Learn the difference between loose & lose
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| Yay! Episode 100! Can you believe it? That's cool, 100 episodes! Thanks everybody for watching this. We appreciate it and your questions. |
| Hi, everybody! |
| Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe. |
| First question this week comes from Ahmad Junaedi. |
| Hi, Ahmad! |
| Ahmad says… |
| “Hi, Alisha! What's the difference between afraid and scared? I'm a little confused. Thank you.” |
| Okay sure. If you are talking about fear, “afraid” and “scared” mean the same thing, when you're using them as adjectives. So, “I'm afraid” and “I'm scared” mean the same thing. We're talking about our emotions. We're talking about fear. |
| In different situations; however, these words can be used in different ways. |
| Let's talk about “scare” first. “Scare” can be used as a verb. To scare (someone) or to scare (something) means to cause someone to feel fear. |
| For example… |
| “AHH! You scared me!” |
| Or |
| “You scared the cat.” |
| So, that means you caused fear in someone else. Past tense is “scared” as used in these examples. |
| We cannot use “afraid” in this way. |
| “Afraid” however, can be used in a way that's “scared” cannot. |
| “Afraid” can be used in very formal situations like business situations as an apology. |
| For example… |
| “I'm afraid I don't have time to meet with you today.” |
| Or |
| “I'm afraid we don't have that item right now.” |
| So this “afraid” doesn't mean “I'm scared.” It means “I'm very sorry but…” |
| So, “I'm very sorry, but we don't have that item in stock right now.” |
| Or |
| “I'm very sorry, but I don't have time to meet with you.” |
| So, “I'm afraid” is like a short polite way to say that. |
| So, these are the differences between “afraid” and “scared.” I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Bruno Moriá. |
| Hello, Bruno! |
| Bruno says… |
| “Hi, Alisha. Can you tell me the difference between the words commitment and compromise, please.” |
| Okay, sure. Think about “commitment” as a promise or as an agreement. So, a “commitment” is something you agree to with another person or with a group of people. As a verb, we say, “commit,” to commit to (something). So, a “commitment” is something you agree upon with other people. |
| Some examples… |
| “I made a commitment to do my best in this job.” |
| “He's afraid of commitment.” |
| So, the second example sentence is actually a common kind of complaint in romantic relationships, “He's afraid of commitment” or “She's afraid of commitment.” You may hear it in situations other than romantic relationships, but it generally refers to someone who is afraid to enter into a kind of agreement, like a romantic agreement, to date or to be in a relationship with one person for a long time. So, that's the nuance of the second example there. More generally; however, “commitment” usually refers to agreements and they can be in business situations. |
| Let's compare this now to “compromise.” So, a compromise is a situation in which two sides have different proposals for something and they each make changes to those proposals to arrive at this middle point. This middle point is called a “compromise.” So as a noun, this point is called a “compromise.” So, side A and side B have different ideas. They change their ideas slightly, slightly, slightly, and find an agreement, so that agreeing point is the “compromise point.” As a verb, it's “to compromise.” |
| So, let's look at some example sentences with compromise. |
| “Our team members reached a compromise after discussing the project.” |
| “My friends wanted to go bowling, but I wanted to play video games, so we compromised and went to an arcade.” |
| So, in the second example sentence, I've used compromise as a verb in the past tense. We compromise, that means each side changed the plan just a little bit and we found this middle solution. |
| So in sum, “commitment” is an agreement. |
| A “compromise,” you can think of as like a type of agreement in which both sides change their ideas slightly. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question! Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Paterne. |
| Hello, Paterne. |
| Paterne says… |
| “Hi, Alisha. What is the difference between supposed to and meant to?” |
| In terms of meaning, nothing. “supposed to” and “meant to” have the same meaning. |
| The only difference here is that “meant to” is used in British English and we don't use “meant to” in American English. |
| For example… |
| “I'm supposed to go to a company event this weekend.” |
| And |
| “I'm meant to go to a company event this weekend.” |
| An American English speaker would use the first example sentence, “I'm supposed to go to an event this weekend.” |
| A British English speaker would use the second sentence, “I'm meant to go to a company event this weekend.” |
| For me, as an American English speaker, the second example sentence feels a bit unnatural to say. It's not something that we use in American English, but these two sentences communicate the same idea. So, if you are studying American English, great! I recommend using “supposed to.” If you're studying “British English,” great, use “meant to.” It will sound more natural. |
| I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Ruben. |
| Hi again, Ruben! |
| Ruben says… |
| “Hi, Alisha! Is there any difference between loose and lose? I'm also confused with the words uninterested and disinterested. I think they have the same meaning, but I'm not sure.” |
| Yes, great question! There are key differences. |
| Let's start by talking about “loose” and “lose.” |
| “Loose” with two Os is the opposite of tight. |
| So, for example… |
| “Huh, my ring is loose.” |
| Or |
| “Wow, my pants are loose.” |
| So this means the opposite of tight. Something tight is like under pressure or it's kind of, you can imagine it in like this shape, something that is tight. |
| Something that is loose is not that, there's not so much pressure. It's easy to move. It's flexible. So, “loose” is an adjective. |
| “Lose,” on the other hand, is a verb which means to no longer have ownership of (something) or to not win (something) as in sports. |
| So, for example… |
| “I lost my cat in the forest.” |
| Or |
| “I think we're going to lose the basketball game today.” |
| So “loose” and “lose” may seem to have similar pronunciations and similar spellings, but they do have very different meanings, also different parts of speech. “Lose” is a verb and “loose” is an adjective, so keep these in mind and be careful of your spellings when using these words. |
| Let's move on now to your second point about the difference between “uninterested” and “disinterested.” In many cases today, we use uninterested and disinterested to mean the same thing which is having no interest in something, like we just don't care, we don't have positive feelings or negative feelings, it's just there, we’re very neutral. So, many people use these two words to mean the same thing. |
| However, “disinterested” can have a couple of other meanings. |
| One of these is “unbiased.” |
| So for example… |
| “Politicians should make disinterested decisions.” |
| So that means politicians should make decisions without bias. So “bias” means having an opinion in one way or another about (something). So, a “disinterested decision” means an unbiased decision. We can use “disinterested” in this way. |
| We can also use “disinterested” to mean “no longer interested in something.” |
| So something you, at one time, were interested in, but you are no longer interested in can be described as something you are now “disinterested” in. |
| For example… |
| “I've become disinterested in my hobbies.” |
| Compare this then to a couple of example sentences that use “uninterested.” |
| “I told my friend about a concert I went to last week, but he was uninterested.” |
| “We're so tired of having uninterested people at our events.” |
| So, please keep in mind, as I’ve said, many people use “uninterested” and “disinterested” to mean the same thing when the meaning is about not having any emotions or not having any attention focused on something. If however, you want to talk about losing interest in something or about not being biased with regard to something, use “disinterested.” So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question! Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Cecilia. |
| Hi, Cecilia! |
| Cecilia says… |
| “Hi, Alisha! I found that sometimes there is a comma before and and sometimes not. When should I add a comma before and? Thanks!” |
| Okay, yes. You should add a “comma before and” when you are joining two independent clauses. An independent clause is an idea or a phrase that can stand alone, so it doesn't need any extra information. It's a complete idea, a complete thought. |
| Let's take a look at a few examples that show different types of clauses together. |
| “On Saturday, I'm going to the mountains, and on Sunday, I'm going to the beach.” |
| “I told my mother I loved her cooking, and I told my father I love his music.” |
| “I'm tired and hungry.” |
| “I missed my train and forgot my wallet.” |
| So the first two example sentences here used a “comma” before “and.” This is because, if we remove the “comma” and “and,” the two ideas can be separated with a period and there's no communication problem. The statements remain the same. |
| “On Saturday I'm going to the mountains.” |
| “On Sunday, I'm going to the beach.” |
| There's no error there. |
| The second example sentence is similar. |
| “I told my mother I loved her cooking.” |
| “I told my dad I loved his music.” |
| If we remove the “comma” and “and,” the sentences are okay because they are called independent clauses. They are complete ideas. They don't need any more information. |
| In the last two example sentences though, we cannot remove “and” because the parts that it joins are not independent. So, “I'm tired and hungry,” if we remove “and,” it becomes “I'm tired hungry.” |
| In the last example sentence, “I missed my train and forgot my wallet.” “I missed my train forgot my wallet.” That's not a grammatical sentence. So, this is a good way to test whether your “and” is connecting independent ideas or not. Try removing it from the sentence. If the sentence remains grammatical, perhaps you have an independent clause and you can use the “(comma) and” there. This is one way to use a “comma before an and.” |
| The other case where you may see a “comma before an and” is in the last item in a list. |
| For example… |
| “I bought bread, fruit, and milk.” |
| “I saw my family, friends, and neighbors.” |
| So, before the final item in each of these lists, there's an “and” and there's a “comma” before the “and.” This is what's known as the serial comma or the Oxford comma. So, some people choose to use this type of comma and some people choose not to. There are some good reasons, I feel, for using the Oxford comma and I'm a person who believes that this is a good comma to use because it can help prevent confusion when you're reading. |
| For example… |
| “I need to buy bread, fruits and vegetables, and a meat and cheese plate.” |
| There are many “ANDs” in that sentence. There are three “ANDs” in that sentence, and using commas to separate each individual item helps the reader understand what they should be looking for. What is one item here? A “comma” helps us identify those things. |
| In another example, we might say… |
| “This weekend, I'm excited to see my friends, Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake.” |
| So, a way to interpret this sentence without an Oxford comma is that Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake are my friends, but they're not actually my friends. The Oxford comma helps prevent this kind of confusion. |
| “This weekend I'm excited to see my friends, Beyoncé, and Justin Timberlake.” |
| So it sounds like those are three different things that are not necessarily related. So, the Oxford comma helps prevent this kind of confusion. For that reason, I'm a big fan of it. |
| The cases where you might see the Oxford comma purposely not used are in journalism really. So in newspapers, in magazines, for example, those publications and the style guides that they follow typically do not advocate or do not suggest the use of the Oxford comma. You will see the Oxford comma; however, in novels and in short stories and other things like that. So, in those cases, you may see it used. This is another reason why you may sometimes see a “comma before an and” and and you may sometimes not see it. There are a couple of different reasons. |
| So in sum, one reason is related to independent clauses and connecting those with a conjunction “and” in this case and a “comma.” The other is related perhaps to the use of the Oxford comma or the serial comma. So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. Okay, that is everything that I have for this week. Thank you as always for sending your questions. Remember, you can send them to me at EnglishClass101.com/ask-alisha. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye! |
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