“Perspective” has to do with sight, as in painting, and is usually a noun. “Prospective” generally has to do with the future (compare with “What are your prospects, young man?”) and is usually an adjective. But beware: there is also a rather old-fashioned but fairly common meaning of the word “prospect” that has to do with sight: “as he climbed the mountain, a vast prospect opened up before him.”
When the vibration of a wheel is reduced it is damped, but when you drive through a puddle your tire is dampened. “Dampened” always has to do with wetting, if only metaphorically: “The announcement that Bob’s parents were staying home after all dampened the spirits of the party-goers.” The parents are being a wet blanket.
It is tempting to think that your attention might be aroused to a high point by “peaking” your curiosity; but in fact, “pique” is a French word meaning “prick,” in the sense of “stimulate.” The expression has nothing to do with “peek,” either. Therefore the expression is “my curiosity was piqued.”
An amazing number of people write about “mountain peeks.” A peak is a summit; a peek is a glimpse.
The most common meaning of “revert” is “to return to an earlier condition, time, or subject.” When Dr. Jekyll drank the potion he reverted to the brutish behavior of Mr. Hyde. But in South Asia it has become common to use “revert” instead of “reply,” writing when people want you to get back to them about something: “revert to me at this address.” In standard English this would literally mean they are asking you to become them, so it is best to stick with “reply” when dealing with non-South Asian correspondents. Even some South Asians disapprove of this use of “revert.”
Originally these two spellings were used interchangeably, but they have come to be distinguished from each other in modern times. Most of the time the word people intend is “compliment": nice things said about someone ("She paid me the compliment of admiring the way I shined my shoes.”). “Complement,” much less common, has a number of meanings associated with matching or completing. Complements supplement each other, each adding something the others lack, so we can say that “Alice’s love for entertaining and Mike’s love for washing dishes complement each other.” Remember, if you’re not making nice to someone, the word is “complement.”
A complement can also be the full number of something needed to make it complete: “my computer has a full complement of video-editing programs.” If it is preceded by “full” the word you want is almost certainly “complement.”
