Word Usage — Cultured and Cultural, Historic and Historical

Today’s writing tip is on word usage. We’re going to look at four different words that people tend to use incorrectly.

Let’s start with cultured and cultural. Cultured means sophisticated. Someone might speak French, take ballet lessons, or visit fine art museums in an effort to become more cultured. Cultural is completely different. It relates to aspects of culture, such as customs, beliefs, or traditions. I remember being very embarrassed once when I wrote a condolence letter to a high-powered lawyer I had been working with during my days of advocating on behalf of wrongly convicted men. This lawyer’s mother had passed away, and in my email, I said, among other things, that his mother had been very cultural. Wrong, Sig! She had been cultured, but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. I had already sent the email when I realized my error, and it was out there in the world. I felt foolish.

Historic and historical are similar. They don’t mean the same thing. You don’t want to use one when you mean the other. Historic means something significant, something that may only happen once every decade or every 70 years, like Haley’s Comet. It’s unusual, unprecedented, and important. Historical relates to history or something that happened in the past. For example, Columbus discovered America in 1492, although this is debatable as to whether someone can “discover” a country that had been inhabited for thousands of years! Nonetheless, this is considered an historical fact. It can be mundane, boring, or unimportant.

My point here is that these terms are not interchangeable. You don’t want to use "cultured" when you mean "cultural," and you don’t want to use "historic" when you mean "historical," and vice versa. But don’t beat yourself up if you make a mistake. I am still berating myself 15 years later for misusing the word 'cultured,' and I need to let it go. My hotshot lawyer, David Asper, probably forgot about it 10 minutes after he read the email, but I’m still thinking of it years later.