A merchant is someone who works in or owns a retail business and sells goods. In Paris you can stroll from merchant to merchant, buying a loaf of bread in one shop and a wedge of cheese in another.

The noun merchant has its Latin roots in the word merchari, meaning to trade. Other words from the same root include "market," "merchandise," and "mercantile." In some areas, independent merchants have banded together to combine advertising dollars and compete against malls and big box stores. You should ask your neighborhood book merchant if they've considered joining a group like this.

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When you give counsel or counsel someone, you give advice. If your neighbor is suing you because your dog keeps eating his begonias, you might seek the counsel of a dog trainer or, if that doesn't work, a lawyer.

council / counsel

A council is meeting for discussion or advice, but to counsel is a verb meaning to give advice. They sound exactly the same, but the language council met and decided to counsel you on how to keep them straight.   Continue reading...

You can get professional counsel — from a minister or psychiatrist or someone else trained in counseling — or you can get counsel from anyone you trust. You can ask your stylish friend to counsel you on your hairstyle, or you could write to Dear Abby for counsel on your lovelife. Counsel is also what you call a lawyer who represents you in court. In your begonia-eating dog case, your lawyer would be counsel for the defense.

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An admiral is the commander of a fleet. In the navy, admiral is one of the highest ranks.

The military is full of rankings, such as captain, private, major, and corporal. Another is admiral, a ranking specific to the navy. While a captain is in charge of one ship, an admiral leads more than one ship: a bunch of ships, which are called a fleet. There are also a few different types of admirals, such as full admiral and vice admiral. Similarly, Battlestar Galactica's Commander Adama becomes Admiral Adama as a result of leading more than one ship.

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A phobia is an intense and irrational fear of something. If seeing a spider makes you scream and jump on top of a table, then you might suffer from a phobia.

The thing to remember about phobia is that it describes an irrational fear. If you're afraid of a black widow spider, for example, that's not a phobia — it's just smart, because the spider is poisonous. If you're afraid of all spiders, however, and the sight of a harmless daddy long legs spider has you shaking in terror, then you may have a phobia. In this case, it's a phobia because your reaction is irrational.

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A synapse is the tiny gap across which a nerve cell, or neuron, can send an impulse to another neuron. When all your synapses are firing, you're focused and your mind feels electric.

Synapse is not an old word. It was coined in an 1897 physiology textbook, from the Greek sun- "together" + haptein "join" — it's the space across which nerve cells can "join together" to communicate from one cell to the next or from a neuron to a muscle. When a chemical or electrical impulse makes that tiny leap across one of your synapses, which you have throughout your nervous system, your body can do what your brain tells it to do
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