Dear Geist,

What's the difference between instinctive and instinctual? The more dictionaries I page through, the more I scratch my head. Maybe the best word would be . . . some other word?

—Arbor Fontaigne, Cyberspace

Dear Arbor Fontaigne,

For most of us, the two words mean pretty much the same thing: arising from or having to do with an unthinking response. Both the Canadian Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries list instinctual at the end of the entry for instinctive, without defining it. Bryan Garner, compiler of Garner's Modern American Usage, refers to instinctual as a “needless variant.” But some writers, particularly in the science community, use both instinctive and instinctual, the latter a bit more remote, meaning “having to do with instincts.”

—The Editors