Saturday, December 15, 2007

English is a Messed Up Language

I just discovered that 'discreet' and 'discrete' are two completely different words with completely different meanings.

discreet - 'judicious, prudent, showing discernment,'
discrete - 'detached, separate' and 'individually distinct'

How ridiculous.

5 comments:

Julie/mom said...

I know about discreet, but never heard of discrete.

which one did you want to use?

Steven said...

I only knew about discreet, but I would have spelled it discrete. In my accounting book it talked about 'discrete units' and I was confused. I thought it was saying there were secret or private units, when it was really trying to say they they were distinct units.

G Dawney said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quinn said...

I only new about discrete

G Dawney said...

I knew about both definitions, but I hadn't realized that they were spelled differently