Why have both principle and principal when they can both be used interchangeably?

Can they be used interchangeably? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought they had distinct meanings. Prinicpal being the leader of a school, or the original money down on a payment, or a sort-of synonym for “foremost,” and principle being an ethical belief or a scientific law (and both probably having more meanings that I didn’t think of). Am I mistaken?

They are not any more interchangeable than stationery and stationary. One is writing paper, the other is an immovable object. Of course, if you never write letters or thank you notes, you have stationary stationery.

@Mariah Yes, they have developed into two different meanings, but since one is mistaken for the other so often, and no one is ever unsure what the meaning in context is, who cares? It is one of those word things that doesn’t make any sense. Read and lead and many other words have several completely different meanings, but no one worries about it, because you can nearly always tell by context what it means.

They both are spelled differently, because they both have entirely different meanings.

Check your dictionary.

Hero can be spelled (or spelt) heroe.

There are many words with variants of spelling, like most of those with a t in the past tense.

this gets my vote for mind-boggling question of the day.

They are different words. People mistaking them doesn’t make incorrect usage ok.
People misuse its and it’s, two, too, and to, and other words all the time to the point that you can understand what the writer means just fine. It doesn’t make them all have the same meaning if you’re using the language properly.

@john65pennington But my point is there are many homonyms (words that have totally different meanings and are spelled exactly the same) so why is it such a big deal? We never have any trouble with bow/bow or bark/bark or fluke/fluke, so why not just make a choice and stick with one spelling?

Meaning cannot always be deduced from context with homonyms.

“Susie complements John” and “Susie compliments John” mean two entirely different things.

I know I goofed principle/principal earlier. Sorry!

Mensa? Really?

They can’t be used interchangeably.

Victoria knows the answer to this conundrum. I think she was last seen in & around Dallas.

@perspicacious Yes, they can and are all the time. No one has the least bit of trouble understanding the incorrect use of either one of them, so why would there be any problem with simply eliminating one of them and saving us all the trouble of figuring out which spelling is correct?

@breedmitch Are you having a little trouble trying to discuss this concept?

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on.

‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least — at least I mean what I say — that’s the same thing, you know.’

‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’

I’m thinking someone hijacked @YARNLADY‘s account. Or slipped her some of @Jeruba‘s pain meds.

Whether they are used interchangeably and whether they should be used interchangeably are two entirely different things. Each spelling has a different meaning. Stationery/stationary, affect/effect, your/you’re, compliment/complement… They’re called homonyms or homophones. There are a lot of them in English.

The Principle of the school had trouble trying to teach the meaning of principle to the children. He was ready to tear his hair out and it brought a tear to his eye.

You have absolutely no trouble trying to figure out the meaning of each of the homonyms I used in the two sentences above. There is no reason what-so-ever the first pair need to be spelled differently. It would actually eliminate the question of “which one do I use?”

Try to explain why there are so many ways to use the word bow, including different pronunciations and meanings.

Word purists will never allow the English language to become truly fonetic.

I should have waited until April Fool’s Day for this one I guess

it’s a matter of principle as much as practicality. you’d have to treat all the words on this (incomplete) list the same way.

at the drugstore yew wood have to ask ware the hare moose is and on witch I’ll yew wood find the breath mince. i hope yew wood knot have to pea because yew mite have to ask for the wrest room key. unless it is part of yore dialect to say ‘ax’ instead of ‘ask,’ in witch case yew could be spelling it ‘acts’ and then yew wood have a hole new can of worms.

the language cannot become phonetic when it is pronounced so many different ways around the world and even just across the u.s. would i have to write with a pin just because you come from a part of the country where that’s how you pronounce ‘pen’?

we might as well have just one written word and pronounce it differently for each meaning. i suggest ‘om.’

I wooden lyk it f it wuz fonetik. I think itz funner when itz funkee.

and we would forever lament the lost joys of paronomasia.

@Jeruba: Good one! I had to look it up. Now I will use alarmingly often, irritating everybody!

@Jeruba OM good choice, they usually use UGH on TV.

If one of the words were eliminated, we’d all have to listen to the prescriptivists of the world whine about it for the next seventy-five years or so as part of their ongoing diatribe about the Downfall of the English Language. I don’t need that, not when they’ve finally quieted down about how “bling” shouldn’t have been added to the dictionary.

On a serious note, I don’t like the idea of removing words from the dictionary unless they have been out of use for a long time. And it is a matter of principle. Not the principle of correctness, but of free speech. Excising words from the language to make it simpler skates a little too close to Newspeak for my liking.

the principle i was alluding to (would we have to merge ‘allude’ and ‘elude’ too? how close is close enough to be considered the same, and exactly what level of ignorance sets the standard?) was not a principle of correctness but the principle of treating like matters consistently—therefore merging all homophones under one spelling per vocalization and not just one instance.

what do you think: should we go with ‘aisle’ or ‘isle’ as the contraction of ‘i will’—or shall we coin ‘ile’ for all three applications?

@Jeruba Whew! What a slippery slope. Put lose and loose on that list too.

Lose and loose are not pronounced the same.

@Jeruba And of course the “principle of treating like matters consistently” doesn’t exist in English. If some governing body of language decided to apply it to homophones, they might also notice some other areas in which English could use a few cosmetic changes. Then we’d end up with far worse than your phonetic example above—and thanks for that, btw. Slippery slope, indeed.

that wasn’t a phonetic example at all, @hobbitsubculture. look again. that was an illustration of applying @YARNLADY‘s proposal to other homophones.

and we do have a great huge amount of consistency, pattern, and rule in english. i don’t know why people are so dazzled by the variations that they overlook that point.

@Seelix, no, they’re not, but neither are ‘allude’ and ‘elude’—unless you’re sloppy about it or just don’t know how to spell them. i don’t say ‘principal’ and ‘principle’ exactly alike either unless i’m being careless.

The Principle of the school had trouble trying to teach the meaning of principle to the children. He was ready to tear his hair out and it brought a tear to his eye.

I would assume that the principle of the school is “All children can learn, and are entitled to an appropriate education.” It’s up to the principal of the school to communicate that principle.

SHE’S BAAACK!!! And I love it! (sigh)

By the way, I think that’s a capital suggestion @YARNLADY – or is it a capitol suggestion?

@Jeruba I don’t think anyone here is “dazzled” by the variations of English. English does have a great deal of patterns and rules, but so do all languages. As far as spelling goes, English is far less consistent than a good deal of modern languages. I can’t think of a single language with less consistent spelling, although I’ve only studied a handful of other languages.

And funny, that I double checked to make sure I didn’t have a principal/principle typo, on this of all threads, and then missed that I’d typed completely the wrong word in another spot.

@YARNLADY Because there is no reason to bastardize the language for the lazy people. I appreciate language and words. These two words are not interchangeable. Of course, people misuse the words. Many people don’t take the trash out but once a week either.

@YARNLADY In the Chinese language it is a lot worse, the same sounding word can be represented by five or six different written characters depending on the meaning.