2021-04-30
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด – A – among & between
แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น
ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค
Dictionary.com
ออกเสียง among = ‘uh-MUHNG’
ออกเสียง between = ‘bih-TWEEN’
Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree
Among = in association or connection with;
= surrounded by:
You are among friends.
Not to be confused with:
between = in the space separating two objects:
It was hard to choose between vanilla and chocolate.
[Among is used whenmore than two persons or things are involved.
Between is used when only two persons or thingsare involved.]
Dictionary.com
WORDS OFTEN CONFUSED WITH BETWEEN
Among expresses a relationship
when more than twopersons or things are involved:
Distrust spread among even his strongest supporters.
Between is used when only two personsor things are involved:
between you and me; to decide between tea and coffee.
Between also continues to be used,
as it has been throughout itsentire history,
to express a relationship of personsor things
considered individually, no matter how many:
Tossing up coins between three people always takes a little working out.
Between holding public office, teaching, and writing, she has little free time.
Dictionary.com
USAGE NOTE FOR BETWEEN
Althoughnot generally accepted as good usage,
between you and I is heard occasionally
in the speech of educated persons.
By the traditional rules of grammar,
when a pronoun is the object of a preposition,
that pronoun should be in the objective case:
between you and me; between her and them.
The use of the nominative form (I, he, she, they, etc.)
arises partly as overcorrection,
the reasoning being that
if it is correct at the end of a sentence like It is I,
it must also be correct at the end of the phrase between you and ….
The choice of pronoun
also owes something to the tendency for the final pronoun
in a compound object to be in the nominative case after a verb:
It was kind of you to invite my wife and I.
This too is not generally regarded as good usage.
The construction between each (or every)
is sometimes objected to on the grounds that
between calls for a plural or compound object.
However, the construction is old and fully standard
when the sense indicates that more than one thing is meant:
Spread softened butter between each layer of pastry.
There were marigolds peeking between every row of vegetables.
The construction
between … to is a blend of
between … and (between 15 and 25 miles)
and from … to (from 15 to 25 miles).
It occurs occasionally in informal speech
but notin formal speech or writing.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Between vs. Among: Usage Guide
There is a persistent but unfounded notion
that between canbe used only of two items
and that among must be used for more than two.
Between has been used of more than two since Old English;
it is especially appropriate
to denotea one-to-one relationship,
regardless of the number of items.
It can be used when the number is unspecified
economic cooperation between nations,
when more than two are enumerated
between you and me and the lamppost
partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia
— Nathaniel Benchley ,
and even when only one item is mentioned
(but repetition is implied).
pausing between every sentence to rap the floor
— George Eliot
Among is more appropriate
where the emphasis is on distribution
rather than individual relationships.
discontent among the peasants
When among is automatically chosen for more than two,
English idiom may be strained.
a worthybook that nevertheless falls among many stools
— John Simon
the author alternates among mod slang, clichés and quotes from literary giants — A. H. Johnston
Between you and I
Between you and me,
there seems to be some confusion about pronouns
when we use compound subjects (“you and me”).
Though nobody is certain why such confusion exists
—such errors are nearly impossible for native speakers of most languages
—it may have to do with the idea
that me seems more emphatic (and less polite and fancy-sounding)
in somesituations, than I,
and that the error is a hypercorrection.
When we use compound subjects,
the rules for pronoun use don’t change,
but it frequently seems that there is more ambiguity
about whether to use I or me.
We sometimes hear sentences like:
Me and my friends went to the movies.
You and me could grab some lunch.
But for subjects, I is always correct,
and it’s preferable to say things like:
My team and I will be at the meeting.
Your sister and I are going swimming tomorrow.
For objects, me is always correct:
Come to lunch with Mary and me.
For my roommates and me, tomorrow is easier.
You can check to see
if you’re correct by eliminating the compound subject:
for “Come to lunch with Mary and I,”
remove “Mary,” and you get “Come to lunch with I,”
which your ear will tell you is wrong.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Usage Notes
'Between' or 'Among': Which is correct?
Just between us: it's a complicated situation.
Most words go through life without muchexcitement,
doing their jobs and never attracting much attention.
Others, such as dilapidated, stir up a small amount of fuss
(at one point, some thought that
referring to a wood house as dilapidated was incorrect,
since the word is rooted in the Latin word for stone, lapis).
Some words, such as
like, are just provocateurs.
Between is one of those unruly few.
The first edition of Fowler’s
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926)
listed five areas of concern for this word,
and the second edition (1965) added a sixth.
Among these were the word’s use as a hypercorrection,
in the dread phrase “between you and I,”
and when used in certain circumstances preceding the word each.
For today,
however, the only form of between’s attention-seeking behavior
we will look at is when it is used in place of among.
As is the case with many usage issues in English,
it is now highly likely that some readers have developed an eye twitch
at the thought of this application,
while others are responding with
“I don’t really see what the problem is….”
If you are a member of this latter group the issue is this:
Among may apply to any number;
between applies to two only.
— Frank Vizetelly, A Desk-book of Errors in English, 1920
It is perhaps imprecise to refer to Vizetelly’s admonition above as a rule,
but since “strong recommendation based on ignorance of lexical history and disregard for nuance” is too long to write every time, let’s call it a rule.
So why do we have it?
Although he may not have been the first to say so,
Samuel Johnson in 1755 added a usage note,
curiously formatted
as the definition of the sixth sense of between,
which read
“Between is properly used of two, and among of more;
but perhaps this accuracy is not always preserved.”
A footnote by the grammarian Goold Brownin his 1851
The Grammar of English Grammars snidely notes that
one of his contemporaries had made a mistake in his use of the word,
since it “cannot have reference to more than two thingsor parties.”
However, betwixt these two books (in 1828)
we find that Noah Webster defined between
as “Belonging to two or more….
We observe that between is not restricted to two.”
What to do? Well, we cannot tell you what you should do,
but we can tell you something of the history
of how the word has been used.
There is considerable evidence
of between being used in reference to more than two things.
Actually, it is more than considerable evidence;
the condemned use of between was in existence for 800 years before Johnson made note of it.
The Oxford English Dictionary has evidence of
between used in this manner from 971,
and offers a succinct yet powerful explanation
for why this use of between is legitimate.
In all senses,
between has been, from its earliest appearance,
extended to more than two….
It is still the only word available
to expressthe relation of a thing to many surrounding things
severally and individually,
among expressing a relation to them collectivelyand vaguely.
— Oxford English Dictionary (oed.com), “between” (sense 19)
Our own citation files have many examples
of between being applied to settings of more than two,
often by writers of some renown,
and often used in a way where among would sound strained.
This, of course, is between our three discreet selves.
— Jane Austen, letter, 11 Oct. 1813
None of this should be taken as a suggestion
that between and among are interchangeable.
The two words have some degree of overlap,
but also, significant differences.
Additionally, none of the above should be taken to mean
that you may not have preferences in this matter,
and you should feel entirely comfortable
following your own self-imposed guidelines
for when to use between and when to use among.
It should, however, be taken as
a refutation of the over-generalizing rule
that Frank Vizetelly espoused earlier in this article.
It is not difficult
to find cases in which among sounds wrong
no matter what the number
(when was the last time you heard anyone describe
being “among the devil and the deep blue sea”?).
And as for the question of
whether between may be used for numbers greater than two,
we have only to look elsewhere in Vizetelly’s own book
to see that sometimes this works quite well.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Usage Notes
'Between' or 'Among' (or 'Amongst')?
What's a little usage disagreement
between/among/amongst friends?
What to Know
Between is typically used when referring to two things,
like "between a rock and a hard place,"
while among is used for a greater number.
However, these rules should be reconsidered
if the sentence sounds awkward or overly pretentious.
Likewise,
amongst can be used in some rare instances in place of 'among,'
but should not be used to make sentences sound more educated.
If you're at all interested in grammar,
then you've probably heard
the maxim about among and between:
only use between when you're referring to two things
("just between us," "between a rock and a hard place,"
"you must choose between cake or death"),
and use among when referring to more than two
("you're among friends," "among the many options available to you").
But like many maxims about grammar and usage,
this isn't necessarily the case.
History of 'Among' and 'Between'
Both among and between date back to Old English.
Among was originally a phrase (on gemonge)
that meant "in a crowd,"
and the noun gemonge came from a verb
that means "to mingle or mix."
From the very beginning,
among has been used to refer to a position(literal or figurative)
in relation to a surrounding group of individuals,
like friends, or something taken to be a composite,
like a basket of flowers.
Between, meanwhile, began its life a little after among.
It'sdirect from Old English,
and is related to the word twā, which means "two."
This is likely the reason
why some people insisted that it can only be used of two
people or things—it's from the word "two"!
But between originally was like among:
it referred to a number of people or things.
In fact,
our earliest use of between in English
is in reference to the Apostles,
and our sources confirm that there were
definitely more than two of them.
Interchangeability
That's not to say that between and among
have exactly the same use or connotation, though.
We use between when we want to express a relation to things
and have them considered as individual
and usually equal entities:
between the devil and the deep blue sea;
the restaurant between my house and my work;
a treaty between nations.
This connotation stems from an earlier use of between
that referred to a point between two places,
or travel between two specific points.
Among, on the other hand is the best word to use
when referring to things collectively and imprecisely:
for this reason,
among many others;
no honor among thieves.
Like many rules around use,
you'd be wiser to follow your own native sense of the language
than hewing strictly to them.
Substituting
among for a more idiomatic between
can create more awkwardness than it solves:
'Amongst' Usage
This sort of overcorrection is common
when a writer wants to sound fancy or educated,
but there is another overcorrection
that gets grief from usage commentators:
the substitution
of the variant amongst for among or between.
For instance,
Bryan Garner, in Garner's Modern English Usage,
gives a perfect example of the criticism against amongst,
calling it an archaism that "is pretentious at best,"
but our evidence doesn't confirm that view.
Amongst is certainly less common than among,
and it's used more in British English than it is in AmericanEnglish
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The In-Betweens: 7 Words From the Middle
Center of the sandwich kind of words
In-between
When we say that someone or something
is in between two other people or things,
we mentally place them in the middle, with something on either side.
After all, between refers to that space in the middle, right?
It does—but it hasn't always.
The Old English word that eventually became between is
actually made up of two parts: the prefix be- and the word twēonum.
Twēonum is related to twā, the Old English word that gave us "two";
it's the dative plural form of an old distributive numeral
that might be best translated as "two each."
You'd expect that be- would mean "in,"but it doesn't:
betwēonum is literally "near two each."
In its earliest uses, it wasn't always
In reference to the intermediary position of two places, things, or people.
It was also used to express
reciprocal action by two people towards each other.
Though some claim that in between is redundant,
we have evidence of it going back to at least the 1500s, if not earlier
—one of our early uses notes that
"The Sea brake in between Wisbich, and Walsockenne."
The collocation was so common, in fact,
that it eventually gave rise to the hyphenated in-between,
a noun that refers to an intermediary.
Threshold
One of the most common in-betweens
we encounter every day is the threshold.
Whenever you leave your house, walk from one room to another,
or enter a building, you are crossing a threshold.
Threshold is an old word, dating back over 1,000 yearsin English,
and its origins are slightly obscured.
Its Old English ancestor threscwald or threscwold
is cousin to the verb that gave us thresh,
and this verb in turn refers to separating grain from chaff
by beating it with something (like a stick or a flail).
But there's nothing in the historical record
that directly ties threshing to the threshold.
The threshold of a door is actually the horizontal floor piece
that you walk over whenever you move through a doorway,
and this is one of the uses we give it today.
But the earliest uses of threshold refer to a different type of boundary:
an Old English translation of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae
uses the word in a sentence about
how the sea was made so that it didn't overstep the "threshold,"
or boundary, of the earth.
We still use threshold with that broader "boundary, limit" sense today:
As members left a meeting about the bill,
many said they were encouraged by their first impressions of the text
but were hesitant to say if it would clear the 50 vote threshold for passage.
—Veronica Stracqualursi, Adam Kelsey, and Ali Rogin, ABCNews.com, 23 June 2017
Betwixt
Betwixt is now old-fashioned sounding,
but it's a close cousin of between:
the -twixt of betwixt traces back
to the same root as the -tween of between.
Not surprisingly, betwixt means "between."
It may seem odd that between and betwixt both exist,
but in Old and Middle English, these compounds abounded.
The Oxford English Dictionary lists between, betwixt, betwixen, betwihen, bitwih, and bitweies
as variants on this theme, and all related to each other.
Most of them passed out of common use by the 1400s, though betwixen stuck it out until the 1800s
and betwixt still survives in limited use.
Betwixt often shows up in the old-fashionedphrase betwixt and between.
It means "neither one thing or the other,"
and is a prime example of redundancies which settle into established use.
Devil and the deep blue sea
Many phrases that evoke in-between-ness
also situate the speaker between two undesirable end points,
like the devil and the deep blue sea.
Ocean lovers may object to that characterization of the deep blue sea,
but this is a later change to the original phrase,
which was the devil and the dead sea.
Why the devil, and why the dead sea? No one knows.
The phrase first shows up in a 1621 English translation
of a collection of Latin and Greek proverbs compiled by Erasmus.
It's the translation of the medieval Latin proverb
a fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi
—which has nothing to do with the devil or the sea.
A better translation of the Latin would be
"a precipice in front, wolves behind."
Scylla and Charybdi
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
has an echo in the phrase between Scylla and Charybdis.
The latter phrase also refers to
being stuck between two undesirable (and dangerous) options.
The phrase appears with this meaning in the mid-1500s.
It draws from Greek mythology.
In Homer's Odyssey and Ovid's Metamorphoses,
Scylla is an immortal monster with six heads,
each on a long neck, and twelve feet,
who lives in a cave near a narrow strait
and feasts on those who are unfortunate enough to sail by.
Odysseus encountered her in the Odyssey
as he sailed through a narrow strait; she ate six of his men.
On the other side of the strait was Charybdis, another immortal monster.
According to Homer, she lived under a fig tree near the shore and swallowed the sea three times a day,
thereby creating a dangerous whirlpool with shifting currents.
A shipwrecked Odysseus escaped her by clinging to a tree
and waiting for her to spit back out an improvised raft.
The pairing of Scylla and Charybdis in mythology
gave later English speakers an easy shorthand to refer to
being stuck in the middle of a dangerous or difficult situation.
Eventually, Scylla and Charybdis were associated with the Strait of Messina:
a narrow channel between Sicily and Italy
known for its rocky coastline and dangerous currents.
A prominent outcropping on the Italian mainland is known as
the Rock of Scylla,
and some navigators throughout history have noted that
the currents in the strait do form a whirlpool on the Sicilian coastline opposite Scylla.
Interstice
Sometimes the in-between isn't about what's there;
it's about what's not.
Interstice is a technical word that came into written use in the 1400s,
and our earliest evidence of it refers to
studying "the interstice of sterres [stars]."
In case we aren't sure what interstice refers to here,
the translator helpfully glosses it for us as "the space bytwene."
Interstice went from macro to micro in use: in the 1600s,
we have evidence of interstice used to refer to
"the place between the browes, the very seat of reason";
in the 1700s, we read about the "interstices of water,"
which are "always found full of air"; and in the 1930s,
interstice was applied to the nonmetal atoms or ions
that were situated in the spaces of a nonmetal crystalline lattice.
In current use, interstice is used to refer to a small space between things,
and it appears quite often in the plural (interstices).
It's common in the sciences.
Liminal
Not all in-betweens are static.
Liminal is a word that, in its most common extended sense,
refers to a state, place, or condition of transition:
the liminal state between wakingand sleeping,
or between life and death.
When liminal first appeared in written use,
it had a very specific meaning that referred to
something (such as a physical stimulus) which was just barely perceptible,
or just barely capable of eliciting a response.
This meaning is still in use today in constructions
like "liminal auditory stimuli."
The word is the adjectival offspring of the noun limen,
which refers to the point at which a physiological
or psychological effect begins to be produced,
and was borrowed wholesale from Latin, where it means "threshold."
While liminal appears primarily in formal
or academic writing and may be unfamiliar to many,
limen is also the root word of the more common subliminal
("belowthe threshold of perception").
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
between′ness n.
Usage Note:
The -tween in between comes from the same Indo-European root
thatgave us two, twain, and duo,
and the -mong of among comes from an Old English word
that meant "crowd" or "throng."
It is thus unsurprising that a traditional rule requires
between to be used only for
sentences involving two items
and among for sentences involving more than two.
Indeed, in sentences involving two items, no rule is needed;
native English speakers spontaneously use between
(as in the differences between [not among] karate and judo).
But when there are more than two items, practice is mixed.
Many careful writers observe a more subtle distinction,
using among when the sentence
refers to the entities collectively or as a mass,
as in
There were many outstanding players among the teams in the quarterfinal round
or A thistle is growing among the roses,
but preferring between
when the sentence refers to relationships
involving particular pairs of entities from within the group,
as in We haven't yet assigned the matchups between teams in the quarterfinal round or I have sand between my toes.
In such sentences,
thetwoness of between has not, so to speak, been lost in the crowd
—the pairings within the larger group
are important to the meaning of the sentence
and thus influence the writer's choice of preposition.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary
be•tween′ness, n.
usage:
By traditional usage rules,
among expresses relationship when more than two are involved
and between is used for only two: to decide between tea and coffee.
between, however, continues to be used,
as it has been throughout its history,
to express relationship of persons or things considered individually,
no matter how many:
Between holding public office, teaching, and raising a family, she has little free time.
Between you and I,
though heard occasionally in the speech of even educated persons,
is usually considered incorrect.
By the rules of grammar,
any and all pronouns that are the object of a preposition
must be in the objective case:
between you and me; between her and them.
The construction between each (or every) is fully standard
when the sense indicates that more than one thing is meant:
Marigolds peeked between each row of vegetables.
Collins English Usage
Usage:
After distribute and words with a similar meaning,
among should be used rather than between:
this enterprise issued shares which were distributed among its workers
Collins COBUILD English Usage
among
1. groups
If you are among a group of people or things,
you are surrounded by them.
Dev wandered among his guests.
Among his baggage was a medicine chest.
Be Careful!
Don't say that you are 'among' two people or things.
You say that you are between them.
Myra and Barbara sat in the back, the baby between them.
The island is midway between São Paulo and Porto Alegre.
See between
The form amongst is sometimes used, but is more formal than among.
The old farmhouse was hidden amongst orchards.
2. dividing
You can say that something
is divided among or between a group of people.
There is no difference in meaning.
He divided his money among his brothers and sisters.
Different scenes from the play are divided between five couples.
The form amongst is sometimes used, but is more formalthan among.
I heard that flour was being distributed amongst the citizens.
3. differences
Be Careful!
Don't use 'among' when you are talking about differences.
Don't say, for example, 'I couldn't see any difference among the three chairs'.
You say 'I couldn't see any difference between the three chairs'.
See between
Collins COBUILD English Usage
between
1. describing position
If something is between two things,
it has one of the things on one side of it
and the other thing on the other side of it.
Janice was standing between the two men.
Northampton is roughly halfway between London and Birmingham.
Be Careful!
Don't say that something is 'between' several things.
You say that it is among them.
See among
2. differences
You talk about a difference between two or morethings or people.
Don't use 'among'.
What is the difference between football and soccer?
There isn't much difference between the three parties.
3. choosing
When someone makes a choice,
you say that they choose between two or more things or people.
Don't use 'among'.
It was difficult to choose between the two candidates.
You can choose between tomato, cheese or meat sauce on your pasta.
You say that someone chooses between one thing or person and another.
She had to choose between work and her family.
Dictionary of Problem Words in English
among & between
Standard usagerequires that
among be employed to show
the relationship of more than two objects or persons
and that
between be employed to refer to only two objects
or, occasionally, to more than two
when each object is considered in relation to others.
This distinctionprobably traces from the fact that the
tweenin between comes from the Old English word for two.
The majority of careful speakers observe this distinction,
but rememberthat between can correctly refer to
more than two objects in certain circumstances.
We speak of
“a trade agreement betweenGreat Britain, France, and the United States”
because each country has an individual obligation to each of the others.
And we do not say that a triangle is the space among three points
orthat
the water-level route runs among New York, Albany, Cleveland, and Chicago.
Keep these examples in mind:
“We distributed the toys among Heather, Greg, and Gray.”
“We distributed the toys betweenJill and Gray.”
“Understanding between nations is desirable.”