Tenets and Tenants

Tricksy Twins

In The Battle of Rorke’s Drift, Lady Butler painted a scene in which Lieutenants Bromhead and Chard “hold the place” of a missing captain.

A tenet is something held. Thus, we speak of the tenets of a faith because those are things that believers hold to be true.

A tenant is someone who holds something. A person who rents an apartment, for example, is a tenant because enjoys possession, however temporary, of the premises in question.

One way to remember this difference is to think of a lieutenant, an officer who sometimes takes the place of his superior, the captain. The word is a gift to English from the French, who assembled it from lieu, meaning “place,” and tenant, meaning … you guessed it … “a person who holds.”

Lieu also gives us loo, which we use to designate a place we would rather not mention directly.

For Further Reading:

Peak and Pique

Complements and Compliments

Continuous and Continual