✅  Pleasing is used to describe things that evoke pleasure or enjoyment (aesthetically pleasing). Gratifying describes something that satisfies your desires or expectations (gratifying work).

✅  Something gratifying is also usually pleasing. However, something pleasing isn’t always gratifying (a pleasing aroma).

✅  In some situations, gratifying can be a more intense word than pleasing (The reply was pleasing; The feedback was gratifying).

Try using gratifying in a paragraph about a time you received a special gift.

✅  Living and livelihood both refer to the way you earn money to support yourself (It’s an honest living; My livelihood depends on it).

✅  Livelihood is a bit more formal, but it’s used in all the same contexts as living.

✅  While they mean just about the same thing, these nouns may have different implications within certain phrases. For example, living is often used in the phrase make a living, which means to make enough money to live on. However, to make a livelihood out of something means to make a business or career out of it.

Try using livelihood in a paragraph describing your career goals.

✅  Enormous is used to describe something unusually or abnormally big (an enormous rock). Immense often describes things that are so vast they seem unmeasurable (the immense expanse of space).

✅  These two adjectives can be used interchangeably to mean that something is very big, but immense is usually used with a more serious tone (They were worried by the immense power of the rising river).

✅  Both immense and enormous can be used figuratively (enormous respect; immense pressure).

Make your vocabulary enormous with these synonyms for immense!