A Little Help No. 4

Welcome back to the scenic route! I hope you’ve been having a great week. I’ve got some more vocabulary clarity for us this week. Are you ready? Let’s get to it!

Dribble, Drivel, or Drizzle? Help!

Yep. We have three words to cover today. I’ve seen these three words used incorrectly multiple times. I think part of the problem is that they aren’t widely used. I’ve decided to tackle them in alphabetical order and since we have three today, I’m gonna jump right in.

Dribble

Dribble functions most often as a verb, but can also be a noun. It has two verb forms — transitive and intransitive. Most often, this has to do with bit-by-bit movement, like when a basketball player is bouncing the ball slowly across the court (transitive), or when a baby is drooling (instransitive.) You can check out the full definition here at Merriam-Webster.

In its noun form, I believe dribble is most often used to speak of tiny amounts. It’s the first definition given for the noun form. I must confess to having trouble using dribble in noun form for either of the other two definitions. Personally, I’ll try to avoid it.

Please, please, please! Do not use this word to describe rainfall. There’s a better word for that and we’re going to get to it. I also dislike when authors use this word to describe tears since, in my mind, it doesn’t really give a good mental picture of what’s happening. I almost always associate this word with basketball and babies. That could just be my own quirk, but I wish authors, romance authors especially, would stop using this word. There are better ones to choose from that keep the reader in those special moments.

Examples of verb usage:

• John dribbled the basketball across the court to execute a magnificent slam dunk.

• Spittle dribbled down the elderly man’s scruffy chin and his wife tenderly wiped it away.

Examples of noun usage:

• The first dribbler was John, who passed it to Terry, who passed it to Amos, who then ended up scoring the final winning point.

• The dribble from the faucet dismayed Joy since she’d completely turn off the water.

Drivel

The next word in our list is drivel. This one’s been around quite a while, I think. And it’s often misused because we just don’t practice using it in modern, everyday English. It’s a great word, so I want to use it correctly if I choose to add it to a manuscript. I learned something new while looking up this definition. Maybe some of you will be surprised, too!

Drivel has both a noun and verb usage. In the noun form, it simply means nonsense or drool. I’ve seen authors add it into manuscripts with the second meaning and it always sounded wrong to me. That’s because the ‘drool’ meaning is an archaic one. This was the something new I learned. What about you? Did you know this about the word drivel?

In the verb form, drivel gets a little wild when it comes to the spelling. But first, in verb form, it can refer to someone talking carelessly or describe when saliva dribbles from the mouth.

Now about that spelling… It appears you can spell it as ‘driveled’ or ‘driveling’ (with one ‘l’) or you can double the ‘l’ to spell ‘drivelled’ or ‘drivelling.’ Since the phonetics rule about double letters fits here, I’d use it doubled to put my mind at ease. It’s interesting to note that my on-board grammar/spelling checker says the doubled form is incorrect. I wonder who’s right?

I’d include a link to the exact phonetics rule here, but I can’t seem to find a simple one that doesn’t show an incorrect example. (I weep for the species on days like today. :,-( ) Basically, if a word has a short vowel sound, like hop, and you want to add ‘-ing’ to it, you’d double the ‘p’ to keep the vowel sound short. If you don’t double the ‘p’, you end up with the word hoping which is future tense of the word hope. The one page I found that went into depth on the topic used this word incorrectly, unless I read their explanation incorrectly.

OK, I digress. Back to ‘drivel’… Here are a couple noun examples:

• In my opinion, too many YA books are absolute drivel.

• I’m not making a sentence with the archaic form of ‘drivel’ because right now… I just can’t. shudder

Here are your verb examples:

• The thief was drivelling far longer than Officer Dan wished.

• The baby driveled, urging the young momma to grab a tissue and wipe the baby’s face as she slept.

Drizzle

The last word of the day is ‘drizzle’ and it’s one of my favorites when it comes to describing rain. It also has noun and verb forms. You can find the definition here on Merriam-Webster.

The noun form is most often used with rain or something like syrup that can be used as a topping.

Examples:

• Ruby added a drizzle of honey to her coffee.

• The light drizzle continued into the evening, giving the garden the water it desperately needed.

In it’s verb form, drizzle has two functions — transitive and intransitive. In both cases, the word is used with the same idea in mind as the noun form, simply being switched from the thing itself to an action that serves to describe rain or something that can be lightly sprinkled, poured in a thin stream, or misted over something else.

Examples:

• The leaves drizzled dewdrops onto the loam below them.

• The chef is drizzling honey over a golden brown biscuit stuffed with hand-whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

You’ll want to know that the word ‘drizzle’ doesn’t ever have anything to do with spit or drool. So let’s not use it in that way when we write. I’ll do my best.

Conclusion

I often misspell words, even though spelling is actually one of my strong points. I just get in a hurry and my fingers type faster than my brain can spit out the necessary info. Can anyone relate?

I want to do a better job, so these vocabulary tip articles continue coming your way on Fridays. Are you finding them useful? Won’t you come back next Friday for another one?

Until next time…
Keep turning pages.