Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

"Reverse" probably indicates that the effect will stop if the cause is
removed.  "Correct" means that something else can be used to make the
side effect stop having bad consequences.

Think of medicines.  Sedatives will make a person sleepy; to reverse
the effect and stop being sleepy, stop taking the sedative.  To be
able to keep taking the sedative because it does something good
anyway, take a second medication, an "upper," which will correct that
bad side effect.

Hm.  I may have "reverse" and "correct" backwards.

If something is making glaciers get shorter, reversing that means
making them get longer again**. Not impossible, since generally
glaciers get bigger at the cold end and melt or fall off into the sea
at the other end.

Correcting in this case would be more like creaing ice elswhere and
piling at the melting end of the glacier.    This example wouldn't
work but in other cases, correcting is possible.

If termites are eating a house, it's usually possible to stop them,
but it's probably impossible to reverse what they've done.   But it's
usually possible to rip out the damaged wood and replace it with new
wood.   Ripping out and replacing is correction.

C