WNW: Homophones the Sequel

I keep a running list of homophone blunders I come across, and when it gets long enough, we get another Word Nerd Wednesday featuring the latest fun.

7 more word pairs to keep straight:

eke/eek

• If you're struggling to make ends meet, you eke out a living, meaning you get it with great difficulty.
• When you open the pantry and a mouse scurries between your feet you shriek, "Eek!"

discrete/discreet

I'm going to be honest; this is a word pair I regularly pause to think over to make sure I get it right.

• When I write a novel, it's discrete, individually distinct from any other.
• If Sammy hears a juicy piece of gossip, she knows how to be discreet by using good judgment and not blabbering it about publicly.

bolder/boulder

• In high school, I was generally too shy to speak up. I had to learn to be bolder in class.
• I used to live on a street named after a huge gray boulder, a stone taller than my ten-year-old self.

latter/later

I've seen this pair mixed up a lot lately, with the second word used as the first, even by highly educated folks. It has me scratching my head. A refresher:

• Laura had to to decide between buying the red or green blouse and opted for the latter. In other words, she's now the proud owner of a green blouse, since it was listed second.
• Had Laura arrived at the store an hour later, the green one might have already been sold, so she'd have bought the red one.

passed/past

I address this pair in my grammar book, but it bears repeating. The first word here (passed) is a verb that already happened:

• As Dave rode his bike to work, cars passed him awfully close.

The other word (past) could be either a noun or a preposition. (It can also be an adjective, but let's keep it simple for today.)

• Noun: Tell me about your the last three years of your past.
• Preposition: Scott walked right past Julie without recognizing her.

allot/a lot

Peeve, peeve, peeve. First of all, note that I didn't write alot. That would be because it's not a word. You need the space between the A and the LOT. TWO words. For the love.

The two words in action:

• Pete planned to allot thirty minutes for his lunch break at work.
• On second thought, make that forty-five. He was starving and knew he'd eat a lot.

idle/idol

This is a recent confused pair. I'm guessing it has something to do with the popularity of American Idol. (Although if that's true, wouldn't more people know the difference? It's a puzzler.)

• Janice planned lots of activities for summer to keep her children from being idle.
• Jenny's mother wished she'd find someone else to look up to instead of her idol, Lindsay Lohan.

The other day, I borrowed a book from my dad that will likely inspire future WNW posts and will definitely bring me lots of nerdy joy: Diction of Confusing Words and Meanings.

I'm salivating already.