Albeit - howbeit

This is a pair of words classed by Fowler 1931 as an example of his category Malaprop 5:

Words whose meaning is misapprehended without apparent cause,

although it might also be said that they belong to Malaprop 4:

Words having properly no connexion with each other, but confused through superficial resemblance.

• Albeit is properly a conjunction. It means the same as 'though', or 'although'. It can be used more firmly as a contrast, 'even though' or 'even if'. It is rather archaic, and is rarely found outside academic and legal English.

• Howbeit is even more archaic, although still to be found in academic writing - sometimes by the confusion that Fowler is trying to warn us against. It is nowadays only a sentence adverbial, roughly equivalent ot 'nevertheless' or 'however' (although OED records an obsolete usage as a conjunction, with a last quotation dated 1634.)

Fowler's concern is mostly with the implications for punctuation. As howbeit is most commonly used at the start of a sentence although it is not a conjunction (~ 'joining word'), it should normally be preceded by a full stop. As albeit, on the contrary, is a conjunction, it should normally be preceded by a comma.

The etymology of both these words may be worth attention. They contain a use of the subjunctive mood of the verb 'to be': each was originally a three-word phrase, 'al[though] it [may] be' and 'how[ever] it may be'. Each had a past tense, all were it and how were it. Neither of these past tenses is current in present-day English.