The Commonly Confused Words Avocation and Vocation

The Commonly Confused Words Avocation and Vocation The English language is full of words that sound similar but have different meanings - or ones that sound different but actually mean similar things. The nouns avocation  and vocation  are among the former group. Although these two nouns look and sound very similar, their meanings are actually not the same.   Definitions An avocation is a hobby or any other activity taken up in addition to ones regular work; it may especially refer to something that is a persons true passion or interest. A vocation is ones principal occupation, often used in the context  of a calling to a particular way of life or course of action. Why Do They Sound Alike? Both  avocation  and  vocation  derive originally from a Latin verb,  vocare,  which means to call.  Avocation  derives from a compounded version of this word,  avocatio, which compounded  ab  (a preposition meaning away from) and  vocare  to create a word that signified a distraction or something off the main path. Since an avocation is an interest thats off the path of ones day-to-day work, its easy to see how this word has come through.   Vocation, in contrast, comes from  vocare  without any alterations. When the word  vocation  appears, it typically carries a connotation of not just a job, but a job thats part of a persons calling in life. It can still be used just as a synonym for job or occupation, but in contemporary usage, it more often has that extra layer of meaning as a job that feels more like a calling. Examples Michel Roux is the chef of a London restaurant by profession and a marathon runner by avocation.Joan Feigenbaum . . . was delighted when she found her true vocation in the Summer Research Program at ATTs famous Bell Labs.(Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. by Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl. Greenwood, 1998)Music was  the only vocation  anyone had ever heard of for a blind child, and the church took up a collection of pennies and nickels to buy Pilgrim a fiddle.(Michael Crummey, Sweetland. Liveright, 2015) Practice (a) After retiring from teaching, my father decided to focus on his  longtime _____ of juggling.(b) By  outward account Simone Weil was a failure several times over, yet in her true _____  as a writer  she succeeded brilliantly.(Thomas R. Nevin,  Simone Weil: Portrait of a Self-Exiled Jew. The University of North Carolina Press, 1991)   Answers to Practice Exercises Glossary of Usage: Index of Commonly Confused Words Answers to Practice Exercises: Avocation and Vocation (a) After retiring from teaching, my father decided to focus on his  longtime avocation of juggling.(b) By  outward account Simone Weil was a failure several times over, yet in her true vocation  as a writer  she succeeded brilliantly.(Thomas R. Nevin,  Simone Weil: Portrait of a Self-Exiled Jew. The University of North Carolina Press, 1991)  Ã‚   Glossary of Usage: Index of Commonly Confused Words