• 2-minute read
• 15th October 2015

Word Choice: Exhort vs. Extort

Although ‘exhort’ and ‘extort’ differ in meaning, it’s still easy to get these terms mixed up. This is partly because they’re not words most people use in their day-to-day lives, while the fact that they look similar on paper makes it difficult to spot mistakes when they occur.

But in academic writing and business settings even small errors can impact heavily upon the clarity and quality of your work. To ensure that you always get your message across, it’s therefore important to learn how these terms should be used.

Exhort (Passionately Advise)

An ‘exhortation’ is a passionate attempt to persuade someone to do something, so the verb ‘exhort’ means to strongly urge someone towards some end:

Bryan cried out as Tom left for the airport, exhorting him to stay.

Extort (Obtain via Intimidation)

The verb ‘extort’ means to use coercion or intimidation to obtain something:

Tom made the decision to leave after Bryan used personal secrets to extort his affection.

We typically use ‘extort’ in relation to the crime of extortion. This is when someone obtains money, property or services by threatening violence:

Al Capone rose to power on the back of ruthless extortion.

Exhort or Extort?

Both ‘exhort’ and ‘extort’ have very specific meanings, so as long as you remember the situations in which they’re used it should be straightforward to tell them apart:

Exhort = Passionately advise something

Extort = Gain something using threats or psychological pressure

Hopefully, this has clarified the meaning of ‘exhort’ and ‘extort’. But even if you know how to use these words, it’s still possible to make a typo: the ‘h’ and ‘t’ keys are very close to one another on a keyboard after all!

And since this kind of error is easy to overlook, it’s always worth having a professional check your work. Try sending a 500-word sample to Proofed for free today to see what we can do!