Words, words and more words....
Posted: Jan 14th, 2018, 6:05 pm
"Free Reign" vs 'Free Rein"
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/201 ... -or-reign/
Rein or reign?
It wasn’t that many moons ago that horses were an integral part of our daily lives: in war and peace, in commerce and agriculture, they proved their worth by pulling various carts, carriages, and barges or they carried individual riders, from messengers to cavalry, on their backs. Since the dawn of the age of the internal-combustion engine, however, horses have slipped from this prominent place: now they feature chiefly in our leisure activities, whether we enjoy having a flutter on a race or riding purely for pleasure.
Giving free rein or reign?
The former central role of the horse in our society is reflected by the influence of all things equestrian on our language. From curtail and marshal to put the cart before the horse and curry favour, English is pervaded by either explicit or long-lost references to our equine friends – so much so that we’re now more likely to encounter them linguistically and figuratively rather than literally.
James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, who famously remarked that ‘a horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle’ would no doubt welcome the current situation. But there is a downside. So distanced are we now from real-life horses and their accoutrements such as saddles, bridles, and reins, that when we write it’s not equestrian-related words that necessarily come to mind. This is demonstrated by the fact that we tend to confuse the spelling reign with rein. The two words mean quite different things, but sound the same when you say them: nowadays, the concept of a monarch’s reign seems to have more immediate relevance to us than the reins used to control a horse.
This misinterpretation is most clearly apparent in the phrase ‘free rein’. To give a horse free rein is to hold the reins loosely so as to allow the animal freedom of movement – it’s the opposite of keeping a tight rein on the horse (controlling it closely). The Oxford English Corpus (OEC), the Oxford Dictionaries’ database of over 2 billion words of 21st-century English, shows that when it comes to free rein, over 38% of the total instances are for the misspelling free reign.
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/201 ... -or-reign/