Words that are often confused 经常混淆的单词

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.

有些词总会让学英语的人感到混淆—因为他们跟另外一个词很像，或者跟你的母语的某个词很像但是其意义完全不同。这里有一些经常引起混淆的词。

sensible and sensitive

sensible与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.

我们通常对某人遇到麻烦或者有困难的时候表现的 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.

我们经常会在某些特定场合感到nervous，例如考试的时候，我们不用nervous去形容一个人的性格。

• 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是可数的，travel是不可数的，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是菜谱

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

A receipt是收据

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

A prescription是处方