Easily Confused Words: Concur Vs. Conquer - Kathleen W Curry

Concur and conquer are easily confused words.

The spell-check application of most word processing software programs would not catch a slip-up of these two words. Spell-check is looking for words that aren’t in its dictionary, and words that resemble words in its dictionary, but are possibly spelled wrong. Spell-check isn’t perfect. It doesn’t know and can’t guess what word you wanted, or what word you meant, it can only judge the words on the page. If you used words that are all spelled correctly, it gives you a pass anyway. 

Autocorrect suggests words that start with the same letters. It’s suggesting what word you may want to save time, but quite often, its suggestions are pretty off base. They don’t help you out, but they do make you laugh.

Concur (pronounced “kawn-kurr”) is a verb. It means to agree with someone else’s point or proposal.

Conquer (pronounced “kawnk-uhr”) is a verb. It means to take over a territory or country by force. People in world history credited with conquering include Genghis Khan of Asia and Alexander the Great of Macedonia.

The following story uses both words correctly:

It was a meeting of grave importance. The president concurred that without help from their allies, her country of Konkadia was extremely vulnerable. Konkadia could easily be conquered by larger ones seeking to exploit natural resources, or its strategic port location.

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