Commonly Misused Words: Knew and New

Three different blog posts, prior to today's post, focused on some commonly misused words. (You can visit the July 9th post, the July 15th post, or the July 22nd post if you'd like to see those topics and participate in the activities.) Today, we'll focus on the words "knew" and "new."

The word "knew" is the past tense of the verb "know." It means having knowledge or understanding of something in the past. For example, I knew that the Olympics would begin on August 8th.

The word "new" is an adjective. This word has many meanings, but a commonality is in the fact that it's used to describe something that's recent, fresh, or unused. For example, I may need to buy a new home computer soon and get some new paper for my printer.

Let's look at the sentence below.
Carol knew that her brother needed some new shoes for school.

Those words ("knew" and "new") could not be switched correctly. Carol had knowledge (in the past) that her brother needed some fresh, unused shoes.

Now that you've had a chance to explore the meanings of those words, try using them correctly! You can either write two separate sentences that illustrate the word's meaning or you can write one sentence (like I did above) that uses both words correctly.

:-)