Make Your Editor Cry: Abhorrent vs. Aberrant
Wearing a pink feather boa and sequined purple top hat to a funeral? Aberrant. Stealing the corpse? Abhorrent.
Abhorrent means disgusting, horrible, or detestable . When you abhor something, you loathe it. Its Latin root means, “to shudder, recoil,” which is what you do when faced with something abhorrent like a film featuring Jude Law, or someone abhorrent like a serial killer, many of our elected officials, or someone who talks in theaters.
If you can remember that the err in aberrant indicates an error and that something horrific is abhorrent, your word choice will be neither aberrant nor abhorrent.
Aberrant (no “h” and “e/a” instead of “o”/e) means unusual, strange, or straying from a defined path. It’s not necessarily nasty. It’s from the Latin, aberrantem, “wandering away.” It’s related to err, a mistake, through Old French and Latin. If a behavior is aberrant, it’s just not normal.
Examples:
Incorrect:
The other party-goers viewed his avoidance of alcohol as abhorrent behavior.
I found her blatant bigotry aberrant.
Correct:
The other party-goers viewed his avoidance of alcohol as aberrant behavior.
I found her blatant bigotry abhorrent.
Gregg Bridgeman is the Editor-in-Chief at Olivia Kimbrell Press. He is husband to best-selling Christian author Hallee Bridgeman and parent to three. He continues to proudly serve in the US Armed Forces and has done so in either an active or reserve capacity for more than twenty years as an airborne and air assault qualified paratrooper, earning a Bronze Star for his service. Most importantly, he was ordained in October of 2001 after surrendering his life to Christ decades earlier.