Grammatical Bitsa: Flair vs. Flare, Breathe vs. Breath, Led vs. Lead, Tide You Over

Sometimes when we’re foraging for dinner in our pantry, my husband, Brady, who is originally from Australia, will deem a meal consisting of crackers, stale corn chips, and old Halloween candy “a bitsa” because it contains “bits of everything.” For your linguistic pleasure, here is Grammar-Tip bitsa cobbled together from mistakes I’ve seen recently on the Internet—and some I’ve ruefully, shamefully, sinfully been making myself. (Don’t tell!)

• Flare vs. Flair: As an apparel copywriter in the season of sundresses, sometimes I write a sentence like, “The designer exhibits a flare for flaired dresses,” and I have to stop and think, “Is that right?”*
  • Flare:
    • noun—a blaze of light or a rounded or spreading shape (as in clothing—“a flared skirt”)
    • verb—to burn suddenly or spread outward (The dress flares at the bottom.)
  • Flair: noun—a skill, talent, or attractive quality
  • How I remember the difference:
    • Flair is spelled like air, and both are things you cannot see or touch. If someone has a flair for something, it’s as simple to them as drawing breath. 
    • Flare (spelled like the verb care, as in, “I care about the difference between flair and flare”) can also be used as a verb, e.g. “The dress flares at the bottom.”
      • However, you cannot use flair as a verb. I don’t cair how much you want to.
• Breath vs. Breathe: I’ve been seeing this mistake a lot on the Internet recently. Personally, I never make it. Not ever.
  • Breath: noun—a puff of air. (I have trouble catching my breath.)
  • Breathe: verb—to inhale and/or exhale (He told me to breathe deeply.)
  • How I remember the difference:
    • The noun breath rhymes with the noun death, and if you run out of the first, you get the other. But if that’s too macabre for you, you can think that adding the extra E on the end of “breath” gives the word two Es, making breathe sound like week or steep.
• Led vs. Lead: If I “read” a book yesterday and still have enough to “read” tomorrow, then I don’t understand why the verb “lead” doesn’t get the same combo present/past spelling. When I am queen, I will fix this, but until then, here’s a breakdown:
  • Lead:
    • verb (pronounced LEED)—to guide or go first (He will lead us to safety.)
    • noun (pronounced LED)—a metal (My brain is made of lead today.)
  • Led:
    • verb (pronounced LED)—past form of lead (He led us to safety.)
  • How I remember the difference:
    • Another macabre trick: lead (the metal) rhymes with dead, which makes me think of a cowboy-esque sentence like, “The sheriff pumped the robber so full of lead that he was soon dead.”
    • Once I can remember that lead is the metal, I am free to remember that led is the past form of lead the verb. And then I can take a nap.
• Tide you over: I confess I had to look this up recently because I thought the correct phrase was “tie you over.” I’ve been saying “tie you over” for years while people probably laughed at me behind by back.
  •  The phrase, meaning “to support or survive temporarily,” first appeared in the early nineteenth century and actually has maritime roots. The idea of “tiding over” relates to a ship trying to enter a harbor at low tide when sandbars or mud might hinder its progress. A higher tide would allow the ship to float above these obstacles, literally “tiding it over” the problem.

As someone who has eaten many bitsa meals, I know Saltines for supper can be somewhat unsatisfying. However, I hope this is enough grammatical goodness to tide you over until next time. As always, I am taking requests!


*It's not.