About Me
- Satima Flavell
- Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- I am based in Perth, Western Australia. You might enjoy my books - The Dagger of Dresnia, the first book of the Talismans Trilogy, is available at all good online book shops as is Book two, The Cloak of Challiver. Book three, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation. I trained in piano and singing at the NSW Conservatorium of Music. I also trained in dance (Scully-Borovansky, WAAPA) and drama (NIDA). Since 1987 I have been writing reviews of performances in all genres for a variety of publications, including Music Maker, ArtsWest, Dance Australia, The Australian and others. Now semi-retired, I still write occasionally for the ArtsHub website.
The Dagger of Dresnia
The Cloak of Challiver, Book two of The Talismans
Available as an e-book on Amazon and other online booksellers.
Mythic Resonance
Mythic Resonance
Mythic Resonance is an excellent anthology that includes my short story 'La Belle Dame', together with great stories from Alan Baxter, Donna Maree Hanson, Sue Burstynski, Nike Sulway and nine more fantastic authors! Just $US3.99 from Amazon.
Got a Kindle? Check out Mythic Resonance. 
My Blog List
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Places I've lived: Manchester, UK
Places I've lived: Gippsland, Australia
Places I've lived: Geelong, Australia
Places I've lived: Tamworth, NSW
Places I've Lived - Sydney
Sydney Conservatorium - my old school
Places I've lived: Auckland, NZ
Places I've Lived: Mount Gambier
Blue Lake
Places I've lived: Adelaide, SA
Places I've Lived: Perth by Day
From Kings Park
Places I've lived: High View, WV
Places I've lived: Lynton, Devon, UK
Places I've lived: Braemar, Scotland
Places I've lived: Barre, MA, USA
Places I've Lived: Perth by Night
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Sunday, 5 June 2011
Common misuses - confusing words
Sunday, June 05, 2011 | 
Posted by
Satima Flavell
Some words have two negative forms, which can be confusing. Two such words are "satisfied" and "interested". Both have two negative forms: one starting with dis- and one starting with un-. These negatives, in both cases, have very different meanings.
Dissatisfied/unsatisfied
If a person is dissatisfied, he or she is feeling upset or disappointed in some way. For instance “Cheryl was really dissatisfied with the service at her hotel.”
But someone who is unsatisfied hasn’t had enough of something: “I was still unsatisfied after the meal.” (You might say this after going to a posh restaurant where they served you miniscule piece of salmon and an artistic trail of sauce, garnished with some unidentifiable herb.)
Disinterested/uninterested
These examples show the difference:
“We need a disinterested party to adjudicate the competition” (i.e. someone who has no vested interest in the outcome. A parent of one of the competitors would not be disinterested!)
He or she might, however, be uninterested. E.g. “Our daughter likes to compete in gymnastics competitions but her father is totally uninterested.” (In the vernacular, he couldn’t give a stuff about gymnastic competitions even if his daughter is competing!
In neither case are the two negative forms interchangeable, because each has its own clearly defined meaning.
Dissatisfied/unsatisfied If a person is dissatisfied, he or she is feeling upset or disappointed in some way. For instance “Cheryl was really dissatisfied with the service at her hotel.”
But someone who is unsatisfied hasn’t had enough of something: “I was still unsatisfied after the meal.” (You might say this after going to a posh restaurant where they served you miniscule piece of salmon and an artistic trail of sauce, garnished with some unidentifiable herb.)
Disinterested/uninterested
These examples show the difference:
“We need a disinterested party to adjudicate the competition” (i.e. someone who has no vested interest in the outcome. A parent of one of the competitors would not be disinterested!)
He or she might, however, be uninterested. E.g. “Our daughter likes to compete in gymnastics competitions but her father is totally uninterested.” (In the vernacular, he couldn’t give a stuff about gymnastic competitions even if his daughter is competing!
In neither case are the two negative forms interchangeable, because each has its own clearly defined meaning.
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4 comments:
A common misuse over here is ignorant. If someone behaves in a bad mannered way, they are called ignorant - I can see where the origin would be, but they way it is used is still inappropriate. Churchill said it first "two nations divided by a common language".
You hear that usage here in Oz as well, Jo. Even the Oxford dictionary accepts it as informal, and it gives another usage as well: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ignorant
But that definitions of Churchill's is a sound one. Several times, when I lived in America, I made an idiot of myself by misusing words that meant one thing in the UK or Oz and something else completely in the States!
It seems to me that language in Australia is closer to English English that it is over here. In fact I found a lot of the usages in North Carolina were closer to what we would say. One that springs to mind, Canadians say dog leash, in the UK and NC it was lead. Mind you I haven't travelled that far in Canada, so maybe its different in BC for instance.
Yes, overall I think that's true. But the Aussie dialect as I knew it 50 years ago has almost died out, to be relaced by a very generic American-influenced one. We now even pronounce the name of the county the American way, which is something like Ustrellya whereas in the olden days it was more like Oztrilya. (That's exaggerated, but it's as close as I can get to the good old-fashioned Ozzie accent without using IPA!)