Words that are commonly confused

Council/ counsel/ consul       

The noun council refers to a group of people who meet regularly to advise, consider, or issue laws. Councils are sometimes elected to manage the business of a city, county, or other district. The noun council derives from a Latin term meaning assembly, or being called together. Churches and other religious organizations often have councils.

Used as a verb, the word counsel means to give advice. Counsel usually means serious advice about something important. The noun counsel refers to a lawyer representing a client. In courtrooms, people refer to the counsel for the defense. Another word for lawyer, in the United Kingdom barrister, is counselor, someone who gives counsel. The word counsel originates with a Latin term meaning consultation or advice.

The noun consul means an official appointed by a government to live in a foreign city and protect and promote the government’s citizens and interests there. Thammasat University students of ancient European history may have seen the term consul referring to annually elected chief magistrates who ruled the republic. In France after the Revolution, consuls were three chief magistrates of the first French republic (1799–1804). The term consul derives from a Latin word meaning to take counsel.

Council and counsel are pronounced the same, while consul should sound slightly different from council and counsel. The difference is something like the difference between the sounds COWN-sull and CONN-sull. One way to try to tell these words apart when writing a thesis or academic research project might be to invent a sentence, where the different spellings are more important than the meaning:

The consul offered counsel to the council.

Although not a counsellor, the consul helped the council in its lawsuit.  

Here are some usage examples:

• Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of chairman and president of the council of war.
• Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast, and evidently still the same waistcoat and high white stock he had worn at the meeting of the Council of State, stood at the table with a beaming countenance.
• The United Nations Security Council has five new members, and one of them – the Dominican Republic – is starting out as the group’s president. Belgium, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa also are starting their two-year terms. All five new members are being recognized with a ceremony Wednesday marking the installation of their flags outside the council chamber. Bolivia, Ethiopia, the Netherlands, Kazakhstan and Sweden finished their terms as 2018 closed. The 15-member council is the U.N.’s most powerful body. China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States are permanent members, with veto power.
• Another advocate, from the Medical Council of Thailand, implored lawmakers to stop dithering and speed up the legalization process for the sake of the country. “We can turn Thailand into a medical hub of cannabis treatment. Think of the new employment opportunities and investment from overseas,” Oraphan Methadilokul said. “If you hesitate in your duty, you will be at fault.” Thiravat and Oraphan were among physicians, drug enforcement agents, pharmacists, police officers and cannabis activists invited to brief junta-appointed lawmakers today following a proposal from some politicians to “fast-track” legalization of medical marijuana.
• A redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation will be sent to Congress by mid-April and will not be shared with the White House beforehand, Attorney General William Barr said Friday.
• On Friday, the U.S. special counsel said Katenberg was an alias used by Lt. Aleksey Lukashev, an email phishing specialist with Unit 26165 of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, often abbreviated GRU.
• I’m a scientist and if I don’t know an answer, I seek counsel from sharper brains.
• Cromwell replied by requesting a brief delay to ask counsel of God and his own heart.
• He was brought to Canterbury, possibly by Becket, together with a supply of books upon the civil law, to act as counsel (causidicus) to Archbishop Theobald in his struggle, which ended successfully in 1146, to obtain the transfer of the legateship from the bishop of Winchester to himself.
• The excesses of the French Revolutionary Tribunal increased with the growth of Robespierre’s ascendancy in the Committee of Public Safety; and on the 10th of June 1794 was promulgated, at his instigation, the infamous Law of 22 Prairial, which forbade prisoners to employ counsel for their defence, suppressed the hearing of witnesses and made death the sole penalty.
• The affairs of the tribe are administered by the sheiks, or heads of clans and families; the position of sheik in itself gives no real governing power, his word and counsel carry weight, but his influence depends on his own personal qualities.
• He graduated in arts, and claims to have graduated in medicine (of this there is no record at Paris), published six lectures on ” syrups ” (the most popular of his works), lectured on geometry and ” astrology ” (from a medical point of view) and defended by counsel a suit brought against him (March 1538) by the medical faculty on the ground of his astrological lectures.
• In the medieval Church there were seven “corporal” and seven “spiritual works of mercy” (opera misericordiae); these were (a) the giving of food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, the clothing of the naked, the visitation of the sick and of prisoners, the receiving of strangers, and the burial of the dead; (b) the conversion of sinners, teaching of the ignorant, giving of counsel to the doubtful, forgiveness of injuries, patience under wrong, prayer for the living and for the dead.
• Former Russian consul charged with forging Thai visas. Kulyushin was the consul at the Royal Thai Honorary Consulate in Vladivostok from 2011 to 2014, police said. He was suspended from his job after Thailand’s Foreign Affairs Ministry complained of his misconduct in 2014. He was later discharged from his post in 2016. Though his right to use the official consular stamp was revoked, Kulyushin did not surrender it despite a warning that year to do so.
• In 1839 he was appointed consul at Rotterdam, and in the following year transferred to Malaga, the place of origin of his mother’s family.
• The executive powers were placed almost entirely in his hands, as will be seen by the terms of article 41 which defined his functions: “The First Consul promulgates the laws; he appoints and dismisses at will the members of the Council of State, the ministers, the ambassadors and other leading agents serving abroad, the officers of the army and navy, the members of local administrative bodies and the commissioners of government attached to the tribunals.
• Mimaut, consul-general of France at Alexandria, sent him several books, among which was the memoir written upon the Suez Canal, according to Bonaparte’s instructions, by the civil engineer Lapere, one of the scientific members of the French expedition.
• In September 1844 Calhoun, then secretary of state, sent Green to Texas ostensibly as consul at Galveston, but actually, it appears, to report to the administration, then considering the question of the annexation of Texas, concerning the political situation in Texas and Mexico.
• Eventually the Cretan chiefs invoked the mediation of England, which Turkey, exhausted by her struggle with Russia, was ready to accept, and the convention known as the Pact of Halepa was drawn up in 1878 under the auspices of Mr Sandwith, the British consul, and Adossides Pasha, both of whom enjoyed the confidence of the Cretan population.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)