputed synonyms where we’re trying to find the one most likely to be common knowledge)
(although of course there are issues because specialist use is mixed up with non-specialist use, and all uses of a word are flattened together, etc. But still. Useful sometimes.)
KC – that graph tracks with how Gary has been talking increasingly about his lungs and nerves