Commonly Confused

Words

Sayed Mohamed
accident vs. incident
The Japanese word ÚöÔ¶ (jiken) can be translated into English as either accident or incident, but these words
are not identical in meaning.
Accident is used to describe things that happen unintentionally, in other words, accidentally. A typical example is
a traffic accident--the driver does not intend to cause an accident. Crimes cannot be described as accidents
because they are intended by the criminal; in the case of a robbery, for example, the robber intends to steal
something; he or she does not accidentally steal it. Incident has a wider meaning and can be used both for
accidents and for intentional actions such as crimes.
Here are some examples from data drawn from the Bank of English corpus created by COBUILD at Birmingham
University.
a.The Iraqi ambassador to France was immediately summoned to the French foreign
office and strong protest delivered. A spokesman said that, 'The incident was serious
violation of the Vienna Convention. It was a new and intolerable attack on international
law.' He called for the immediate freeing of the four men and their return ...
c.The case arose after an incident in January, when Ostashvili and a group of
supporters burst into a meeting of writers in central Moscow and started eschewing anti-
semitic threats.
NOTE:Accident could not replace incident in either (a) or (b) because these actions are
intentional.
c.A gas explosion and fire has ripped through a coal mine in Czechoslovakia, killing at
least 22 people. Officials say at least eight others are missing. The incident occurred
yesterday afternoon at a mine in Karvina near the Polish border. Reason for the
explosion is not known.
NOTE: If the cause was known in (c), and if the cause of the explosion was found to an
accident or natural forces, accident could be used here. But since the cause is not
known, incident is better because it leaves open the possiblity that someone caused the
explosion (with a bomb or something.)
d.Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Federation, was hospitalized in Moscow this
morning after his car was involved in an accident. An aide says Yeltsin was not hurt, but
was taken to the hospital for a checkup.
f.Officials say it's unlikely that yesterday's collision was caused by the same factors as a
similar 1987 crash at Back Bay Station. That earlier accident was blamed on a faulty
signal. National Transportation Safety Board officials say investigators have not ruled
anything out.
admit, recognize and accept
The Japanese verb äF-§-Ž (mitomeru) corresponds to at least three different English verbs: accept, admit, and
recognize. These verbs are not exactly the same in meaning, and in many situations, only one of them can be
used.
The definitions and examples below are adapted from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 3rd
edition.
admit
The senses below are common uses of admit. Notice that that senses (3) and (4) are neutral in tone, but (1) and
(2) are usually rather negative, indicating that the person is embarrassed or unwilling to admit something.
1.to accept and agree unwillingly that something is true or that someone else is right
•'I was really scared,' Jenny admitted.
•You may not like her, but you have to admit that she's good at her job.
freely/openly admit: admit without being ashamed
•Philips openly admits to being selfish.
2.to admit to: to say that you have done something wrong, especially criminal
•A quarter of all workers admit to taking time off when they are not ill.
4.to allow someone to enter a public place to watch a game, performance etc.
•Only ticket holders will be admitted to the stadium.
6.to allow someone or something to join an organization, club, etc.
•The UK was admitted to the EEU in 1973.
recognize
Some of the senses of recognize are similar to thoseof admit, but others are quite different.
1.to know who someone is or what something is because you have seen, heard, experienced or learned about
them in the past
•She was humming a tune I didn't recognize
•Saleha came home so thin and weak her own children hardly recognized her.
3.to officially accept that an organization, government, document, etc. has legal or official authority
•The management recognizes three main trade union. British medical qualifications are recognized in
Canada.
This sense is similar to admit, sense 4. The difference is that admit focuses on the fact that a person or group is joining an
organization.
3.to be recognized as: to be thought of as being important or very good by a lot of people
•Lawrence's book was eventually recognized as a work of genius.
5.to accept and admit, often unwillingly, that something is true
•We recognize that it is an unpleasant choice to make.
•Do you think he recognizes how foolish he looks?
This sense is quite similar to admit, sense 1. The difference seems to be that with if a person uses admit, it sounds like he or she is
in some sense responsible for the situation. For example: "We admit that it is an unpleasant choice to make." It sounds as if "we" are
implying that they somehow responsible for making someone else make a choice. With recognize, it sounds like the situation is out
of the control of "we" or at least that "we" is not willing to do anything to make the choice easier.
5.to publicly and officially thank someone for something they have done, by giving them a special honor
accept
1.GIFT/OFFER/INVITATION
to take something that someone offers you, or agree to do something that someone asked you to do
Examples:
•I've decided to accept the job.
•Are you going to accept their invitation?
3.PLAN/SUGGESTION/ADVICE
to decide to do what someone advises or suggests you should do
Examples:
•I wish I'd accepted your advice and kept my money in the bank.
5.IDEA/STATEMENT/EXPLANATION
to agree that what someone says is right or true
Examples:
•She managed to persuade the jury to accept her version of events.
This sense is similar to admit, sense 1 and recognize, sense 4. But unlike those two verbs, accept does not imply any
unwillingness. Also, compared to accept, admitseems to show more involvement on thepartof the person who is agreeing--if you
admit something, it is usually something that you have done or that you know about first-hand. Here, admit would sound strange
because the jury probably does not have any first-hand knowledge of what the defendant or witness has done. However, recognize
could be used in place of accept in this sentence.
4.SITUATION/PROBLEM
•SITUATION/PROBLEM
to decide that there is nothing you can do to change a difficult or unpleasant fact and continue with your normal
life

•There's nothing we can do about it so we'll just have to accept it. I found it hard to accept the fact that she'd
gone.
This sense of accept is something like Japanese âœ-§-Ž (akirameru)ª@.
•THINK SOMEBODY/SOMETHING GOOD ENOUGH
to decide that someone has the necessary skill or intelligence for a particular job, course, etc. or that a piece of
work is good enough

•My story's been accepted for the school's magazine.

•BECOME PART OF
to allow someone to become part of a group, society, or organization and to treat them in the same way as the
other members

•The children gradually began to accept her as one of the family.

let and make
Japanese verbs ending in -saseru (--Ò-Õ-Žªj can be translated into English as either let+OBJECT+VERB or
make+OBJECT+VERB; for example, benkyou saseru ªið×ÑÐ-Ò-Õ-Žªj can be translated as either 'make
someone study' or 'let someone study'. However let and make have distinct meanings. The two sentences
below, for example, have different meanings.
•My parents let me study abroad.
•My parents made me study abroad.
In the first sentence, the writer wanted to study abroad and was glad that her parents allowed her to go; in the
second, the writer did not want to study abroad, but her parents forced her to go.
In other words, let indicates that a person is being allowed to do something he wants to do or that a thing is being
allowed to follow its natural course without any interference. Make indicates that someone or something is being
forced or coerced into a particular course of action. The following examples provide some images that you can
use to help you decide whetehr to use let or make.
•You let a helium balloon fly up into the sky or let a baseball fall to the ground, but you make a baseball fly
through the air by hitting or throwing it.
If there is nothing holding the balloon back, it will naturally rise, and if no one holds the baseball up, it will
naturally fall to the ground. However, a baseball never flies through the air on its own; someone has to apply a
force to it to send it into the air.
•Parents let their children play video games but make them study, and parents let their children eat candy
but make them eat spinach.
This assumes, of course, that children like to play video games but they don't like to study, and that they like
candy but not spinach. If a child likes to study and wants to do it, it would not be correct to say that the child's
parents are making him study.