2022-01-25
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – C - confidant & confident
แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น
ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค
Dictionary.co
ออกเสียง confidant = “KON-fi-dant” or “kon-fi-DAHNT”
ออกเสียง confident = “KON-fi-duhnt”
Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions:
confidant & confident
Confusion between these two similar words results in an impropriety.
Confidant (kon-fuh-DANT) refers to one to whom secrets or other private matters are entrusted.
A female confidant is aconfidant (kon-fuh-DANT)
Confident, an adjective meaning
“assured, certain of success,” is pronounced
“KON-fuh-duhnt” or “KON-fi-duhnt”
Example of use:
“Edith was my trustedconfidante. I wasconfident that I could trust her.”
Dictionary.com:
CONFIDANT VS. CONFIDANTE VS. CONFIDENT
What’s the difference between confidant, confidante, and confident?
Confidant is a noun meaning someone you feel comfortable telling secret or private things to
—a person you confide in.
The word confidante is a gender-specific form of confidant
that’s applied to women.
Confident is an adjective that means sure of oneself or one’s abilities, or having a high level of certainty about something.
Very rarely, the word confident can be used as a noun
meaning the same thing as confidant,
but we’re pretty confident almost no one uses it this way.
We’re also sorry to report that
there’s a kind of sofa called a confidente
that can also be called a confidante,
but honestly you’ll be better off
if you just forget we ever said anything about it.
Confidant and confidante are borrowed from French,
which has grammatical gender,
so some words end differently
depending on whether they are applied to men or women
(with e being the feminine ending).
This happens in a few other pairs of words in English, like blond and blonde,
though in many cases
the term without the e has become largely gender-neutral.
This is the case with confidant, which is the more commonly used
of the two.
What’s the best way to be confident that you’re using the right word?
Just remember that the ending of both confidant and confidante
sounds like the more formal pronunciation of aunt
—your aunt could be your confidant
(as could your commandant, the ending of which also sounds the same).
The ending of confident, on the other hand, sounds like dent.
Here’s an example of
confidant and confident usedcorrectly in the same sentence.
(The word confidant could be replaced with confidante if you were referring to a woman and wanted to make the term gender-specific.)
Example:
I am confident that what I confide to my confidant stays confidential.
Dictionary.com:
“Confident” vs. “Confidant”: What’s The Difference?
Published October 23, 2020
Before getting on stage to audition for the school play,
Monica needed to believe in herself and reflect on her talent.
But as she peeked out into the auditorium,
where the judges were sitting, her self-esteem started to waver.
At that point, was Monica feeling less confident
than she was while singing in the shower?
Or was she struggling to remain confidant?
Or, what about confidante?
And since these three words are similar, can they ever be interchanged?
Let’s take a closer look.
What does confident mean?
Confident is primarily used as an adjective meaning
“having strong belief or full assurance; sure.”
Someone who is confident is bold, completely self-confident, and/ sure of themselves.
They also have “no uncertainty about one’s own abilities, correctness, successfulness.”
However they can also be excessively bold or presumptuous.
For example:
He’s incredibly talented, and while he’s confident, he never projects arrogance.
Synonym for confident
include certain, positive, sure, self-reliant and assured
What does confidant mean?
Next up is Confidant: a noun that’s defined as
“a close friend or associate to whom secrets are confided
or with whom private matters and problems are discussed.”
For example:
- Some describe the colleague as her “work husband”
because they are close confidants in the office.
- Samuel describes his ideal marriage as one in which his partner is both his best friend and confidant.
Synonyms for confidant include adviser, companion, and crony.
What does confidante mean?
Lastly, there’s Confidante.
The addition of the e may seem like a slight change,
but it does alter this noun’s meaning.
Confidante is defined as specifically a woman
“to whom secrets are confided or with whom private matters and problems are discussed.”
For example:
Emery was not only her neighbor, but also her life-long confidante, someone who was always there for her when she had problems that she couldn’t share with her own mom.
Synonyms for confidante include companion, confidant, and crony.
Where do these words come from?
There’s a good reason why these words seem similar:
they come from the same root.
All three are derived from the Latin confīdere,
which is equivalent to con- (with) and fīdere (“to trust”).
Confident is the first of the three to be recorded in English around 1570–80.
Historically, confident was used as a noun, like confidant,
but confidant and confidante, took its place and prevailed.
They were first recorded around 1705–15 and developed from
the French word confident (“person trusted with private affairs”).
Believe it or not,
English shared the practice of gendering nouns until around the 1200s.
Words like confidant and confidante were borrowed from French,
which like Spanish, has grammatical gender.
(This is how we get the whole blond vs. blonde conundrum.)
In French, confident is the masculine form;
adding the e makes it feminine.
How to use each
If you need a tip to help keep these three words straight,
you might try mentally separating them as E versus A.
So confident versus confidant(e).
From there, remember that you need self-confidence to be confident.
You can also think e for “energy”
or the positive energy someone needs to be confident.
Once you remember that confident always deals with confidence,
it’s easier to keep that one straight.
Then we have confidant versus confidante.
These two both refer to a trusted person or advisor
but can’t always be interchanged.
That’s because a confidant can be a man or a woman,
but when an e is added to the ending,
it means a reliable companion who is strictly a woman.
For example, they can be interchanged in a case like this:
- My mother isn’t just a parent, she’s also my most trusted confidant.
- My mother isn’t just a parent, she’s also my most trusted confidante.
But can’t be interchanged here:
My father isn’t just a parent, he’s also my most trusted confidant.
If we look back on the original example about the school play,
we now know that confidence is what an actor needs at an audition.
Monica needed to remain confident in order to perform on stage.
(That said,
we hope she has a close confidant who provides moral support as well!)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Is it confident or confidant? (Or is it confidante?)
If you find yourself unsure whether
you should choose confident or confidant don’t feel bad;
confidant comes to English from the French word confident,
and when the word first entered our language
it was often spelled that way, rather than as confidant.
The difference is quite simple:
confidant is a noun (meaning "a person in whom you confide things"),
and confident is an adjective (defined as “having confidence”).
You may well be confident in your confidant,
but you would not be confidant in your confident.
Although this distinction has not always been observed
by writers, confidante is generally used for a female confidant.
The word confidant is more frequently used to describe a man,
but it may be applied to either gender.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Did you know?
If you're confident of the trustworthiness of your confidants,
you're inadvertently aware of the origins of the word confidant.
It comes from the French noun confident,
which goes back to the Italian adjective confidente,
meaning "confident" or "trustworthy"
and to the Latin verb confidere, meaning "to confide"
—the root of which is fidere, meaning "to trust."
Other descendants of confidere in English include confide, confidence,and confident, as well as confidential
(which was formed from confidence).
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Usage Notes
'Confidant' vs. 'Confident' vs. 'Confidante'
We feel like we can trust you with this information.
What to Know
Confident is an adjective referring to assurance or self-reliance,
whereas confidant is a noun describing
a person to whom secrets are entrusted.
Both come from the French for "having trust or confidence in."
Confidante is generally interchangeable with confidant,
but it is more typically used to describe women.
There are many pairs of words in English
which are vexing and troublesome to differentiate,
the lexical equivalent of itching powder
combined with a hefty dose of nepenthe.
Many of us have gone through life
unable to consistently tell the difference between enervate and energize,
or between urticose and vernicose.
To this list we may add the words confident and confidant.
'Confident' vs. 'Confidant'
Confident is an adjective, typically carrying the meaning of
“having or showing assurance and self-reliance,”
whereas confidant is a noun, meaning
“one to whom secrets are entrusted.”
Even though they occupy different parts of speech
these words overlap in sufficient degree
that they are occasionally mixed up..
Both come from the Latin confīdere
(“to put trust in, have confidence in, be sure”),
although confidant passed through Italian and French
before ending up in English.
And although we do not use the word confide
in our definition of confidant,
it is easy to see how one might think of the word
as ‘one in whom secrets are confided,’ and so spell it with an E.
Confident is the older of the pair, coming into English use
in the middle of the 16th century; confidant dates from the 17th.
We do see, especially in the 17th century,
confidant occasionally spelled as confident.
Less common, but still found, is confident spelled as confidant.
'Confidant' vs. 'Confidante'
Despite the intertwined beginnings of these words,
they are now viewed as distinct.
Less clear is the distinction between confidant and confidante.
A number of usage guides have taken the position
that confidante is reserved for a woman to whom one entrusts secrets,
while confidant should be used only for men.
We define confidant without gender,
and say of confidante that it is especially (although not exclusively)
used of one who is a woman.
It is not difficult to find examples
of confidant being used of a woman, and confidante of a man.
You may use confidant or confidante without much worry
for whether one or the other is more correct
(although some usage guides will fault indiscriminate use).
Confident and confidant are not interchangeable,
and you should adopt whatever mnemonic works best
to help you tell them apart.
We recommend
‘the person you confide in is the word with an A,
and being self-assured is the word with an E.’
Collins COBUILD English Usage:
Confidant - confident
1. 'confidant'
Confidant /'kɒnfɪdænt/ is a noun.
A confidant is a person
who you discuss your private problems and worries with.
You use the spelling confidante when the person is a woman.
...Colonel House, a friend and confidant of President Woodrow Wilson.
She became her father's only confidante.
2. 'confident'
Confident /'kɒnfɪdənt/ is an adjective.
If you are confident about something,
you are certain that it will happen in the way you want.
He was confident that the problem with the guidance mechanism could be fixed.
I feel confident about the future of British music.
People who are confident are sure of their own abilities.
... a witty, young and confident lawyer.
His manner is more confident these days.
Self-conscious – confident
1. 'self-conscious'
Someone who is self-consciousis easily embarrassed
and worries about what other people think of them.
I stood there, feeling self-conscious.
Patrick is self-conscious about his thinness.
2. 'confident'
If someone is sure of their own abilities, qualities, or ideas,
you do not say that they are 'self-conscious'.
You say that they are confident, self-confident, or self-assured.
...a witty, young and confident lawyer.
She was remarkably self-confident for her age.
His comments were firm and self-assured.
