TPS News

Correct best answer: Replace “burley” with “burly.”

“The old farmer parked his tractor next to the field of flax and climbed nimbly from the machine, his burly frame alighting with practiced grace.”

“Burley” and “burly” sound exactly alike and almost are spelled the same. Yet there is a world of difference between them. “Burley” is a kind of air-cured tobacco that contains less nicotine than some darker varieties of tobacco. Because burley is a farm product, the writer might have had a mental lapse in the course of writing a piece about an agricultural activity, accidentally typing burley instead of “burly,” which describes a person of strong and heavy build. Or perhaps it was just a spelling error. Any word that a writer uses infrequently always should be double-checked to avoid embarrassing episodes of word confusion.
“Burley”（白肋菸草）與 “burly”（魁梧的）發音相同，拼法也非常相似，但還是有一個字母不同。“Burley” 是一種煙燻處理過的菸草，尼古丁比一般深色菸草少。因為白肋菸草是農產品，作者可能在描述農業活動時，一時失誤，不慎將 burly 打成 burley，而 “burly” 是形容一個人體格強壯厚實。也可能作者就只是拼錯字了。若使用自己不常用的字，切記多檢查幾次，以免寫錯出糗。