Thanks for the bunce!

BUNCE (n.) – a colloquial word meaning money or profit.

This 19th century word was almost obsolete by the 1960s, until an ironic revival in the ‘greed-is-good’ 1980s.

More recently it has become more common as a verb – buncing – to describe the practice where shops stick new higher-price tags over the original lower-price ones.

The word’s origins are uncertain, but it might have originally been a corruption of ‘bonus’.

It’s easy to see why people get confused between complement and compliment – they look similar and sound the same. Even their usages aren’t a million miles apart – but they mean two very different things. So, how can you remember which is which? How about this:

Complement means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the action of completing or fulfilling something. Each of the two items or functions looks better when they are used together.

For example, “those ruby earrings really complement your eyes”, or “I find Stinking Bishop to be the perfect complement to a large glass of Muscadet”. It links back to the word ‘complete’.

So if the meaning you want to convey has a sense of completion – two things combining to produce a good overall effect – the word you need is complement.

Compliment, on the other hand, means expressing admiration or praise for something.

For example, “John complimented Gareth on his exquisite taste”, “the policeman complimented the woman on her excellent driving,” or “you should always thank people if they pay you a compliment”.

So if you want to say something nice about someone, you need the ‘I’ version: compliment.

A good way to remember is to think of the classic compliment (or chat-up line. It’s a grey area), “what nice eyes (i’s) you have”.

We’ve just finished our latest project for national accountants Baker Tilly – and we’re really chuffed with it!
Wordsworks has been supporting the Restructuring and Recovery Group at Baker Tilly with a number of writing projects over the past few months.
The most recent was a Pension Scheme Trustee Confidence survey. Our writers interviewed a number of Baker Tilly pensions experts to draw out the core findings of the survey, and used these as a framework for turning bland statistics into informative, compelling copy.
We’ve also been working with Baker Tilly’s marketing team to sharpen up the editorial content of a number of client newsletters and sector briefs, drafting commentary, case studies and insights that showcase the firm’s specialist knowledge.
Sometimes it’s a case of a quick interview with a fee earner, for us to then draft the copy from scratch. Other times a rough draft will be prepared in-house for us to further develop, refine and generally prepare for publication.

Check out a PDF of the report here.

Not snollygosters, fortuntately

Young George Osborne announced his new budget a couple of weeks ago, so we’ve a special politics-related word for you to chew on:

snollygoster (n.) - meaning a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.
Or someone who is guided by personal advantage, rather than by consistent, respectable principles.

For example:
Thanks goodness there are no snollygosters in politics today.

Do you have a blind spot for certain words? Words that no matter how many times you look at them, you just can’t remember how to spell them, or maybe what they mean?

We certainly do. Affect and effect is one of mine. I’ve got it now, but it took a good ten years and several dictionaries before it finally stuck.

Like affect and effect, it is often when two words sound or look similar, but have different meanings, that confusion arises.

Take practice and practise. They sound the same, look very similar, and mean similar things. But it’s the similarity that causes the problem. Their meanings touch on the same general idea, but their usage is totally different.