Tuesday, September 1, 2015

disgression/discretion: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Tuesday, September 1, 2015

disgression/discretion
Discretion has to do with being discreet or with making choices. A lot of people hear it and get influenced by the quite different word “digression” which is used to label instances of people wandering off the point. The result is the nonword “disgression.” The expression is “you can do it at your own discretion.”

Also wrong but less common—and pretty funny—is “at your own desecration.”


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This is the tenth year of the Common Errors in English Usage calendar. To celebrate, we are bringing back some of our favorite interesting, funny, but sometimes merely silly entries through the years before going on hiatus in 2016.

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