Words that are often confused 經常混淆的單詞

Some words are often confused by language learners – because they are similar to another word or because they look like a word in your own language but have a different meaning. Here are some words that often cause confusion.

有些詞總會讓學英語的人感到混淆—因爲他們跟另外一個詞很像，或者跟你的母語的某個詞很像但是其意義完全不同。這裏有一些經常引起混淆的詞。

sensible and sensitive

sensible與sensitive

sensible means ‘practical’ or ‘having good judgement’

sensible是明智的

sensitive means ‘easily affected by the things people say or do

sensitive是敏感的

• Come on darling, be sensible and put a coat on. It’s freezing outside.
• Don’t be so sensitive - he didn’t say you were fat, it was just a joke.

Sympathetic and nervous

Sympathetic和nervous

Usually we are sympathetic when someone has a problem or is in trouble.

我們通常對某人遇到麻煩或者有困難的時候表現的 sympathetic（同情的）。

• They were very sympathetic when our house was burgled but they couldn’t do much to help.

We don’t use it to mean ‘nice’ or ‘pleasant’

我用它不是指好或者舒服。

• My uncle is a very sympathetic man.

We are nervous in a particular situation, like an exam. We don’t generally use nervous to describe someone’s character.

我們經常會在某些特定場合感到nervous，例如考試的時候，我們不用nervous去形容一個人的性格。

• I’ve never been as nervous as the time I had to give a speech to 500 people.• My sister is very nervous. She’s always shouting at me.

journey and travel

journey和travel

Journey is countable. Travel is uncountable and refers to the general idea of travelling.

Journey是可數的，travel是不可數的，它指代的是“travelling（旅行）”的大意。

• Did you have a good travel?
• Travel is something I recommend to all young people.
• The journey took about 8 hours.

recipe, receipt and prescription

recipe, receipt和prescription

A recipe is a set of instructions for cooking something.

A recipe是菜譜

A receipt is a piece of paper you are given after you pay for something.

A receipt是收據

A prescription is a piece of paper a doctor gives you to get the medicine you need.

A prescription是處方