Answer: "pour" vs. "pore"

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

campylobacter wants to know "When do you use 'pour' vs. 'pore'?"

We all know what pouring is, so this should be easy. But it's not. Our friends from Stargate SG-1 will help illustrate.

To pour in the literal sense refers to the flowing or streaming of a liquid or a substance that behaves as a liquid; that's the easy part.

Jack poured another cup of coffee for Daniel, then went back to waiting for the translation to be done.

Sam crinkled her nose in annoyance as she poured sand out of her boot.

Rain poured down on the tent, drowning out all but shouted conversation.

Pour is also used figuratively, which is where the confusion starts.

Replicators poured through the opening they'd chewed in the engine room wall, swarming into the corridor.

Reports were pouring in about the "meteors" over Antarctica, and the SGC was working overtime with the White House on spin.

Jack was mighty suspicious of a Tok'ra not wearing the usual utilitarian uniform; Anise looked like she was poured into that skimpy outfit.

There's a liquid feel to the visual images represented here, a flowing, streaming, or flooding kind of metaphor.

So can't we use pour figuratively and say that Daniel pours over his books? Maybe his eyes and attention are cascading down the lines of text? The problem is, that's not what's really happening; if Daniel were pouring his gaze over the words, they'd be rushing past his eyes too quickly for him to make sense of them.


To pore over a book is to be absorbed in the reading or studying of it—this is what our scholarly friends will be doing.

Daniel pored over the Ancient text, looking for a clue.

Rodney pored quickly through Sam's notes, hoping to find a way to reverse the process.

I use a visual image to remember when to use pore, related to the noun version. It's etymologically incorrect, because the verb and the noun come from completely different roots, but it works for me.

If you want to examine a pore in your skin, you'll need a big magnifying glass, right? So:

Daniel pours/pores over the hieroglyphs on the cartouche in the temple.

Which one is correct? Picture a little cartoon Daniel. Is he sweeping past the cartouche in a rush and flowing out the temple doors? Or is he standing in front of the cartouche peering through a magnifying glass at the hieroglyphs? He's poring over them! He is examining the information closely, the way he would examine closely a tiny object like a pore.

When your character is looking over something with enough attention to pick up the small details, that's when you use pore. And if he or she really is rushing eyes past without really seeing, I'd use a different word than pour just to eliminate possible confusion.

Comments

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I wish I had the art skills to render the image. :-)