When and where found: I found this while reading the Nagy (1988) article titled Teaching Vocabulary to Improve Reading Comprehension. Nagy was writing about semantic feature analysis and explained that the strategy works best if students can understand some distinctions in meaning.
What it means: Distinction refers to differences or slight differences in meaning. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary online, distinction means "the distinguishing of a difference."
Level of Familiarity: I am very familiar with this word. I use it in my writing and speech. It's also one of my favorite words because it more describes a difference without actually using "difference," which is so overused.
To know well or not: Yes, people of all kinds should know this word well. It enriches our language when used. Using distinction instead of difference also offers less negative connotation that difference can sometimes bring.
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