I was struck anew by how lucky those of us who are native speakers of English are. Nearly every paper and all of the plenary lectures at the conference were given in English. The business meeting was conducted in English. Conversations at meals, unless restricted to fellow members of a contingent from a single country, were in English. Hotels, restaurants, shops, market vendors — everyone spoke English.

I was also struck by how precise the non-native speakers at the conference were in their use of English, how much more careful than native speakers they generally were to observe nice distinctions between terms. Granted, the attendees were highly educated people specializing in linguistics, so they could hardly be considered representative of their compatriots en masse. Yet I had to wonder how many native speakers of English would have carefully observed the difference between distinct and distinctive, as a fellow attendee did when he remarked to me that a speaker had a distinctive style that was a distinct contrast with that of the previous speaker.

The difference between distinct and distinctive is subtle. Both words describe something that stands out, that is unmistakable for anything else. To understand the difference in use, we need to turn to the contexts in which the two words are used, to their collocational environment. The collocates of distinct — the words that most frequently occur with it — include advantage and disadvantage; difference; group and community; and area and boundary. Distinct is frequently used in the phrases be distinct from and as distinct from, but in neither case would distinctive substitute for distinct. A distinct mark is clearly visible, a distinct pleasure or honor is an unambiguous one. Something that is distinct, it would seem, can be clearly delineated: here is the line between one thing and another, and which side each belongs on is obvious.

Distinctive things, on the other hand, have one or more characteristics that make them stand out from among their peers in the groups they belong to, as opposed to being entirely different things altogether. A distinctive moustache is still a type of moustache. A distinctive voice is still a voice. Distinctive designs and styles stand out because of their originality or audacity in departing from the expected.

It was a distinct pleasure to reconnect with my European colleagues, some of whom said they’d missed my distinctive laugh. I hope it was a compliment.