More commonly confused words

Didactic/ pedantic

The adjective didactic means having the purpose of teaching, especially teaching moral values. It is usually used in a good sense. If it is meant in a bad way, other words must be added to explain why in this specific situation, it might not be good to be didactic. For example, teaching about nutrition and caloric content with many posters with health warnings about the dangers of bad diet might not seem appropriate to decorate an ice cream vendor or fast food restaurant. In those cases, being too didactic might not be appropriate. Yet in the context of a university, where the mission is to teach, being didactic is fine, since otherwise it would be more difficult for people to learn. The adjective pedantic means to fussy about small things, being over-careful about details that are not important. This adjective derives from the noun pedant, or a person who cares too much about minor things or showing off scholarship. It is never a good thing to be called a pedant, so students and ajarns should be careful not to use this term when describing university classmates or colleagues, since it can be taken as an insult. Yet these two words are often confused even by native English speakers. To be sure to keep the two words separate, perhaps inventing a sentence as a reminder may work, for example:

The didactic effort did act positively on the students.

The point is to remember that didactic is not an insult and usually means a good effort to teach. Some usage examples:

• Driven by an intent to seek the best school for her daughter, Serene Jiratanan decided to start Montessori Academy Bangkok International School (MABIS) on Bangna Road, km. 3.5 in 2010. A Montessori classroom is a specially designed child-centered learning environment with trained Montessori teachers and specialized didactic materials which support auto-education in a multi-sensorial way.
• Instruction in Finnish teacher-education departments is arranged to support pedagogical principles that new teachers are expected to implement in their own class-rooms, according to the Finnish Ministry of Education. At higher education levels, future teachers are trained in pedagogical skills in order to perceive their responsibility as educators. Teaching and learning includes comprehension of the subjects taught as well as pedagogical perception and didactic competence.
• Specialized didactic materials draw the child’s interest and promote the development of skills in logic, mathematics, languages, daily life activities, fine and gross motor control, sensory development, and others. The program also helps children improve concentration so they can learn more effectively going forward.
• “Fanfare” is Jerome Robbins’s most festive ballet, a mixture of entertainment and didacticism rolled into one.
• At a time when children’s stories were exclusively moral and didactic, the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen revolutionized the genre by infusing it with the humor, anarchy and sorrow of great literature.
• Woody Allen’s “Café Society” is a sweet, sad, insubstantial film, watchable, charming and beautifully shot by Vittorio Storaro – yet always weighed down with a pedantic nostalgia for the 1930s golden age in both Hollywood and New York, nostalgia which the title itself announces.
• Michael Keller can be amusing and he can be fairly insightful as well, but there’s a disorienting lurch back and forth in the essays in this collection. The book chugs along on two forms of fuel – silliness and misinformed pedantry – or perhaps they’re the same thing.
• The newspaper Letters column is a forum from various expatriate and Thai readers, writing scholarly, intelligently, light-heartedly, arrogantly, trivially, pedantically and insultingly.
• University dispute labelled pedantic.

Disassemble/ dissemble

The verb disassemble means to take something apart. It is the opposite of the verb to assemble. When the letters dis begin a word, they can change the meaning of the rest of the word, by opposing or reversing the initial definition. Among such words are the familiar examples:

dislike

disappear      

disagree         

disqualify      

disappoint     

disobey          

disinfect         

disconnect     

disembark.

In computer studies, the verb to disassemble is used to refer to translating a program into a symbolic language. Disassemble is a neutral word, meaning it can be good or bad depending on the context of the sentence. This is not true of another verb, dissemble, meaning to hide how one feels and pretend or lie to people. The word origin for dissemble means not as it seems, so this is usually not a good way to behave. The two words are frequently confused in Thai English. When in doubt, try to remember that the longer word means to take things apart, and the shorter one is a potential insult. Also, the word disassemble has the word assemble in it, so that should be a clue. Some usage examples:

• It takes less time to change an engine than to fix the old one, and there is less work for the mechanic to do. If there are any problems, the source is also easier to trace because only the engine shop and the mechanic are involved, whereas with overhauling the old engine there is the quality of work of the mechanic who disassembled it, the quality of the parts used and sometimes the quality of the machining, if the engine needs to be modified.
• In line with the architect Tadao Ando’s vision, the older wooden house was disassembled.
• The roof is a permanently installed part of the house. Amendments made to it at a later time can be costly and involve disassembly and rebuilding of the entire roof structure.
• Having been in the business for 35 years, Kirchhofer has inherited his father’s passion. He recalls the old days when he and his sister were given old clocks, with the instruction to disassemble and reassemble them.
• More than a million fans have flocked to the park since RX782 took up residence here on July 11. Tomorrow, the robot will be disassembled and moved to another venue, although the location has yet to be revealed.
• The muslin dress is then disassembled and its pieces used as templates for cutting the fabric for the final dress.
• With the rear split-folding backseats fully down, it is possible to fit a full-size bicycle without having to disassemble the wheel or handle bar.
• When there’s a paywall, there’s a way, and there are no shortages of methods to dodge or dissemble one’s way through The New York Times’ new content subscription paywall.
• The new Netflix series “Bloodline” is a sneaky, dissembling film noir account.
• The Times does not dissemble about its sources – does not, for example, refer to a single person as “sources” and does not say “other officials.”
• On forests’ role in climate, the newspaper op-ed gets it wrong and the journalist may have had to distort or dissemble the information due to its relatively abstract nature.
• “People find excuses,” Dr. Ariely said, and those who dissemble often start believing their own lies.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)