The verbs notify and apprise are close in meaning—they both deal with conveying information—but there are a few differences in how they are used. Notify is more likely to be used of information that needs to be formally addressed or acted on. The DMV might notify you that your driver's license is about to expire, for instance. Apprise, which is defined as “to give notice to” or “to advise,” is very often used to talk about keeping someone up to date on information that is of interest to them, or, in other words, keeping them in the loop. This verb appears most frequently in passive constructions, so while it’s perfectly appropriate to say “Julie apprised Joe of the matter,” you’re far more likely to encounter it in a pattern resembling this: “Joe asked Julie to keep him apprised of the matter.”

The nouns disaster and calamity both refer to adverse happenings, especially ones that are sudden and unexpected. A disaster is an event that causes great loss of life, damage, or hardship, such as a flood, airplane crash, or business failure. A calamity is a great misfortune or disaster, but this term emphasizes the grief or sorrow caused by such an event. Calamity is also used to refer to misery itself, or a state of pain and distress, as in “a year of calamity.”

Lend us your ears, synonym sleuths, because today we expose the difference between the verbs listen and eavesdrop. To listen is to give attention with the ear, or to attend closely for the purpose of hearing. No surprises there. To eavesdrop is to listen secretly to a private conversation, a far stealthier proposition. But what on earth is an eave and why is it dropping? Eavesdrop is a back formation of the noun eavesdropper, a person who stands on the eavesdrop—the ground on which water from the eaves (the overhanging of a roof) falls—in order to listen to conversations inside the house.