Word Confusion: Pause versus Paws

Posted September 23, 2013 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
10 July 2023

To be fair, I haven’t run across this heterographic (a subset of homophone) word confusion myself, but I did like the mental image it created in my mind. And it’s always possible that some winsome lass would prefer that the lecher pause in his pawing while most of us would prefer that the old windbag would pause in his speechifying. Truly a nightmare to suffer through his words pawing through our minds.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Pause	Paws
Pause by Joy Pixels under the CC BY 4.0 license, via Creazilla.	Paw and Pads by Amos T Fairchild is under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons.
Part of Grammar:
Noun Verb, intransitive & transitive Plural for the noun: pauses Gerund: pausing Third person present verb: pauses Past tense or past participle: paused Present participle: pausing	Morpheme: paw Noun Verb, intransitive & transitive Plural for the noun: paws Gerund: pawing Third person present verb: paws Past tense or past participle: pawed Present participle: pawing NO: ~~pawsing~~
Noun: Temporary stop in action or speech [Music] A mark () over a note or rest that is to be lengthened by an unspecified amount [Medical] A temporary stop or cessation [Prosody] A break or suspension, as a caesura, in a line of verse [pause button] A control allowing the temporary interruption of an electronic or mechanical process, especially video or audio recording or reproduction Verb, intransitive: Interrupt action or speech briefly Verb, transitive: Temporarily interrupt the operation of a videotape, audiotape, or computer program	Noun: An animal’s foot having claws and pads [Chiefly derogatory] A person’s hand Verb, intransitive: [Of an animal] Feel or scrape with a paw or hoof Verb, transitive: [Of an animal] Feel or scrape with a paw or hoof [Informal; of a person] Touch or handle awkwardly or roughly [Of a person] Touch someone in a lascivious and offensive way
Examples:
Noun: She dropped me outside during a brief pause in the rain. In the 5th Symphony he dispenses with the pause before the finale. The same effect could be achieved by using the pause button on a DVD player. The admiral chattered away without pause. Verb, intransitive: She paused, at a loss for words. She continued her speech after pausing to look me up and down with disgust. Walking down his driveway, he pauses briefly to wave goodbye to the couple. Verb, transitive: She had paused a tape on the VCR. Fay squealed seconds later, pausing the tape and pointing at the figure on the screen. Users can pause live TV, rewind and set up recordings — all without an advanced degree in VCR technology.	Noun: Touch her with your filthy paws, and I’ll ram my fist into your face. Access to water is always recommended, as is staying off the asphalt, which can burn an animal’s paws. The cat looked up from its toys and stretched out its paws to claw at the ragged arm of an old chair. Verb, intransitive: Young dogs may paw at the floor and whine. Public outrage has given him pause. At this point in my talk, I’ll pause. He paused, giving himself a chance to take a breath. Verb, transitive: The horse rose on its strong haunches, its forelegs pawing the air. He had pawed his way through a copious meal. Some overweight, ugly Casanova had tried to paw her.
Derivatives:
Adjective: pausal, pauseful, pauseless Adverb: pausefully, pauselessly Noun: pauser	Adjective: unpawed Noun: pawer
History of the Word:
Late Middle English from the Old French, which came from the Latin pausa, which itself is from the Greek pausis, from pausein meaning to stop.	Middle English from the Old French poue, probably of Germanic origin and related to the Dutch poot.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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