Word Mix-ups

en masse

I ran into a statement last week about women being tried, convicted and executed “in mass” as witches. The author’s meaning was pretty clear, but I stumbled over the sentence, because in English we usually use the French expression, “en masse,” which according to the Oxford Dictionary on my Mac means “in a group” or “all together”—exactly what the author meant. So what does “in mass” mean? Well, if the author had used a capital M, he might have been talking about a religious service in the Catholic Church. These trials and executions, however, did not occur in a church. Nor did they occur in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which is abbreviated Mass, though there were those persecutions in Salem.

sadist / saddest

I sent out a message yesterday referring to an internet thread about the “Saddest Songs Ever”. Unfortunately, I was typing fast and not paying attention to what I was doing. I wrote “sadist” instead of “saddest.” Oops! I’ll let you work out the difference between these two words for yourself.