15+ Word Pairs People Think Are Interchangeable But Actually Aren’t

Both a cemetery and a graveyard are locations where dead bodies are buried but they have distinct differences. Cemetery derives from the Latin word cemeterium and the Greek word koimeterion, both of which trace to antiquity. Cemetery was initially used to describe a burial ground not near a church. A graveyard, on the other hand, generally sits adjacent to or close to a church.

Cemeteries are often in urban settings but a graveyard is more likely to be in a rural location. Cemeteries are usually bigger than graveyards, as well.

The materials used and shape distinguish caskets and coffins, as do some additional features. Caskets are rectangular, often made out of metal, and usually have railings or handles along the outside so they can be carried. Coffins are made of wood and are more tailored to the human form, narrow at the bottom, broader at the shoulders, and then tapered at the head. The materials used make coffins more affordable than caskets in many instances.

Caskets have four sides while a coffin has six. There’s not always a hinged lid on a coffin but there generally always is on a casket. Coffins and caskets, as general terms, can be used to hold valuables. Historically, the words have been synonymous with chest or box.

People sit on both, they have them in their homes, and couches and sofas feature upholstery and cushions. But, there are important distinctions between couches and sofas. Couches are considered less formal and often lack armrests and prominent backs.

Some designers picture “oversized, stuffed, and informal” for a couch, while sofas have more of an elegant, formal association. Because sofas have armrests and elaborate backs, laying down on them isn’t very easy. Many sofas are smaller than couches, as well.

Despite being used as synonyms, cement and concrete aren’t the same. But there’s a bit of a catch – you can’t have concrete without cement.

Cement is made by combining limestone and clay and has been used since antiquity. When cement is mixed with sand, gravel, or pebbles as well as water, the result is concrete.

Streets and roads are surfaces used to move people and things to different places or for animals and the like to move on. Streets are usually urban, paved, and are lined by houses and businesses. Roads can be in rural or even rugged locations.

A street connects two points but a road can meander indefinitely and even come to an end in the middle of nowhere. Streets generally have names but roads do not.

All of this is to say that streets are roads but roads are not always streets.

To make things a bit more interesting, we can’t forget avenues and boulevards. Avenues are more broad than traditional streets but are still located in towns, villages, and cities. Boulevards are similarly wide streets that have trees and other landscaping on both sides.

Neither highways nor freeways make a lot of sense when you look at the words – a highway isn’t high, a freeway isn’t free – but they have more in common than faulty nomenclature. Highways and freeways are paved, multi-laned, and connect two places.

Freeways are highways, albeit ones where driver access is controlled. Freeways usually have medians and crossing one means using an overpass or underpass. Freeways may have higher speed limits than their simple highway counterparts.

Highways are, at their most fundamental, public routes that serve as main roads.

And, if there’s any confusion about interstates they’re exactly like they sound – they run between states.

An autobiography is the narrated story of a person’s life written by that very person. In contrast, a memoir is an account or biography written using observations, personal knowledge, and lived experience.

Memoir, as a term, comes from the Latin word for “memory,” and autobiography is made up of “auto” and “biography” – basically indicating the work is a “self history of life.”

To put it another way, they are both works of nonfiction, but an autobiography tells about a person’s whole life and a memoir does not.

For something to be poisonous, it must be absorbed, inhaled, or consumed at levels that cause danger. A lot of seemingly harmless things can be poisonous – water, for example – if taken into the body excessively. Because poisons vary in the harm they can cause, not all poisons are the same level of poisonous to an organism.

Then there are toxins. Toxins are produced by plants and animals and, in turn, are poisonous to humans. This means that a toxic substance may be a poison or a toxin, but not everything that is poisonous is also toxic.

But there’s also venom and venomous substances. Venom comes from a bite, sting, or injection and, by definition, is venomous. This means something can be both poisonous and venomous, but the two can exist separately, too.

Hitting the job market means someone needs to have a resume in hand to show to potential employers. But, not always. In academic, research, and scientific fields, the document used in the hiring process (or to list one’s accomplishments) is a curriculum vitae or CV.

Both resumes and CVs list a person’s academic background, previous employment, skills, and accolades. Resumes are much shorter, generally no more than two pages. Preparing a resume requires a lot of concision and summarizing to keep the information succinct and easily accessible.

CVs, on the other hand, can be pages and pages long, with no real cap on length at all. The intent is to include everything, not just highlight stand-out information.

Colleges and universities are both institutions of higher learning, but they’re not the same in many ways. Colleges award degrees in a variety of disciplines as standalone entities. Colleges may also be part of universities, which are bigger and enroll undergraduate, graduate, and professional students alike.

A college may be a community college or a liberal arts college, while universities offer degrees across science, liberal arts, and technical disciplines. Universities are also more research-oriented than their teaching-focused college counterparts.