List - litany

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This is a pair of words which are sometimes confused. They sound similar (they start in the same way, at any rate), and their meanings are not far apart. Nevertheless, confusing them is a malapropism, and so should be avoided.

It is also a malapropism to use liturgy when you mean litany - though this may only concern Christians and theologians.

  • The noun list, in the sense in which academic writers are most likely to want to use it, means simply 'catalogue'; 'a more or less ordered collection' - a shopping list, perhaps; or a list of the contents of a house, or handbag. There is also a verb, 'to list', which means 'to make a list of'. See also the page on the homographs list

When you mean the noun list, do not use litany.

  • litany means '[some of] the words in a religious service.' It does not mean list, and do not use it in that sense.

However, some of its figurative uses, meaning something like 'a recitation of familiar words or sounds', could let some readers think that it merely meant a list. (It shouldn't.) OED gives, in its 'additions series' of 1997, a new meaning "b. A succession or catalogue of phenomena, esp. unfortunate events", which it illustrates with the following quotations, none of which mean simply a list:

    • 1961 M. SPARK Curtain Blown by Breeze in Voices at Play 72, I lay on my bed listening to a litany of tennis noises from where my two brothers played. 1963 P. LARKIN Let. in A. Thwaite Sel. Lett. Philip Larkin (1992) 357, I ought to have written at once..and can only repeat the usual litany of excuses to say why I didn't. ... 1985 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 10 Oct. B3/4 Mercantile has been..looking around for a merger partner..after a litany of troubles, including serious exposure to bad loans. ... 1990 Guardian 28 May 20/7 The Bank Holiday weekend..brought the usual litany of traffic jams and queues at air and sea ports.