Word list: H


halfway

One word.

handover

The noun is one word, with no hyphen.

harebrained

Not hair(-)brained.

historic, historical

Historic means famous or important in history, as in “a historic occasion”, whereas historical can refer to anything that occurred in the past. So it’s a historical share price, not a historic one (and certainly not an historic one).

There’s no need to say “an historic moment” (or an historic anything). It’s a historic moment. Possibly because many years ago the H of historic wasn’t aspirated, it was customary to write “an historic” and now there is a misconceived notion that “an historic” is the right way to describe something terribly important. It’s not.

hoard, horde

  • A horde is a crowd or a mob.
  • A hoard is an accumulated store of something, and the verb to hoard means to accumulate a store of something.

home page

Two words.