General Walters is … presently the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. COD11 lists both usages without comment; CHAMBERS merely flags the sense of "now" as "N Amer, especially US". Disputed usage: I am presently reading Wikipedia. Undisputed usage: I will be finished with that activity presently. Q Quartary and quaternary. Quartary (from ) is the fourth member of an ordinal number word series beginning with (primary, secondary, tertiary) and continuing with (quintary, sextary, ...). Quaternary (from ) is the fourth member of a distributive number word series beginning with (singular, binary, ternary) and continuing with (quinary, senary, septenary, octonary ... centenary). In biology, the non-standard usage "quaternary structure" is so firmly entrenched that to refer to "quartary structure" would be unfamiliar. Likewise in geology, the terms Tertiary and Quaternary are used for successive geological periods. Historically, they were a continuation of Primary and Secondary, so Quaternary is non-standard but also firmly established. R raise and rear – Some people argue that raise should not be used to mean an upbringing of a being, since raise originally meant to cause something or someone to rise, and rear meant to bring up something or someone. Although raise was formerly condemned in this sense, it may now be considered standard, at least with regard to animals, and is common at least informally with regard to human children. Disputed usage: You rear hogs, but you raise children. Disputed usage: You raise hogs, but you rear children. Undisputed usage: You rear hogs, and you rear children. raise and rise – According to traditional rules of English grammar, "raise is almost always used transitively", whereas "rise is almost exclusively intransitive in its standard uses". However, because of their similar meanings, they may be used by many informal speakers as though they were interchangeable. Disputed usage: The elevator was raising. Disputed usage: The elevator was being risen. Undisputed usage: The elevator was rising. Undisputed usage: The elevator was being raised. refute – The traditional meaning of refute is "disprove" or "dispel with reasoned arguments". It is now often used as a synonym for "deny". The latter sense is listed without comment by M-W and AHD4, while CHAMBERS tags it as colloquial. COD11 states that "Traditionalists object to [the use of refute as deny], but it is now widely accepted in standard English." However, RH does not mention this use at all. Refute is also often