Errors & Omissions: There’s no such thing as a trouser, but is there an antic?

An unusual singular, confusions of similar and same-sounding words, prepositions and number agreement in this week's Independent

Last Saturday’s profile of Donald Trump’s campaign manager informed us: “And, indeed, the pair have much in common, not least a love of the attention-grabbing antic.” That looks odd. Is there really such a thing as an antic? Yes, but it’s unusual.

There are a few nouns that appear only in the plural – “trousers” springs to mind; there is no such thing as a trouser. Is “antics” one of them? Well, almost. The word is derived from the Italian antico and means grotesque architectural decoration, and hence a grotesque gesture or posture. Here, the Oxford Dictionary inserts “Usually in plural”.

Further, “antic” can mean the kind of person you would expect to make such grotesque gestures, a mountebank or clown. In that meaning it can certainly be a singular, as in Shakespeare’s superb lines from Richard II: “For within the hollow crown/That rounds the mortal temples of a king/Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,/Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp.”

µ A report on Wednesday on the Sharapova doping affair quoted a scientist: “You’d think that’s a very high percentage. I think it would infer that there would be some misuse.”

That is one of the most common mistakes of meaning. The fact is that we could do without the distinction between “imply” and “infer”, using the same word for both, but then the language would be a little less elegant. When my words convey something without explicitly stating it, I am implying the hidden meaning (Latin, implicare, to enfold); when you understand what I am saying, you infer (Latin, inferre, to bring in) the hidden meaning.

The speaker implies; the listener infers.

µ Colin Sanderson writes in about our coverage last Saturday of Rupert Murdoch’s wedding. We referred to the rector of St Bride’s, Fleet Street, as “Cannon” Alison Joyce. “Cannon” comes from the same Latin root as “cane”, and means a hollow tube. A canon, from a Greek word for “rule”, is a member of the clergy living under ecclesiastical rules. It’s just a troublesome coincidence that the two words sound the same.

µ On Wednesday we published an interview with the actress Elizabeth Debicki: “She decided at the age of 17 to pursue acting, by which time she was enamoured by Cate Blanchett.” No, that should be “enamoured of”. Which preposition follows which verb is pretty arbitrary – enamoured of, entranced by, obsessed with, attached to and so on – but let’s get it right.

µ Sorry to go on and on about this, but number agreement seems to be in danger of breaking down altogether. Last Saturday’s coverage of Facebook’s tax arrangements included this: “Until now, money made from sales to advertisers in the UK have been routed through Ireland.” It looks as if somebody has just bunged down “advertisers … have”, without realising that it is really “money … has”. Mere proximity has been allowed to trump the logical relationship between the words.