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Roberto Henry Ebelt

Adverse and averse.

Adverse means harmful or unfavorable: "Adverse market conditions caused the IPO to be poorly subscribed." 

Averse refers to feelings of dislike or opposition: "I was averse to paying $18 a share for a company that generates no revenue."

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Affect and effect

Affect means to influence: "Impatient investors affected our roll-out date.

Effect means to accomplish something: "The board effected a sweeping policy change."

How you use effect or affect can be tricky.

For example, a board can affect changes by influencing them and can effect   changes by directly implementing them.

Bottom line is: use effect if you're making it happen; use affect if you're having an impact on something that someone else is trying to make happen.

As for nouns (no que diz respeito a esta palavra quando funciona como substantivo) effect is almost always correct:

"Once he was fired he was given 20 minutes to gather his personal effects." 

Affect refers to an emotional state, so unless you are a psychologist you probably have little reason to use it.

Note que em espanhol, a expressão “efectos personales”, sempre mencionada ao fim de cada voo, significa “objetos pessoais” ou “personal belongings”.

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Bring and take:

Both have to do with objects you move or carry. The difference is in the point of reference: you bring things here and you take them there. You ask people to bring something to you, and you ask people to take something to someone or somewhere else.

“Can you bring an appetizer to John's party”?

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Compliment and complement:

Compliment means to say something nice (elogiar).

Complement means to add to, enhance, improve, complete, or bring close to perfection; the number or quantity that makes something complete: we have a full complement of staff.

I may compliment your staff and their service, but if you have no current openings you have a full complement of staff.

Or your new app may complement your website. For which I may decide to compliment you.

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Criteria and criterion

"We made the decision based on one overriding criterion.” Criterion é singular. Criteria é plural.

Remember: one criterion, two or more criteria.

Or just use "reason" or "factors" and you won’t have to worry about getting it wrong.

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Discreet and discrete

Discreet means careful, cautious, showing good judgment: "We made discreet inquiries to determine whether the founder was interested in selling her company."

Discrete means individual, separate, or distinct: "We analyzed data from a number of discrete market segments to determine overall pricing levels."

And if you get confused, remember you don't use “discretion” to work through sensitive issues; you exercise discretion.

Eles, os que falam inglês, também cometem muitos enganos, assim como nós que falamos inglês como segunda língua. Temos que continuar aprendendo inglês durante toda a vida, pois este idioma é uma verdadeira “mão na roda”. Pode ser utilizado até nos boondocks (lugar onde o diabo perdeu as botas) do Paquistão.