Parry and dodge refer to moving quickly or cleverly to avoid a physical blow, a verbal attack, or some other aggression or demand. To dodge a blow is to avoid being struck by moving out of the way or behind something. To parry a thrust in fencing is to meet it with a deflecting move and, ideally, open a space for one’s counterattack. These two maneuvers, when transferred to more figurative contexts, have contrasting connotations. Long before the term draft dodger was coined, dodging was often associated with the shifty, evasive side of cleverness. Dodging the question in verbal exchanges, as politicians often do, is effective but not necessarily admirable. To parry a question or parry criticism is not to avoid it, but to skillfully fend it off while turning it to one’s advantage.

You don’t need to sink your teeth into a beautiful wax peach to get the difference between appetizing and delectable. Appetizing food appeals to or stimulates the appetite, so food can have an appetizing smell or appearance, or be described in an appetizing way. People may remark that your strawberry soup looks delectable, but strictly speaking, they have to try it before declaring it to be so, because delectable means delightful to the taste, or delicious. Not surprisingly, you’ll most often find this adjective describing things to eat: delectable desserts, a delectable morsel, delectable fruit, a delectable feast.

The nouns spectrum and gamut both refer to a broad range of similar things arranged along a scale, but there are significant degrees of difference between them. The scientific meanings of spectrum carry over to its general usage, where emphasis is on the overlap and hence continuity between items on or along the spectrum. A spectrum is often contrasted with an either-or conception of something. In a spectrum of political beliefs, for example, liberals and conservatives are on the same continuum. Gamut, as suggested by the common phrase the whole gamut, emphasizes the comprehensiveness of a range and hence the variety or contrast encompassed by it: Love involves the whole gamut of emotions, from despair to joy. Of just about any set of wide-ranging and varied things (reactions to a movie, a dessert menu) we can say it runs (or covers or spans) the gamut.