Discreet vs. discrete

Posted on Feb 23, 2010 in Language | 10 comments

Falstaff, Shakespeare’s famous character from Henry the Fourth, knew “the better part of valor is discretion,” but did he know the difference between “discrete” and “discreet”? It’s a tricky distinction for many writers and you’ll see plenty of examples of these homophones being misused once you know the difference. Before we look at one, here’s the distinction between the two:

• When you want to keep something to yourself, keep it on the down-low, not draw attention to it, you want to be discreet about it. You know, like how Tiger Woods wishes his multiple affairs had been kept discreet rather than becoming such major “news.”
• When you keep your personal bank account and spending separate from your business finances, you are keeping the two discrete. This is a lesson that Dane Cook’s financial manager should have learned.

How to keep them straight – Two mnemonics can help you remember what meaning goes with which spelling:

• Discreet: if someone found out about what you trying to keep secret, you’d squeal: “eek!” Those two es in eek mirror the two es found in discreet, which is the proper spelling for this meaning.
• Discrete: the t in discrete keeps the two es separate, and separate is the meaning of this spelling.

Improper use of "discrete" highlighted. Improper use of "advertisement" above it not highlighted.

Misuse of discrete and discreet—and their adverbial cousins, discretely and discreetly—is common, and a quick Google search for “discretely” revealed this site‘s mistake. The author of the page (on how to surreptisiously use MySpace for business promotion) writes “discretely” when he should have written “discreetly.” (This example probably appeared high in my search because the word “discretely” appears in the URL, page title, H1 tag and within the body of the article.) No disrespect to the author for the error, as these two words are easily confused.

It even tripped up the folks at the popular site eHow.com.