Words Too Easily Confused, Set Eleven Quiz

Answer: portent

"Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home:
She dreamt to-night she saw my statua,
Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts,
Did run pure blood: and many lusty Romans
Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it:
And these does she apply for warnings, and portents,
And evils imminent; and on her knee
Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day."
~William Shakespeare, 'Julius Caesar', Act II, Scene 2.

The Modern English noun portent derives from the Latin 'portentum' (meaning a sign or an omen or perhaps a monster) via the Middle French 'portente'. The related Modern English verb portend derives from the Latin 'portendere' (meaning to foretell or to reveal).

Answer: portal

"Praise is the portal to the presence of God." ~David Brazzeal, 'Pray Like a Gourmet'.

The Modern English noun portal derives from the Medieval Latin 'portale' (meaning a porch or a city gate) via the Old French 'portal' (meaning gate). Door in Catalan is 'porta' in Catalan, Galician, Italian and Portuguese; in French it is 'porte', and in Spanish it is 'puerta'.

Answer: portobello

"I'm a mushroom freak. I make a mushroom soup where I use maybe six or seven varieties, not just portobello and shiitake, but dried porcini and morels." ~Itzhak Perlman.

A portobello is a fully mature crimini mushroom (Agaricus bisporus). It is also spelled portabella and portabello. Portobello is also a city in Ireland, or in New Zealand, or in Panama, or in the U.S. (in either Maryland or Virginia), or a road in London, or a fictional location in some stories involving Long John Silver ('tho not the original novel), or a typeface, or a 2008 novel by mystery writer Ruth Rendell.

Answer: porte-cochere

"The truth be told, that shadow over the porte-cochere is probably nothing more than swamp fire, those mysterious lights that flash over a body of water." ~ C.M. Turner, Where the Ironweed Blooms.

The French porte cochère literally means coach door. In English, a port cochere is a large part of a building which covers a driveway and protects people entering or leaving motor vehicles there from the weather. They are common in front of hotels, theatres, restaurants, castles and mansions. The term is frequently confused with portico, about which see below.

Answer: portage

"For 24 years I was a light canoeman. I required but little sleep, but sometimes got less than I required. No portage was too long for me; all portages were alike. My end of the canoe never touched the ground 'til I saw the end of it. Fifty songs a day were nothing to me. I could carry, paddle, walk and sing with any man I ever saw..." ~Anonymous, quoted by an historian for the Hudson's Bay Company.

Portage entered the English language from the Old French 'portage', which was derived from the Medieval Latin 'portaticum'. It shares a common origin with the English word portable.

Answer: porter

"In April 1909, he landed in Mambasa with his son Kermit. Roosevelt, at the head of a safari including 250 porters and guides, trekked across British East Africa, into the Belgian Congo and back to the Nile ending in Khartoum." ~EyeWitness to History (1997).

The English noun porter, used to describe someone who carries something, is found from the 13th Century. It crossed the Channel from the Anglo-French 'portour' and the Old French 'porteor'. Both found their way into Romance languages from the Latin 'portare', meaning to carry.

Answer: portico

"Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico." ~Joseph Conrad

A portico exists for the benefit of walkers. It is a covered porch protecting the entrance to a building. From the Ancient Greeks, porticos have been supported by columns. Architects distinguish them by the number of columns, e.g. tetrastyle has four, hexastyle has six, octastyle has eight, and so on. The English word comes from the Italian.

Answer: portcullis

"You have engaoled my tongue, doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips." ~William Shakespeare, 'Richard II', Act I, Scene 3, l. 167, Mowbray to King Richard.

A portcullis is a heavy strong weave of iron, wood and other materials which can be quickly lowered on chains or ropes to seal off the entrance to a castle. The portcullis travels down grooves built into the gate wall to make it strong and secure. In some castles, two were built so as to trap invaders in the space between and allow for easy killing of them. At last report, the portcullis at the Tower of London still worked.

Answer: portly

"A goodly portly man, i'faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage." ~William Shakespeare, 'Henry IV', Part I, Act II, Scene 4, ll. 412-413, Falstaff to Prince Hal

The Modern English word portly used to be more complimentary than it is today, carrying with it the sense of someone royal in their bearing. It derived from the Latin 'portare', meaning to carry. Bearing is still (occasionally) referred to as carriage. In the 16th Century, portly acquired the meaning of stout and has been used as a euphemism in the men's plus-size clothing industry ever since.

Answer: portmanteau

"'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there are plenty of hard words there. "Brillig" means four o'clock in the afternoon - the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.'
'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "slithy"?'
'Well, "slithy" means "lithe and slimy". "Lithe" is the same as "active". You see it's like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed up into one word.'
'I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully."
~Lewis Carroll, 'Through the Looking Glass' Chapter 6.

A portmanteau is a neologism constructed from both the sounds and the meanings of two preexisting words. A common example is brunch which was compounded from breakfast and lunch. The French portmanteau meant a suitcase with compartments on either side of a hinge which, when closed, became a single thing to carry. Humpty Dumpty uses the term in a novel fashion in the passage above.