marine, maritime, naval, nautical: There are distinctions among these words. Marine and maritime, from the Latin mare, the sea, signify belonging to the sea; naval, from the Latin navis, a ship, signifies belonging to a ship; nautical from the Latin nauta, a sailor, signifies belonging to a sailor or to the sailor’s pursuit, navigation. A maritime nation must be well supplied with marine stores, must have a large naval force and be skilled in matters nautical.
marry: Now used correctly of both acceptance in marriage and union in matrimony: formerly condemned as incorrect.
masses: The masses, in the sense of the common people, the great body of the people, exclusive of the wealthy or privileged, has so entered into popular speech that the expression is now beyond criticism, although exception has been taken to it, on the ground that the subject of the mass should be specifically named. The masses of what?
matinee from the French matin, morning, is strictly a morning reception; and to talk of an “afternoon matinée” is therefore, if not a solecism, a contradiction in terms. Still nowadays the word is used to mean an afternoon rather than a morning reception, or entertainment.
me: “It is I,” never “It is me.” And so with all personal pronouns following the verb to be and in apposition with its subject. The same form of error is constantly made in such phrases as “She is better looking than me,” where, if the elliptical verb were supplied, the correct construction would readily be seen to be “She is better looking than I (am).”
mean: A word often erroneously used. Its generic meaning is “common” and therefrom it has been accepted as meaning “of humble origin, of low rank or quality, of inferior character or grade” and is used in England as a synonym for “miserly in expenditure, stingy.” In the United States it is commonly misused as a substitute for “ill-tempered; disagreeable.”
mean. Compare [INTEND].
means: As means or some means covers “any means,” it is pleonastic to write “by some means or another.” For the same reason some means or other may be condemned; its only excuse is that “other” refers not to “means” but qualifies the word “procedure” (understood). If this form of speech is desired, the correct utterance would be one mean or another.
memoranda should never be used as a singular. It is the plural of memorandum and the distinction should always be observed in speech or writing.