Tenant - tenet

From Awe

It is quite common to find thew two words tenant and tenet confused - perhaps because they sound very similar in hurried speech; and perhaps because many new to academic life do not know the word tenet, and so take it to be tenant, which most native English speakers do know.

• Tenant, literally, is a term from law, and particularly land law. A tenant is someone who occupies land or building(s) by virtue of a regular payment of rent to the owner of the land or building(s). (Some tenants do not pay regularly, or even at all; but there is always a notion that payment of that sort is at the heart of the tenancy. The reverse of the tenant - the owner who is paid - is the landlord.
• Tenet, on the other hand, is a term from intellectual or academic discussion in almost any field. A tenet is a principle, an axiom or some other form of fundamental idea held by someone. More trivially, it may be just an opinion.

Etymological note: Both tenant and tenet come from the same root, the Latin verb tenēre, 'to hold'. A tenant is from the -ing participle tenens, '[one who is] holding'; tenet is the 3rd person singular of the present tense, '[s/]he holds'. This is also the root of lieutenant.