Once again I need your help. My students and I were reading a text yesterday when one of my students asked me if he could replace the word "deserve" by "worth" in this sentence: "The city didn �t deserve its bad reputation." I obviously told him he couldn �t and then he asked me the reason. I told him "worth" is an adjective always preceded by the verb to be and followed by a noun or a gerund. Then I told him that deserve involves you merit something: "You don �t deserve your girlfriend." But then he told me you can also say "He is worth every penny.". I told him I would look up the difference for the next class but I have no more information about the use of these words. Could you please help me?

 

Another point I need help on is about the words pollute and contaminate. Are they synonyms? Can these terms been used interchangeably? Could you please give me examples?

 

Thanks in advance for your help and time.

 

 

You are right about "worth". To deserve is to merit (similar to your Spanish word "merecer" - I think that �s right), and worth is value.

 

I deserve a raise.

Behavior like that deserves some punishment.

 

My house isn �t worth $150,000.

 

Pollute and contaminate are very similar, and can often be interchanged. I think of pollute as being bigger or more general in its results.

 

That factory is polluting/contaminating the environment.

The small difference I sense is that contaminating has the feel of contributing a single item (CO2, lead, etc.) into the environment, while polluting is a more general dirtying. It �s more a difference in how the words feel to me than in their actual definitions.

 

Be sure to wear gloves so you don �t contaminate the blood sample. (not pollute).

 

If you leave the potato salad out in the sun, it will become contaminated with salmonella. (not polluted).

 

I hope this helps,

Bruce

 

Bruce