You don’t need to sink your teeth into a beautiful wax peach to get the difference between appetizing and delectable. Appetizing food appeals to or stimulates the appetite, so food can have an appetizing smell or appearance, or be described in an appetizing way. People may remark that your strawberry soup looks delectable, but strictly speaking, they have to try it before declaring it to be so, because delectable means delightful to the taste, or delicious. Not surprisingly, you’ll most often find this adjective describing things to eat: delectable desserts, a delectable morsel, delectable fruit, a delectable feast.

The nouns spectrum and gamut both refer to a broad range of similar things arranged along a scale, but there are significant degrees of difference between them. The scientific meanings of spectrum carry over to its general usage, where emphasis is on the overlap and hence continuity between items on or along the spectrum. A spectrum is often contrasted with an either-or conception of something. In a spectrum of political beliefs, for example, liberals and conservatives are on the same continuum. Gamut, as suggested by the common phrase the whole gamut, emphasizes the comprehensiveness of a range and hence the variety or contrast encompassed by it: Love involves the whole gamut of emotions, from despair to joy. Of just about any set of wide-ranging and varied things (reactions to a movie, a dessert menu) we can say it runs (or covers or spans) the gamut.

The adjectives brief and fleeting describe things of short duration. Used of events, brief can simply mean lasting a short time: a brief period, a brief meeting, a brief hello. Applied to speech and writing, brief suggests concise and effective: a brief introduction, a brief summary. Fleeting is used of things that pass quickly, with the suggestion that they escape our grasp or are over too soon: the fleeting pleasures of youth, fleeting fame, a fleeting thought, a fleeting glimpse. Fleeting can imply a poetic poignancy, but also fickleness, as in fleeting loyalties.