Precedent vs. President

Paste vs. Paced

This again is an issue of spelling as defining meaning.  Both words are pronounced identically, but their meaning is quite different.  The importance in spelling them correctly is in conveying the correct intended meaning.

Paste (n) is material of a thick consistency, like glue or farina, baby food, mud or grits.

Paced (adj) means anything whose speed is measured, such as a paced gait, or jogging at regular, measured pace.

Access vs. Axis

Eminent vs. Imminent

Disbursement vs. Dispersement

Both are nouns, but both mean totally different things:

Disbursement (n) means to payment of monies, mostly.

Dispersement (n) is a derivative of disperse, to disseminate, distribute widely, scatter. 

Lesions vs. Legions

Words, Words, Words

Yes, this is a throwback to Shakespeare, but this entry is not about the Bard.  It is about the word gay.

A member of our Toastmasters club gave a riveting speech last night, discussing how we came about to associate gay with homosexual.  Evidently, it was a missed media opportunity, because whatever the media did to try to associate the word with homosexuality did not "take," with the result that what used to mean merry, jolly, carefree has now come to mean nothing of the sort.  Indeed, those definitions show up at the end of a dictionary entry for gay.