More words that are easy to confuse.

Freeze/ frieze

As a verb, to freeze means to turn into ice. It can also mean to stay absolutely still or to keep anything without change or motion.  A frieze is a noun describing a sculpted or painted decoration, usually placed high on a wall.

Two women rest on a windowsill inside the Angkor Wat temple at Siem Reap, Cambodia, taking a rest from viewing the friezes.

In “The Flesh Is Yours, the Bones Are Ours,” American artist Michael Rakowitz uses art-nouveau plaster friezes moulded by apprentices of Istanbul’s long-gone Armenian and Greek artisans.

A woman looks over a group of pieces by Thai artist Rirkrik Tiravanija during the opening day of the Frieze Art Fair in Randalls Island Park in New York, New York, USA, 09 May 2014.

For the last two years, she has worked to create a market for Korean monochrome paintings called “dansaekhwa.” The often overlooked painting movement, formed under the authoritarian governments from the 1960s to 1980s, received eulogies in the global art market when they were first showcased in 2013 at Frieze London.

Tobacco firms say industry in major crisis, call for excise freeze.

Lift hiring freeze on foreign workers, Malaysian government urged.

Freeze on approval of hotel licences in Kuala Lumpur.

Doha producer summit on ‘production freeze’ expected to keep the markets guessing.

The ‘freeze’ that failed to warm oil-market. The oil market might have analysed the implications of a highly conditional “output freeze” agreement among a handful of producers amid a persistent supply glut before reacting.

Most of the time, historians of art and architecture and other cultural experts will need to write the word frieze. For others, the word freeze will be used far more than frieze. In that case, the challenge is not to spell one word when the other is meant. One way to remember the difference in spelling between the two words is to recall that when it is so cold that things freeze, we say ee! This may remind us to associate coldness and freezing with the double letter e’s.

Tenants/ tenets

The noun tenants means people who rent property from a landlord. Also a noun, tenets refer to principles or beliefs. The word tenets is usually seen in the plural form.

Tenants demand repairs, not demolition.

Aliwassa Pattanathabut, managing director of CB Richard Ellis (Thailand), said office tenants now increasingly preferred LEED-certified buildings, especially if they have a policy to undertake LEED-certified interior fit-outs, which more companies are doing.

Green buildings are currently limited to the commercial sector due to high building costs, as the accrued green cost is more difficult for individual, residential tenants to bear compared to companies occupying commercial buildings.

For Chadatip, an innovation leader in the retail property sector for nearly 30 years, clients are like a mirror that reflects back what they think and feel. For that reason, she likes to spend time every day walking around her malls to get first-hand responses from her customers as well as sit and talk with her tenants who pay handsomely to rent the prime retail space.
Demand for non-CBD offices has been driven mainly by tenants relocating within a similar area.

More office developers, business tenants catching on to ‘green’ building trend.

These elements in themselves are nothing new. They are fundamental tenets that have guided Indonesia for nearly seven decades.

While distinct in identity and tenets, the coverage in this theme focuses on universal principles of equality, co-existence and humanitarian issues.

She discovered that neurolinguistic coaching techniques are very much like some of the tenets of Buddhism, such as the “emotional labelling” technique that helps one to gain control over feelings through acknowledging of the current feeling-state.

So what visitors to the influential Saatchi Gallery will be seeing starting next Tuesday is a painting of a blue military tank (check), a golden handbag (check) and the Buddha’s ears framing the hood of a car (in other words Buddhist tenets misconceived, so again, check).

Current restrictions on the free movement of workers not only run contrary to one of the central tenets of the AEC, but they will also make it difficult for the region to achieve its goal of increased economic integration.

In law, tenants are people who possess real property which they occupy. They are present.

This is why the word’s origins, from the Latin word tenere, mean holding. English words ending with the letters ant can refer to a person who. In the case of tenants, the people are those who are in possession or holding onto land, an apartment, a shop, or whatever they are occupying. Some other related words:

complainant

lieutenant

poignant

pregnant

Somewhat confusingly, the word tenets has the same Latin origin as tenants, since beliefs are also things that are held onto. To remember the difference between the spellings of the two words, we might try to invent a small story that to hold onto our beliefs or tenets, we need to have nets to keep them in. That way the word tenets will be spelled correctly, and not as if it referred to tenants. Similarly, we might imagine that tenants living in a terrible slum often see ants in their home, and that way we will remember that the word tenants ends with the letters ants.

Council/ counsel

A council is a committee that leads something. Counsel means advice, seriously given. If a friend asks what movie to see over the weekend, that is not usually what is meant by counsel. Instead, a counsellor, another word used for lawyer, offers responsible views about the law, education, health, or other formal matters. The word council comes from the Latin term concilium, meaning summoned together. A council is a group that was called to be assembled for a certain purpose. The word counsel derives from a different Latin word, consilium, meaning consultation or advice. Here are some examples of usage:

The Privy Council gives counsel to His Majesty the King, who will use his own judgement on whether to take or not to take that counsel.

The real growth in demand for public relations counsel and related services is with major Thai corporations that have bulked up in preparation for the emergence of the Asean Economic Community.

Volunteers to be recruited to counsel people in grievance.

Thai Criminal Code S134/4 stipulates that, for any statement given by a suspect to be admissible in court, he must first have been informed of his right to silence and to legal counsel during interrogation.  

A leading health economist is pushing for the establishment of the National Health Security Council (NHSC) to facilitate co-operation between, not to merge, the country’s three major healthcare systems.

500 top teachers to attend English course run by British Council.

The President’s Office, Myanmar, has announced 11 members of the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC), including Aung San Suu Kyi, the chairperson of National League for Democracy.

The National Buddhism Office yesterday confirmed that the Supreme Sangha Council has the right to nominate a new supreme patriarch.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).