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Course: Grammar > Unit 10
Lesson 1: Frequently confused words- Affect and effect
- Frequently confused words: affect/effect
- Hear/here and accept/except
- Frequently confused words: here/hear
- There, their, and they're
- Frequently confused words: there/their/they're
- To, two, and too
- Frequently confused words: to/two/too
- Compliment/complement and desert/dessert
- Less versus fewer
- Bare/bear, allowed/aloud, advice/advise, and break/brake
- Frequently confused words: assorted
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Compliment/complement and desert/dessert
How do you tell the difference between "compliment" and "complement", "desert" and "dessert"? We'll show you!
Want to join the conversation?
- Another really easy way to remember "Desert" from "Dessert" is that Desert has one S for "Sand" and Dessert has two S's for Sugar and Sweet. Hope this helped!(44 votes)
- Would this be correct? "I want dessert for breakfast" and "I was stuck in the desert."(12 votes)
- That's wonderful. Stick with it (but get out of the desert).(32 votes)
- The way i find easy to remember desert and dessert is in dessert there is "esse" and in german "esse" means to eat, like eating dessert.(13 votes)
- I remember it by the two s’ in dessert are my two servings (cause we all love dessert)
And desert has 1 s because we don’t want to journey through it again.
But Sarai, I do learn german in school :) and I love your trick!!(11 votes)
- I always use strawberry shortcake to remember the two s’s in de_ss_ert(10 votes)
- That works. I hope it helps many people.(6 votes)
- Just a comment:2:11Deserts don’t have to be sandy. They just have to be dry. For example, the world’s largest desert is Antratica.(9 votes)
- That's right Vanish!
The word "Desert", means a Dry place!
Look at Greenland for example, it's mostly made out of Snow which is a Dry Desert Place!(1 vote)
- Dessert vs. Desert
Just think of the saying "Save room for dessert!" to help you remember the difference.
You need extra room for the two S's in dessert!!(7 votes) - If it helps, you can remember that dessert has two s's by remembering that if you want more dessert, you want seconds! More s's, more dessert.(7 votes)
- The way I get "desert" and "dessert is dessert has two S's cause you always want more. I hope this helps!(6 votes)
- doesn't complement also mean a side dish that works well with the main dish?(5 votes)
- Yes, it does if you are in a kitchen, a dining room, a restaurant, or at Jack-in-the-Box.(2 votes)
- Whoa whoa he said heck!(4 votes)
- Heck isn't really a bad nor a offensive word. However, it does big damage to a Religious Person!(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] Hello, grammarians. Continuing our journey through the world of frequently confused words, I'd like to begin with
complement with two Es and compliment with an I and an E. How the heck do we keep these separate? Well, first let's get some definitions. Complement with two Es, C,
O, M, P, L, E, M, E, N, T, is a verb, and it means to match, pair,
or work well with something as in, that hat complements
your suit, Melvin. There's our guy Melvin. There's his very fine hat in
the same color as his suit, so it matches or pairs or
works well with something 'cause these are the same colors. They look nice together, maybe a little matchy matchy. Give him some gold epaulets. Shake it up a little bit, Melvin. There you go. Compliment, with an I, C,
O, M, P, L, I, M, E, N, T, is a verb that means to praise or noun that just means praise. So complement with an E is
the verb of actually matching, but when we point it out, and we say, that hat
complements your suit, Melvin, and we say, that looks
pretty good, Melvin, that in itself is a compliment. So this sentence is a compliment. So Melvin would say in response, "Thank you for the compliment." So I can see how this is confusing, so when two things go together well, visually or sonically or however, you say they complement one another. When two people work well as a team, you can say their skills
complement one another, and if you point that out in a way that is praiseworthy, if you say, "Ah, Melvin,
that is a dope ensemble "you are rocking today," that is a compliment with an I. So you are praising it. This one is a classic. So we've got desert over here and dessert over here, so these words look a little similar, but they are pronounced differently, which is to our benefit. So these are both nouns, so desert with a zuh sound, zuh, is dry, sandy land. So for example, this is a
depiction of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and Mexico. Right, so this is a saguaro cactus. That there's a barrel cactus. That's a palo verde. There's a little kit fox. So when you see desert with one S as opposed to dessert with two Ss, what I want you to imagine is water, a long, flowing river made of Ss and that
when you're in a desert, there just isn't as much. There isn't as much water. So one S means less water, means cacti and little kit
foxes and gila monsters. Dessert with two Ss is
like an ice cream sundae. We got some vanilla ice cream. We got some strawberry ice cream, and then this black ice
cream is licorice ice cream, which is actually delicious, and I encourage you to try it, and then this, if you
couldn't tell, is a banana. So what is a dessert? So a dessert is a noun, and it is a sweet food eaten after a meal. Certainly it doesn't have
to be this banana split, this ice cream sundae. It could be anything sweet, so cookies, cake, chocolate, the sorts of things that you
would not find in a desert. So keeping these two words straight, desert and dessert, is
really one of abundance. When there's two Ss, it means, oh, times are good. We're doing so well. We can have ice cream. If you're missing that second S, it means things are a little lean. There's not a lot of water. There's a lot of cacti and rattlesnakes. Don't get me wrong. I have had some excellent
desserts with two Ss in desert places. There happens to be a
very fine ice cream parlor in Scottsdale, Arizona, but what I'm trying to say is that in the landform that
we call a desert with one S, you are unlikely to
find an ice cream sundae just sitting out. You can learn anything. David, out.