Principal and principle: the difference between the words is a letter at the end. In elementary school, a distinct memory of the head of my school telling kids just how easy it was to spot the difference between the words: his spelling ended in “pal," that's how you could tell the difference, because he was our friend.

But what of the other word? What does “principle” really mean in the American English lexicon? In the way of things for children, I recall trying to piece together the meaning of that second word from how it was used. My father would say things like, “a man has to stand behind his principles,” and it would be said with the same intense and uncompromising brevity from which he would tell me that “a man’s word is worth more than his weight in gold.” Other uses came from my co

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