English is a Rubick’s cube of confusing possibilities, but the new book, “100 Words Almost Everyone Mixes Up Or Mangles” from the editors of the American Heritage Dictionary will set straight all the little linguistic hurdles that effect us, once and for all.

Here are a few of the most famous mix-ups featured in the book with captions by the editors of “100 Words.”

*cache / cachet: Cache, “a hidden store,” is sometimes confused with cachet, “prestige, appeal.” Both words come from French, but cache is pronounced like “cash,” while cachet rhymes with “sashay.”
*enervate / energize: Many people believe that enervate is a synonym of energize, but in fact the words are antonyms. Enervate means “to deprive of energy or vitality.”
*flounder / founder: These words are closely related. It’s probably that flounder (the verb, not the fish) is derived from founder. If you flounder, you move clumsily or struggle along (as you might in deep snow), and the word is applied metaphorically to other endeavors in which you have difficulty. If you founder, you sink to the bottom, like a ship, and fail utterly.
*pore / pour: When you read something closely, you pore over it. You only pour over something if you are dumping a liquid on it. It may seem to some that they are pouring their attention or vision over something they are reading, and this metaphor encourages the confusion.
*shined / shone: Shine is one of those “strong verbs” that had an irregular past tense and past participle (shone) but later acquired a regular form ending in -ed as well. Shined takes a personal subject and an object: I shined the flashlight at the bear. Shone is used of light sources and does not take an object: The moon shone over the harbor.
*throe / throw: the noun throe is an odd-looking word that is sometimes confused with the more familiar noun and verb throw.
*wangle / wrangle: When you wangle something, you get it by contrivance of almost any kind: The fan wangled his way into the club by tipping the doorman. Usually wrangle means “to argue,” as in The two comedians wrangled over who should perform first. But it has developed the meaning of “to obtain by persuasion or verbal arguing.” So if you wrangle a ticket to the premiere, you get it by arguing. If you wangle the ticket, your methods could be many and various.

See: The Huffington Post