A minor but extremely annoying language peeve:<\/p>\n
The straps that one uses to steer horses are called reins<\/a>.<\/p>\n The period of time during which some sort of ruler holds authority is a reign<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thus, when one wishes to reassert control over something that is running unchecked, one would “rein it in.” The time during which the unchecked influence is having malign effects might be called a “reign of terror.”<\/p>\n It’s a subtle and important distinction. It’s also not something that spell-check will help you with.<\/p>\n Consider the comments an open thread for confused homonym peeves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A minor but extremely annoying language peeve: The straps that one uses to steer horses are called reins. The period of time during which some sort of ruler holds authority is a reign. Thus, when one wishes to reassert control over something that is running unchecked, one would “rein it in.” The time during which… Continue reading Ask Mister Language Person<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}