Hi people. Can any native-speaker tell me what’s the difference between a guarantee and a warranty? Is there a difference or are they synonyms? Warranty more used in the USA? I have consulted several dictionaries, but haven’t really found an answer.
A warranty has a time limit (5 years, 50,000 miles, etc.). A guarantee is an assurance that something will happen as promised. The terms are often used interchangeably in conversation and in advertisements. They also have very distinct meanings in certain professions, such as law, real estate, and insurance, all of which leads to confusion. In general, however, warranties are always in writing and are time-sensitive (even if the warranty is for life). A guarantee is a promise. If it’s in writing, it probably should have been called a warranty.
There is a conversational sense of warrant, which doesn’t seem to be time-sensitive, as in “I’ll warrant that .....” which conveys a sense of certainty, dependability and reliability without any time constraint. It is less forceful than “I’ll guarantee that…”, which leaves no room for doubt.
“I’ll warrant” seems to convey more of a personal undertaking, with the implication “to the best of my knowledge and ability”.
I think that the two terms have both conversational and business meanings that are nor always consistent from region to region and business to business. If I have a protection plan from an automobile dealer, it’s a warranty. If I buy replacement part for the same car, I want it to be guaranteed for at least 30 days.
I would guess that “I’ll warrant you that…” is a colloquialism from days gone by. If I said it friends of business associates, they would look at me funny. As a matter of fact, I would almost guarantee it.
I looked up “guarantee” and “warranty” in the OED just out of curiosity. Seems that both come from OF “guarant” and the dialectical variant, “warant” (I assume that “gua…” became “ua…,” which became “wa…” in spoken OF). No wonder the two are confusing.
All uses of the two words, however, imply some type of assurance on the part of the one doing the guaranteeting or warranting, or the right to some justification on the part of the one on the receiving end of the guarantee/warranty.
I suppose this is how a “warrant” came to be used in law enforcement, since there needs to a some justifiable cause to get one.
It’s funny that both words connote assurance when nobody is sure how to use them
Hi people. Can any native-speaker tell me what’s the difference between a guarantee and a warranty?
In more persuasive terms “guarantee” is usually what you get before and “warranty” after you get the proverbial shaft here in scam’n'scheme-ridden America!
It’s all a matter of “usage,” defined as follows: (1) making an educated guess about how something should be said or written and hoping that the person on the other end of the communication doesn’t know any better or (2) not really caring one way or another.
Examples include “preventative” instead of “preventive,” “between you and I” instead of “between you and me,” “real-uh-tor” instead of “realtor,” etc.
Then, again, Shakespeare made up about words by the bushel, and it doesn’t seem to have hurt his reputation.
Given time, the lamb will lie down with the lion, swords will be beaten into plowshares (or “ploughshares”), and the English we speak today will be considered archaic.
It’s all a matter of “usage,” defined as follows: (1) making an educated guess about how something should be said or written and hoping that the person on the other end of the communication doesn’t know any better or (2) not really caring one way or another.
. . . or “usage” to mean finally settling for what you can best get away with!
Examples include “preventative” instead of “preventive,” “between you and I” instead of “between you and me,” “real-uh-tor” instead of “realtor,” etc.
But one choice “preventative” means the same as the other “preventive” only fills more vital writing space in your lengthy college dissertation! I recall “me” as object pronoun of first person singular “I” therefore grammatical object case of the distinct preposition “between” with nursery school grammar & motion picture screenplays both providing notable exception to our customary rule here. As for regional variation “real-uh-tor” normal pronunciation will always differ from town to town, as well as tongue to tongue!
In my humble opinion, “preventative” is simply a variant of “preventive.” Words like “repetitive” and “competitive” probably caused the variant to occur, although I’m not sure. I know that “preventive” entered the language first, so it sorta makes sense.
“Between you and I” is hyper-correction. It sounds fancier to someone trying to make an impression. Same goes for phrases like “John and myself.” which one usually finds in sentences like “John and myself both drive Mercedes.” Toyota drivers would probably get it right.
As for “real(a)tor,” I don’t think it’s a regionalism. I think it’s and example of epenthesis, which is putting in an extra vowel or consonant sound to make a hard word easier to pronounce. “Athalete” for athlete, “hampster” for “hamster,” and, two of my favorites, “thisaway” and “thataway” are other examples. Mr. Bush’s “nucular” could be another, even though the sounds are swapped rather than something being added. And children don’t say “chimley” because they’re stupid, but because “chimney” requires more oral gymnastics than their little lips and tongues can manage.
