Dictionary Related Quotes

...I realized that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words- maiden, wife, mother - told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs., of whore, of common scold?... Which words would define me? Which would be used to judge or contain?

But why people need privacy? Why privacy is important? In China, every family live together, grandparents, parents, daughter, son and their relatives too. Eat together and share everything, talk about everything. Privacy make people lonely. Privacy make family fallen apart.

Now more than ever, 33 Himmel Street was a place of silence, and it did not go unnoticed that the Duden Dictionary was completely and utterly mistaken, especially with its related words. Silence was not quiet or calm, and it was not peace.

There is, in every man, an animal...imprisoned, like a galley slave, and there is a gate, and if we open the gate, the animal will rush out, like the slave finding his way to escape.

Mistake is a single page in a part of Life .... but Relation is a book of dictionary ----- So don't lose a full Book for a single page.

The problem with the alphabet is that it bears no relation to anything at all, and when words are arranged alphabetically they are uselessly separated. In the OED, for example, aardvarks are 19 volumes away from the zoo, yachts are 18 volumes from the beach, and wine is 17 volumes from the nearest corkscrew.

The title derived from the fact that all the words between timid and Timbuktu in very small dictionaries relate to time.

For a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its readers, a dictionary is absolutely passive and may legitimately be read in an infinite number of ways.

The Dictionary defines Soul Mate as: A person who is perfectly suited to another in temperament. Before I met mine, I didn't know I was bonkers!

One day or another, it is true, dust, supposing it persists, will probably begin to gain the upper hand over domestics, invading the immense ruins of abandoned buildings, deserted dockyards; and, at that distant epoch, nothing will remain to ward off night-terrors, for lack of which we have become such great book-keepers...

In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.

beauty is often very relative, just as what is decent in Japan is indecent in Rome, and what is fashionable in Paris, is not fashionable in Pekin; and he saved himself the trouble of composing a long treatise on beauty.

(…) most people don`t know my name, and nobody knows hat to call me in relation to you.

fem·i·nist   n. a person who supports feminism.   adj. of, relating to, or supporting feminism: feminist literature.  late 19th cent.: from French féministe, from Latin femina 'woman'.

Cartesian,adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo sum- 'I think I think, therefore I think that I am'; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realised that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words—maiden, wife, mother—told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs., of whore, of common scold?

Family was exhausting, and complicated, and everyone was their own person, which meant you had just as much chance of getting along with them as you did any stranger off the street. Just sharing blood wasn't enough to make someone proper family; she'd take Cook over most of her blood relatives, any day.

It became clear that Keisha Blake could not start something without finishing it. If she climbed onto the boundary wall of Caldwell, she was compelled to walk the entire wall, no matter the obstructions in her path (beer cans, branches). This compulsion, applied to other fields, manifested itself as "intelligence." Every unknown word sent her to a dictionary--in search of something like "completion"--and every book led to another book, a process that, of course, could never be completed. This route through early life gave her no small portion of joy, and, indeed, it seemed at first that her desires and her capacities were basically aligned. She wanted to read things--could not resist wanting to read things--and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, that she should receive any praise for such reflexive habits baffled the girl, for she knew herself to be fantastically stupid about many things. Wasn't it possible that what others mistook for intelligence was in fact only a sort of mutation of the will?

How about adding to the dictionary a word we can all relate to: complesult. A remark that is part compliment, part insult, like, ‘You’re pretty smart, for a girl.

Duden Dictionary Meaning #4. Wort - Word: A meaningful unit of language / a promise / a short remark, statement, or conversation. Related words: term, name, expession.

(…) most people don`t know my name, and nobody knows what to call me in relation to you.

CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum—whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum— "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

Fear My dictionary informs me that the word “fear” comes from the Old English word faer, which is related to the word faerie and means to cast enchantments. Faerie, or fairy, has roots in the word fae or fay, meaning of the Fates, or fate, which in turn is linked to faith, derived from the Latin word meaning to trust… He appeared, when I fist sumoned him, tall and stooped, big, hooded, and draped in mists and swathes of gray, from pale to almost black. There was a line between him and me. He walked over the line and stood just behind my left shoulder. He’s there now. He stoops and whispers in my ear, “Watch out!” “Don’t trust what you’re hearing,” “Slow down the car down,” “Trust the omens!” He is Fear. He warns me of probable danger, and I listen to him because he is always correct. Fear is your ally! It is your instinct to survive. Worry is a useless thing, it achieves nothing. Resolution is the key to success.

Now more than ever, 33 Himmel Street was a place of silence, and it did not go unnoticed that the Duden Dictionary was completely and utterly mistaken, especially with its related words. Silence was not quiet or calm, and it was not peace.

23 Emotions people feel, but can’t explain 1.    Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own. 2.    Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable. 3.    Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place. 4.    Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self. 5.    Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops. 6.    Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat. 7.    Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet. 8.    Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like. 9.    Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head. 10.    Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm. 11.    Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist. 12.    Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening 13.    Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out. 14.    Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence. 15.    Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire. 16.    Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it. 17.    Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone. 18.    Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness. 19.    Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore. 20.    Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time. 21.    Liberosis: The desire to care less about things. 22.    Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years. 23.    Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective. John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Simon & Schuster, November 16, 2021)

INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction. Two Seidlitz powders, one in blue And one in white, together drew And having each a pleasant sense Of t'other powder's excellence, Forsook their jackets for the snug Enjoyment of a common mug. So close their intimacy grew One paper would have held the two. To confidences straight they fell, Less anxious each to hear than tell; Then each remorsefully confessed To all the virtues he possessed, Acknowledging he had them in So high degree it was a sin. The more they said, the more they felt Their spirits with emotion melt, Till tears of sentiment expressed Their feelings. Then they effervesced! So Nature executes her feats Of wrath on friends and sympathetes The good old rule who won't apply, That you are you and I am I.

Worse yet, he blundered from the start, asking her why she felt she needed to be hurt. “Why are people gay?” she shot back, suddenly unshy. “Why does anyone have a foot fetish? One of my earlier memories is of looking up words related to—to this, in the dictionary. It just happens, you know?

One summer day when I was about ten, I sat on a stoop, chatting with a group of girls my age. We were all in pigtails and shorts and basically just killing time. What were we discussing? It could have been anything—school, our older brothers, an anthill on the ground. At one point, one of the girls, a second, third, or fourth cousin of mine, gave me a sideways look and said, just a touch hotly, “How come you talk like a white girl?” The question was pointed, meant as an insult or at least a challenge, but it also came from an earnest place. It held a kernel of something that was confusing for both of us. We seemed to be related but of two different worlds. “I don’t,” I said, looking scandalized that she’d even suggest it and mortified by the way the other girls were now staring at me. But I knew what she was getting at. There was no denying it, even if I just had. I did speak differently than some of my relatives, and so did Craig. Our parents had drilled into us the importance of using proper diction, of saying “going” instead of “goin’ ” and “isn’t” instead of “ain’t.” We were taught to finish off our words. They bought us a dictionary and a full Encyclopaedia Britannica set, which lived on a shelf in the stairwell to our apartment, its titles etched in gold. Any time we had a question about a word, or a concept, or some piece of history, they directed us toward those books. Dandy, too, was an influence, meticulously correcting our grammar or admonishing us to enunciate our words when we went over for dinner. The idea was we were to transcend, to get ourselves further. They’d planned for it. They encouraged it. We were expected not just to be smart but to own our smartness—to inhabit it with pride—and this filtered down to how we spoke.

Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realized that the words most often used to define us were words that describe our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words - maiden, wife, mother - told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs., of whore, of common scold? I looked out the window towards the scriptorium, the place where the definitions of all these words were being bedded down. Which words would define me? Which would be used to judge or contain? I was no maiden, yet I was no man’s wife. And I had no desire to be.

Database Management System [Origin: Data + Latin basus "low, mean, vile, menial, degrading, ounterfeit."] A complex set of interrelational data structures allowing data to be lost in many convenient sequences while retaining a complete record of the logical relations between the missing items. -- From The Devil's DP Dictionary

Though a work of literature can be read in a number of ways, this number is finite and can be arranged in a hierarchical order; some readings are obviously “truer” than others, some doubtful, some obviously false, and some, like reading a novel backwards, absurd. That is why, for a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its readers, a dictionary is absolutely passive and may legitimately be read in an infinite number of ways.

A good writer is likely to know and use, or find out and use, the words for common architectural features, like "lintel," "newel post," "corbelling," "abutment," and the concrete or stone "hems" alongisde the steps leading up into churches or public buildings; the names of carpenters' or pumbers' tools, artists' materials, or whatever furniture, implements, or processes his characters work with; and the names of common household items, including those we do not usually hear named, often as we use them. Above all, the writer should stretch his vocabulary of ordinary words and idioms--words and idioms he sees all the time and knows how to use but never uses. I mean here not language that smells of the lamp but relatively common verbs, nouns, and adjectives. The serious-mined way to vocabulary is to read through a dictionary, making lists of all the common words one happens never to use. And of course the really serious-minded way is to study languages--learn Greek, Latin, and one or two modern languages. Among writers of the first rank one can name very few who were not or are not fluent in at least two. Tolstoy, who spoke Russian, French, and English easily, and other languages and dialects with more difficulty, studied Greek in his forties.

Naming species is not big science. It is like mapmaking or dictionary work and, on its own, of relatively little use. But it is the first step. It is the first thing children do as they lay hold of their surroundings. It is the simplest measure of the world. It is analogous to finding and naming the planets and the stars. Once named, it is another matter altogether to set the stars and planets, the moons and other bodies in motion relative to each other, but it is the beginning. Every culture known names species, then groups them, and then builds them into knowledge and stories. Naming, and the learning associated with it, is part of what makes us human.

exulansis n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or mere foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your story, until it feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land. Latin exulans, exile, wanderer, derived from the Latin name of the Wandering Albatross, diomedea exulans, who spend most of their life in flight, rarely landing, going hours without even flapping their wings. The albatross is a symbol of good luck, a curse, and a burden, and sometimes all three at once. Pronounced “ek-suh-lan-sis.” la

A definition is a dictionary's explanation of the meaning of an English word using other English words, intended to be read by a whole person, applying the entirety of his or her intelligence and language skills. A semantic representation is a person's knowledge of the meaning of an English word in a conceptual structure (the language of thought), processed by a system of the brain that manipulates chunks of conceptual structure and relates them to the senses. Definitions can afford to be incomplete because they can leave a lot to the imagination of a speaker of the language. Semantic representations have to be more explicit because they are the imagination of the speaker of the language.

I told myself it was curiosity spurring me on. I didn't realize that a dictionary might be like reading a map or looking in a mirror. butch (v. transitive), to slaughter (an animal), to kill for market. Also: to cut up, to hack dyke (n.), senses relating to a ditch or hollowed-out section gay (v. intransitive), to be merry, cheerful, or light-hearted. Obsolete lesbian rule (n.), a flexible (usually lead) ruler which can be bent to fit what is being measured... queer (adj.), strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character, suspicious, dubious... Even at school I remember wondering about closets, whether there was a subtle difference between someone being in a closet and a skeleton being in a closet.

A few days after the fireworks, I gave them a lesson on category nouns versus exact nouns. I hadn’t heard of this distinction prior to opening the textbook. It transpired that a category noun was something like “vegetables,” whereas exact nouns were “beetroot,” “carrots,” “broccoli.” It was better to use exact nouns because this made your writing more precise and interesting. The chapter gave a short explanation followed by an exercise: an A4 page divided into columns. On the left were various category nouns. On the right, you had to fill in at least three corresponding exact nouns. I told the kids they could use their Cantonese-to-English dictionaries. Cynthia Mak asked what to say for “people.” Did it mean “sister,” “brother,” “father,” or “teacher,” “doctor,” “artist,” or— “They’re all okay,” I said. “But if I put ‘sister,’ ‘father,’ ‘brother’ in ‘people,’ then what about here?” She pointed to the box marked “family.” “Okay, don’t do those. Do ‘teacher’ or something.” “But what about here?”—signaling the “professions” row. “Okay, something else for ‘people.’” “Happy people, sad people?” “‘Happy people’ isn’t an exact noun—it’s an adjective plus a category noun.” “So what should I write?” We looked at each other. It was indeed a challenge to describe people in a way not immediately related to how they earned money or their position in the family unit. I said: “How about ‘friend,’ ‘boyfriend,’ ‘colleague’?” “I don’t want to write ‘boyfriend.’” I couldn’t blame her for questioning the exercise. “Friend,” “enemy,” and “colleague” didn’t seem like ways of narrowing down “people” in the way “apple” did for “fruit.” An apple would still be a fruit if it didn’t have any others in its vicinity, but you couldn’t be someone’s nemesis without their hanging around to complete the definition. The same issue cropped up with my earlier suggestions. “Family” was relational, and “profession” was created and given meaning by external structures. Admittedly “adult,” “child,” and “teenager” could stand on their own. But I still found it depressing that the way we specified ourselves—the way we made ourselves precise and interesting—was by pinpointing our developmental stage and likely distance from mortality. Fruit didn’t have that problem.

Amiability: Diplomats must strive to build and maintain cordial personal relations with officials of the government to which they are accredited. Amiability on the surface, no matter how strained relations may be beneath it, keeps open channels of communication that can be vital to the resolution of issues between states when the time to resolve them is at hand. Amity, cross-cultural: "There is a mutual bond of amity and brotherhood between man and man over all the world ... Nor is it distance of place that makes enmity, enmity makes distance. He therefore that keeps peace with me, near or remote, of whatever nation, is to me as far as all civil and human offices an Englishman and a neighbor ... This is gospel." — John Milton, 1649 Anger: Never get angry except on purpose.

exulansis n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or mere foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your story, until it feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land. Latin exulans, exile, wanderer, derived from the Latin name of the Wandering Albatross, diomedea exulans, who spend most of their life in flight, rarely landing, going hours without even flapping their wings. The albatross is a symbol of good luck, a curse, and a burden, and sometimes all three at once. Pronounced “ek-suh-lan-sis.” la cuna n. a twinge of sadness that there’s no frontier left, that as the last explorer trudged his armies toward the last blank spot on the map, he didn’t suddenly turn for home, leaving one last island unexplored so we could set it aside as a strategic reserve of mystery. Latin lacuna, an unfilled space or hole + Spanish la cuna, cradle. Pronounced “lah koo-nuh.

fuck VULGAR SLANG  v. [trans.] 1 have sexual intercourse with (someone).  [intrans.] (of two people) have sexual intercourse. 2 ruin or damage (something).  n. an act of sexual intercourse.  [with adj.] a sexual partner.  exclam. used alone or as a noun (the fuck) or a verb in various phrases to express anger, annoyance, contempt, impatience, or surprise, or simply for emphasis.    go fuck yourself an exclamation expressing anger or contempt for, or rejection of, someone.  not give a fuck (about) used to emphasize indifference or contempt.    fuck around spend time doing unimportant or trivial things.  have sexual intercourse with a variety of partners.  (fuck around with) meddle with.  fuck off [usu. in imperative] (of a person) go away.  fuck someone over treat someone in an unfair or humiliating way.  fuck someone up damage or confuse someone emotionally.  fuck something up (or fuck up) do something badly or ineptly.   fuck·a·ble adj.  early 16th cent.: of Germanic origin (compare Swedish dialect focka and Dutch dialect fokkelen); possibly from an Indo-European root meaning 'strike', shared by Latin pugnus 'fist'.   Despite the wideness and proliferation of its use in many sections of society, the word fuck remains (and has been for centuries) one of the most taboo words in English. Until relatively recently, it rarely appeared in print; even today, there are a number of euphemistic ways of referring to it in speech and writing, e.g., the F-word, f***, or fk. fuck·er  n. VULGAR SLANG a contemptible or stupid person (often used as a general term of abuse). fuck·head  n. VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse). fuck·ing  adj. [attrib.] & adv. [as submodifier] VULGAR SLANG used for emphasis or to express anger, annoyance, contempt, or surprise. fuck-me  adj. VULGAR SLANG (of clothing, esp. shoes) inviting or perceived as inviting sexual interest. fuck-up  n. VULGAR SLANG a mess or muddle.  a person who has a tendency to make a mess of things. fuck·wit  n. CHIEFLY BRIT., VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse). fu·coid

Take the oft-repeated injunction to get “its” and “it’s” straight. Everyone claims it’s remarkably easy to remember that “its” is possessive and “it’s” is a contraction. But logic tells us that in English, ’s attached to a noun signals possession: the dog’s dish, the cat’s toy, the lexicographer’s cry. So if English is logical, and there are simple rules to follow, why doesn’t “it’s” signal possession? We know that ’s also signals a contraction, but we don’t have any problems with differentiating between “the dog’s dish” and “the dog’s sleeping”—why should we suddenly have problems with “it’s dish” and “it’s sleeping”? This type of grammar often completely ignores hundreds (and, in some cases, well over a thousand) years of established use in English. For “it’s,” the rule is certainly easy to memorize, but it also ignores the history of “its” and “it’s.” At one point in time, “it” was its own possessive pronoun: the 1611 King James Bible reads, “That which groweth of it owne accord…thou shalt not reape”; Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, “It had it head bit off by it young.” They weren’t the first: the possessive “it” goes back to the fifteenth century. But around the time that Shakespeare was shuffling off this mortal coil, the possessive “it” began appearing as “it’s.” We’re not sure why the change happened, but some commentators guess that it was because “it” didn’t appear to be its own possessive pronoun, like “his” and “her,” but rather a bare pronoun in need of that possessive marker given to nouns: ’s. Sometimes this possessive appeared without punctuation as “its.” But the possessive “it’s” grew in popularity through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until it was the dominant form of the word. It even survived into the nineteenth century: you’ll find it in the letters of Thomas Jefferson and Jane Austen and the speechwriting notes of Abraham Lincoln. This would be relatively simple were it not for the fact that “it’s” was also occasionally used as a contraction for “it is” or “it has” (“and it’s come to pass,” Shakespeare wrote in Henry VIII, 1.2.63). Some grammarians noticed and complained—not that the possessive “it’s” and the contractive “it’s” were confusing, but that the contractive “it’s” was a misuse and mistake for the contraction “ ’tis,” which was the more standard contraction of “it is.” This was a war that the pedants lost: “ ’tis” waned while “it’s” waxed.

Perhaps the similarity between their position and her own created a disagreeable impression for her. There was also the fact that they were soured bluestockings who sought, through the number of theatrical entertainments they hosted, to delude themselves that they kept a salon, and there was a rivalry between them, which the considerable erosion of their fortunes in the course of their rather unruly lives, by obliging them to watch their purse strings and to rely on the charity of the actors they used, transformed into a sort of life struggle. And, again, the lady with the Marie-Antoinette coiffure, whenever she set eyes on Mme de Villeparisis, could not help being reminded of the fact that the Duchesse de Guermantes did not come to her own Friday receptions. She was consoled by the unfailing presence at these Fridays of hers of her dutiful relation, the Princesse de Poix, her own special Guermantes, who never went near Mme de Villeparisis, despite the fact that she was an intimate friend of the Duchesse. Nevertheless, from the mansion on the Quai Malaquais to the salons of the rue de Tournon, the rue de la Chaise, and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a bond as strong as it was hateful united these three fallen divinities, and I would have been keen to learn, from the pages of some dictionary of society mythology, what amorous adventure, what

(a) A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very ‘deep’ things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published. (b) A writer has a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation; convinced, as he is, that he has been born into an age of mediocrity, he believes that being understood would mean losing his chance of ever being considered a genius. A writer revises and rewrites each sentence many times. The vocabulary of the average man is made up of 3,000 words; a real writer never uses any of these, because there are another 189,000 in the dictionary, and he is not the average man. (c) Only other writers can understand what a writer is trying to say. Even so, he secretly hates all other writers, because they are always jockeying for the same vacancies left by the history of literature over the centuries. And so the writer and his peers compete for the prize of ‘most complicated book’: the one who wins will be the one who has succeeded in being the most difficult to read. (d) A writer understands about things with alarming names, like semiotics, epistemology, neoconcretism. When he wants to shock someone, he says things like: ‘Einstein is a fool’, or ‘Tolstoy was the clown of the bourgeoisie.’ Everyone is scandalized, but they nevertheless go and tell other people that the theory of relativity is bunk, and that Tolstoy was a defender of the Russian aristocracy. (e) When trying to seduce a woman, a writer says: ‘I’m a writer’, and scribbles a poem on a napkin. It always works. (f) Given his vast culture, a writer can always get work as a literary critic. In that role, he can show his generosity by writing about his friends’ books. Half of any such reviews are made up of quotations from foreign authors and the other half of analyses of sentences, always using expressions such as ‘the epistemological cut’, or ‘an integrated bi-dimensional vision of life’. Anyone reading the review will say: ‘What a cultivated person’, but he won’t buy the book because he’ll be afraid he might not know how to continue reading when the epistemological cut appears. (g) When invited to say what he is reading at the moment, a writer always mentions a book no one has ever heard of. (h) There is only one book that arouses the unanimous admiration of the writer and his peers: Ulysses by James Joyce. No writer will ever speak ill of this book, but when someone asks him what it’s about, he can’t quite explain, making one doubt that he has actually read it.

The mixture of a solidly established Romance aristocracy with the Old English grassroots produced a new language, a “French of England,” which came to be known as Anglo-Norman. It was perfectly intelligible to the speakers of other langues d’oïl and also gave French its first anglicisms, words such as bateau (boat) and the four points of the compass, nord, sud, est and ouest. The most famous Romance chanson de geste, the Song of Roland, was written in Anglo-Norman. The first verse shows how “French” this language was: Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes, set anz tuz pleins ad estéd en Espaigne, Tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne… King Charles, our great emperor, stayed in Spain a full seven years: and he conquered the high lands up to the sea… Francophones are probably not aware of how much England contributed to the development of French. England’s court was an important production centre for Romance literature, and most of the early legends of King Arthur were written in Anglo-Norman. Robert Wace, who came from the Channel Island of Jersey, first evoked the mythical Round Table in his Roman de Brut, written in French in 1155. An Englishman, William Caxton, even produced the first “vocabulary” of French and English (a precursor of the dictionary) in 1480. But for four centuries after William seized the English crown, the exchange between Old English and Romance was pretty much the other way around—from Romance to English. Linguists dispute whether a quarter or a half of the basic English vocabulary comes from French. Part of the argument has to do with the fact that some borrowings are referred to as Latinates, a term that tends to obscure the fact that they actually come from French (as we explain later, the English worked hard to push away or hide the influence of French). Words such as charge, council, court, debt, judge, justice, merchant and parliament are straight borrowings from eleventh-century Romance, often with no modification in spelling. In her book Honni soit qui mal y pense, Henriette Walter points out that the historical developments of French and English are so closely related that anglophone students find it easier to read Old French than francophones do. The reason is simple: Words such as acointance, chalenge, plege, estriver, remaindre and esquier disappeared from the French vocabulary but remained in English as acquaintance, challenge, pledge, strive, remain and squire—with their original meanings. The word bacon, which francophones today decry as an English import, is an old Frankish term that took root in English. Words that people think are totally English, such as foreign, pedigree, budget, proud and view, are actually Romance terms pronounced with an English accent: forain, pied-de-grue (crane’s foot—a symbol used in genealogical trees to mark a line of succession), bougette (purse), prud (valiant) and vëue. Like all other Romance vernaculars, Anglo-Norman evolved quickly. English became the expression of a profound brand of nationalism long before French did. As early as the thirteenth century, the English were struggling to define their nation in opposition to the French, a phenomenon that is no doubt the root of the peculiar mixture of attraction and repulsion most anglophones feel towards the French today, whether they admit it or not. When Norman kings tried to add their French territory to England and unify their kingdom under the English Crown, the French of course resisted. The situation led to the first, lesser-known Hundred Years War (1159–1299). This long quarrel forced the Anglo-Norman aristocracy to take sides. Those who chose England got closer to the local grassroots, setting the Anglo-Norman aristocracy on the road to assimilation into English.

Word Power I could have tried to have another son, Mother said, but then I'd have to divide my love in two, so I sacrificed, & just had you. But sometimes I think you could have used the competition that a baby brother would have brought. All the relatives would put him in their arms, & hold him high over their heads. And that just might stir you to action. Because right now you're even too lazy to look up a word in the dictionary, & your vocabulary is limited. And one day your wife is going to ask you if you really love her. And you should tell her yes, & that you also idolize her. But since you don't know what that word means, you won't be able to use it. And even if she buys you Webster's Unabridged Dictionary for a birthday present, you still might not get the hint.

heed   v. [trans.] pay attention to; take notice of: he should have heeded the warnings.   n. careful attention: if he heard, he paid no heed; | we must take heed of the suggestions.  Old English (originally intransitive); related to Dutch hoeden and German hüten.

 mid 16th cent.: extension of obsolete practitian, variant of PRACTICIAN. Linked entries: PRACTICIAN prae-   prefix (used esp. in words regarded as Latin or relating to Roman antiquity, e.g., praenomen) equivalent to PRE-.  from Latin. Linked entries: PRE- prae·ci·pe   n. [LAW] an order requesting a writ or other legal document.  HISTORICAL a writ demanding action or an explanation of nonaction.  Latin (the first word of the writ), imperative of

relation

The Oxford Dictionaries define “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” In this, they underline that the prefix “post” is meant to indicate not so much the idea that we are “past” truth in a temporal sense (as in “postwar”) but in the sense that truth has been eclipsed—that it is irrelevant.

The challenge in debating pseudoscience, for a teacher, or with a friend, is not an intellectual one, it is one of politeness. No-one of good will would want to hurt an intellectually curious, although misguided, person's feelings, anymore than hurting the child's. (Canning 77-78)

The Unabridged Webster’s International Dictionary says it comes from the Latin root habilis. The definition is “to invest again with dignity.” Do you consider that part of your job, Harvey, to give a man back the dignity he once had? Your only interest is in how he behaves. You told me that once a long time ago and I’ll never forget it. “You’ll conform to our ideas of how you should behave.” And you haven’t retreated from that stand one inch in thirty-five years. You want your prisoners to dance out the gates like puppets on a string with rubber-stamp values impressed by you. With your sense of conformity. Your sense of behavior. Even your sense of morality. That’s why you’re a failure, Harvey. Because you rob prisoners of the most important thing in their lives—their individuality.15

are constantly taking transient experiences, cramming them into prearranged slots, turning discontinuity into continuity, and making solid what is actually fluid. The technical term for what’s happening is reification—giving immaterial experiences “thingness.” So convincing is this transformation that rocks seem solid and heavy when, in fact, your mind reified them—you have created solidity and heaviness in your own awareness. This constitutes another outrageous conclusion to anyone who is out to reinforce and reaffirm the spell/dream/illusion. But you cannot thaw out the “thingness” of the physical world unless you break down the process that created it. I’m hesitant to use any kind of jargon, but we need to delve into how reification works. The dictionary definition of reify is “to make something more concrete or real.” The mental image of money gets reified into a dollar bill, which you can fold up and stick in your wallet. “Parenting” gets reified when you decide to have a baby you can hold in your arms. What’s earthshaking is that virtual reality owes its existence entirely to reification. The web of connections that entangles everything in the spell/dream/ illusion with everything else comes down to the mind, because connections are mind-made. No object is actually a physical thing, pure and simple. “Object” and “thing” and “physical” are strands of a mental web. People find it relatively easy to accept that a piece of paper currency is the reified form of a concept (money), but they balk when they are told that the same is true of body, brain, and universe. The key is to

SQL database is self-describing because it tells us everything we need to know regarding the relations between the data items inside and what they’re made of. We can find the metadata in a data dictionary. The data dictionary is used to describe all elements that make up the database.

bulk n. 1 [mass noun] the mass or size of something large: residents jump up and down on their rubbish to reduce its bulk. large size or shape: he moved quickly in spite of his bulk. [count noun] a large mass or shape. [as modifier] large in quantity: bulk orders of over 100 copies. roughage in food: potatoes supply energy, essential protein, and bulk. cargo in an unpackaged mass such as grain or oil. [PRINTING] the thickness of paper or a book. 2 (the bulk of) the greater part of something: the bulk of the traffic had passed. v. [with obj.] 1 treat (a product) so that its quantity appears greater than it is: traders were bulking up their flour with chalk. [no obj.] (bulk up) build up flesh and muscle, typically in training for sporting events. 2 combine (shares or commodities for sale): your shares will be bulked with others and sold at the best prices available. bulk large be or seem to be of great importance: territorial questions bulked large in diplomatic relations. in bulk 1 (of goods) in large quantities and generally at a reduced price: retail multiples buy in bulk. 2 (of a cargo or commodity) not packaged; loose. Middle English: the senses ‘cargo as a whole’ and ‘heap, large quantity’ (the earliest recorded) are probably from Old Norse búlki ‘cargo’; other senses arose perhaps by alteration of obsolete bouk ‘belly, body’. bulk buying

plant related to the clubmosses, with a dense rosette of long slender

No writer ever knows enough words but he doesn’t have to try to use all that he does know. Tests would show that I had an enormous vocabulary and through the years it must have grown, but I never had a desire to display it in the way that John Updike or William Buckley or William Safire do to such lovely and often surprising effect. They use words with such spectacular results; I try, not always successfully, to follow the pattern of Ernest Hemingway who achieved a striking style with short familiar words. I want to avoid calling attention to mine, judging them to be most effective as ancillaries to a sentence with a strong syntax. My approach has been more like that of Somerset Maugham, who late in life confessed that when he first thought of becoming a writer he started a small notebook in which he jotted down words that seemed unusually beautiful or exotic, such as chalcedony, for as a novice he believed that good writing consisted of liberally sprinkling his text with such words. But years later, when he was a successful writer, he chanced to review his list and found that he had never used even one of his beautiful collection. Good writing, for most of us, consists of trying to use ordinary words to achieve extraordinary results. I struggle to find the right word and keep always at hand the largest dictionary my workspace can hold, and I do believe I consult it at least six or seven times each working day, for English is a language that can never be mastered.* [*Even though I have studied English for decades I am constantly surprised to find new definitions I have not known: ‘panoply’ meaning ‘a full set of armor’, ‘calendar’ meaning ‘a printed index to a jumbled group of related manuscripts or papers’. —Chapter IX “Intellectual Equipment”, page 306

The relation of destiny with the cyclic process is implied in the figures of the legendary Tarot pack; the wealth of symbolic knowledge which is contained in each and every one of its cards is not to be despised, even if their symbolic significance is open to debate. For the illustrations of the Tarot afford clear examples of the signs, the dangers and the paths leading towards the infinite which Man may discover in the course of his existence.

Realistic philosophy sees chaos as the earliest state of disorganized creation, blindly impelled towards the creation of a new order of phenomena of hidden meanings. Blavatsky, for example, asks: ‘What is primordial chaos but the ether containing within itself all forms and all beings, all the seeds of universal creation?’ Plato and the Pythagoreans maintained that this ‘primordial substance’ was the soul of the world, called protohyle by the alchemists. Thus, chaos is seen as that which embraces all opposing forces in a state of undifferentiated dissolution. In primordial chaos, according to Hindu tradition, one also meets Amrita—immortality—and Visha—evil and death (9). In alchemy, chaos was identified with prime matter and thought to be a massa confusa from which the lapis would arise; it was related to the colour black. It has also been identified with the unconscious.

Analytic truths also take a blow from the fact that dictionaries need to be updated from time to time. The meaning and usage of words is not static and unchanging; there is nothing 'necessary' about it. Hence, trying to base analytic truths on definitions, which are supposedly immune to revision and absolutely certain, would seem to be risky business. This is true even of scientific terms. For example, at one point the statement 'Atoms are indivisible' would have been widely accepted as analytic, but not so today. At one point in history, Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics appeared to provide analytic truths. However, the rise of Riemannian geometry and Einstein's relativity theory made analytic truths in those areas debatable.

There are those who find it soothing to say that the analytic statements of the second class reduce to those of the first class, the logical truths, by definition; 'bachelor,' for example, is defined as 'unmarried man.' But how do we find that 'bachelor' is defined as 'unmarried man'? Who defined it thus, and when? Are we to appeal to the nearest dictionary, and accept the lexicographer's formulation as law? Clearly this would be to put the cart before the horse. The lexicographer is an empirical scientist, whose business is the recording of antecedent facts; and if he glosses 'bachelor' as 'unmarried man' it is because of his belief that there is a relation of synonymy between these forms, implicit in general or preferred usage prior to his own work. The notion of synonymy presupposed here has still to be clarified, presumably in terms relating to linguistic behavior. Certainly the 'definition' which is the lexicographer's report of an observed synonymy cannot be taken as the ground of the synonymy.

ʻal al; (Aramaic) corresponding to 5921; above, over, upon, or against (yet always in this last relation with a downward aspect) in a great variety of applications:—about, against, concerning, for, (there-) fore, from, in, [idiom] more, of, (there-, up-) on, (in-) to, [phrase] why with.

Aletheia, the Greek term subsequently translated “truth,” literally means the unhidden, and, in awe of this unhiddenness, subsequent thinking sets aside the underlying hiddenness instead of contemplating it. Differing essentially from aletheia despite its relation to this “truth” of the first beginning, the truth grounds as the clearing for the hiddenness of historical-being. “The clearing for the concealment as the primordial-unified unfolding is the abyss of the ground that the here [Da] unfolds as” (65: 350). Time-space.

Johnson insists: It must be remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every one that speaks it, … words are hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water. Perhaps

I-thou relationship. Martin Buber’s term for a special relationship that is possible between persons when those persons relate to each other in a fully personal way and do not think of the other as an object to be manipulated or as a means to an end. Buber believed that such relationships make possible a different kind of knowledge of the other and that it is possible to have such a relation with God, who is the absolute Thou.

In the early 1970s the regime dropped a very clear official hint that a close relative would become Kim Il-sung’s successor. The 1970 edition of North Korea’s Dictionary of Political Terminologies had included this critical definition: Hereditary succession is a reactionary custom of exploitative societies whereby certain positions or riches may be legally inherited. Originally a product of slave societies, it was later adopted by feudal lords as a means to perpetuate dictatorial rule. The definition failed to appear in the 1972 edition of the dictionary.

Post-Modernism (n.): That period that comes between Modernism (q.v.) and Post-Post-Modernism. Modernists think that Science makes it possible for us to know everything perfectly and objectively, and that therefore all claims to know anything that can't be put into a test tube or under a microscope are illusory. Post-Modernists think that Modernism was wrong and that therefore we can't know anything at all. This is considered a great advance in human knowledge. Modernists think that anyone (except a Scientist) who makes a universal truth claim is a great fool; Post-Modernists think that anyone at all who makes a universal truth claim is a sly devil who is trying to gain power over you. Both are relativists, but while the Modernist is absolutely relative, the Post-Modernist is relatively more relative. The Post-Modernist also uses more jargon, like "metanarrative," "totalizing discourse," "sexual politics," and "hegemonic power structure," words which, when fully "deconstructed," all basically mean "My, look how devilishly clever and up to date I am!

AFFLUENCE  (A'FFLUENCE)   n.s.[affluence, Fr. affluentia, Lat.]1. The act of flowing to any place; concourse. It is almost always used figuratively. I shall not relate the affluence of young nobles from hence into Spain, after the voice of our prince being there had been noised.Wotton.2. Exuberance

Why do things happen the way they do? Is there some kind of order in all this chaos that we just don't see, or is it all, as the mathematically minded people would like us to believe, just random coincidence? If you put one hundred apes in a room, they'll tell you, with one hundred typewriters, and given an infinite amount of time and bananas, one of them would eventually churn out the complete Oxford dictionary. It's all statistical math and probability. The odds of winning the lottery are greater than the odds of getting struck by lightning, but someone wins, don't they? And people get hit by lightning disturbingly more often that you would think. Their point is, eventually all things happen. No matter how philosophically unprejudiced you are, you can't argue with statistical probabilities. But you can certainly give the mathematicians some substantial cud to chew on, can't you? For instance, sure, everything may be eventual from a statistical point of view, but what happens to the formula if you plug in when a particular thing happens? The fortuitousness of the timing? Or combine a particular coincidence with other seemingly non-related coincidences that might have occurred within the same general time frame? We've all had it happen. It's one of our favorite phrases: "Why me? Why now?" Well, when you take the "when" into account, all kinds of very interesting and un-mathematical things begins to happen. The coincidence becomes too coincidental to be a coincidence.

A reporter covering the event—mostly out of bemusement—went on to identify the lexicographer and language columnist Ben Zimmer, editor of the pathbreaking Visual Thesaurus, as “a major geek.” In some circles that might have led to a libel suit, but most of the DSNA participants embraced the nerdiness of the event, even performing dictionary-related songs at the conference-ending banquet. Peter

As it happens, the most fulsome remarks made about the volunteers that night relate to two men who had much in common: Both were Americans, both spent time in India, both were soldiers, both were mad, and though both had been invited, neither one came to the Oxford dinner.

I'm sorry, sir, but we have a dress code," said the official. I knew about this. It was in bold type on the website: Gentlemen are required to wear a jacket. "No jacket, no food, correct?" "More or less, sir." What can I say about this sort of rule? I was prepared to keep my jacket on throughout the meal. The restaurant would presumably be air-conditioned to a temperature compatible with the requirement. I continued toward the restaurant entrance, but the official blocked my path. "I'm sorry. Perhaps I wasn't clear. You need to wear a jacket." "I'm wearing a jacket." "I'm afraid we require something a little more formal, sir." The hotel employee indicated his own jacket as an example. In defense of what followed, I submit the Oxford English Dictionary (Compact, 2nd Edition) definition of jacket:1(a) An outer garment for the upper part of the body. I also note that the word jacket appears on the care instructions for my relatively new and perfectly clean Gore-Tex jacket. But it seemed his definition of jacket was limited to "conventional suit jacket." " We would be happy to lend you one, sir. In this style." "You have a supply of jacket? In every possible size?" I did not add that the need to maintain such an inventory was surely evidence of their failure to communicate the rule clearly, and that it would be more efficient to improve their wording or abandon the rule altogether. Nor did I mention that the cost of jacket purchase and cleaning must add to the price of their meals. Did their customers know that they were subsidizing a jacket warehouse?

and third things a theory of assholes should explain are related and must be handled with greater care. The second thing to explain is that most assholes are not morally beyond the pale, unlike, say, a murderer, rapist, or tyrant. Most assholes are not that bad. One post in the Urban Dictionary has it that “[an asshole is] the worst kind of person.… If you’re an asshole, you are disgusting, loathsome, vile, distasteful, wrathful, belligerent, agoraphobic, and more.… [Assholes] are the lowest of

ANNALS OF LANGUAGE WORD MAGIC How much really gets lost in translation? BY ADAM GOPNIK Once, in a restaurant in Italy with my family, I occasioned enormous merriment, as a nineteenth-century humorist would have put it, by confusing two Italian words. I thought I had, very suavely, ordered for dessert fragoline—those lovely little wild strawberries. Instead, I seem to have asked for fagiolini—green beans. The waiter ceremoniously brought me a plate of green beans with my coffee, along with the flan and the gelato for the kids. The significant insight the mistake provided—arriving mere microseconds after the laughter of those kids, who for some reason still bring up the occasion, often—was about the arbitrary nature of language: the single “r” rolled right makes one a master of the trattoria, an “r” unrolled the family fool. Although speaking feels as natural as breathing, the truth is that the words we use are strange, abstract symbols, at least as remote from their objects as Egyptian hieroglyphs are from theirs, and as quietly treacherous as Egyptian tombs. Although berries and beans may be separated by a subtle sound within a language, the larger space between like words in different languages is just as hazardous. Two words that seem to indicate the same state may mean the opposite. In English, the spiritual guy is pious, while the one called spirituel in French is witty; a liberal in France is on the right, in America to the left. And what of cultural inflections that seem to separate meanings otherwise identical? When we have savoir-faire in French, don’t we actually have something different from “know-how” in English, even though the two compounds combine pretty much the same elements? These questions, about the hidden traps of words and phrases, are the subject of what may be the weirdest book the twenty-first century has so far produced: “Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon,” a thirteen-hundred-page volume, originally edited in French by the French philologist Barbara Cassin but now published, by Princeton University Press, in a much altered English edition, overseen by the comp-lit luminaries Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood. How weird is it? Let us count the ways. It is in part an anti-English protest, taking arms against the imperializing spread of our era’s, well, lingua franca—which has now been offered in English, so that everyone can understand it. The book’s presupposition is that there are significant, namable, untranslatable differences between tongues, so that, say, “history” in English, histoire in French, and Geschichte in German have very different boundaries that we need to grasp if we are to understand the texts in which the words occur. The editors, propelled by this belief, also believe it to be wrong. In each entry of the Dictionary, the differences are tracked, explained, and made perfectly clear in English, which rather undermines the premise that these terms are untranslatable, except in the dim sense that it sometimes takes a few words in one language to indicate a concept that is more succinctly embodied in one word in another. Histoire in French means both “history” and “story,” in a way that “history” in English doesn’t quite, so that the relation between history and story may be more elegantly available in French. But no one has trouble in English with the notion that histories are narratives we make up as much as chronicles we discern. Indeed, in the preface, the editors cheerfully announce that any strong form of the belief to which their book may seem to be a monument is certainly false: “Some pretty good equivalencies are always available. . . . If there were a perfect equivalence from language to language, the result would not be translation; it would be a replica. . . . The constant recourse to the metaphor of loss in translation is finally too easy.” So their Dictionary is a self-exploding book,

Line 10: The fact that the inhabitants of the Netherworld are said to be clad in feather garments is perhaps due to the belief that after death, a person's soul turned into a spirit or a ghost, whose nature was wind-like, as well as bird-like. The Mesopotamians believed in the body (*pagru*) and the soul. the latter being referred to by two words: GIDIM = *et.emmu*, meaning "spirit of the dead," "ghost;" and AN.ZAG.GAR(.RA)/LIL2 = *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu*, meaning "soul," "ghost," "phantom." Living beings (humans and animals) also had ZI (*napis\/tu*) "life, vigor, breath," which was associated with the throat or neck. As breath and coming from one's throat, ZI was understood as moving air, i.e., wind-like. ZI (*napis\/tu*) was the animating life force, which could be shortened or prolonged. For instance...Inanna grants "long life (zi-su\-ud-g~a/l) under him (=the king) in the palace. At one's death, when the soul/spirit released itself from the body, both *et.emmu* and *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu* descended to the Netherworld, but when the body ceased to exist, so did the *et.emmu*, leaving only the *zaqi_gu*. Those souls that were denied access to the Netherworld for whatever reason, such as improper buriel or violent or premature death, roamed as harmful ghosts. Those souls who had attained peace were occasionally allowed to visit their families, to offer help or give instructions to their still living relatives. As it was only the *et.emmu* that was able to have influence on the affairs of the living relatives, special care was taken to preserve the remains of the familial dead. According to CAD [The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago] the Sumerian equivalent of *zaqi_qu*/*ziqi_qu* was li/l, which referred to a "phantom," "ghost," "haunting spirit" as in lu/-li/l-la/ [or] *lilu^* or in ki-sikil-li/l - la/ {or] *lili_tu*. the usual translation for the word li/l, however, is "wind," and li/l is equated with the word *s\/a_ru* (wind) in lexical lists. As the lexical lists equate wind (*s\/a_ru* and ghost (*zaqi_qu*) their association with each other cannot be unfounded. Moreover, *zaqi_qu* derives from the same root as the verb *za^qu*, "to blow," and the noun *zi_qu*, "breeze." According to J. Scurlock, *zaqi_qu* is a sexless, wind-like emanation, probably a bird-like phantom, able to fly through small apertures, and as such, became associated with dreaming, as it was able to leave the sleeping body. The wind-like appearance of the soul is also attested in the Gilgamesh Epic XII 83-84, where Enkidu is able to ascend from the Netherworld through a hole in the ground: "[Gilgamesh] opened a hole in the Netherworld, the *utukku* (ghost) of Enkidu came forthfrom the underworld as a *zaqi_qu." The soul's bird-like appearance is referred to in Tablet VII 183-184, where Enkidu visits the Netherworld in a dream. Prior to his descent, he is changed into a dove, and his hands are changed into wings. - State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts Volume VI: The Neo-Assyrian Myth of Istar's Descent and Resurrection {In this quote I haven't been able to copy some words exactly. I've put Assyrian words( normally in italics) between *asterisks*. The names of signs in Sumerian cuneiform (wedge-shaped writing) are normally in CAPITALS with a number slightly below the line after it if there's more than one reading for that sign. Assyriologists use marks above or below individual letters to aid pronunciation- I've put whatever I can do similar after the letter. E.g. *et.emmu" normally has the dot under the "t" to indicate a sibilant or buzzy sound, so it sounds something like "etzzemmoo." *zaqi_qu* normally has the line (macron) over the "i" to indicate a long vowel, so it sounds like "zaqeeqoo." *napis\/tu* normally has a small "v" over the s to make a sh sound, ="napishtu".}

But here's the thing about 'would.' It's the most useless word in the entire dictionary because it has no place in any point in time. It's a stand-in for an imaginary space between what might happen and what actually happens.

Terry Anderson, the American journalist who was held hostage for almost seven years by the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, relates a telling conversation he had with one of his guards. The guard had objected to a newspaper article that referred to Hezbollah as terrorists. “We are not terrorists,” he indignantly stated, “we are fighters.” Anderson replied, “Hajj, you are a terrorist, look it up in the dictionary. You are a terrorist, you may not like the word and if you do not like the word, do not do it.”84 The terrorist will always argue that it is society or the government or the socioeconomic “system” and its laws that are the real “terrorists,” and moreover that if it were not for this oppression, he would not have felt the need to defend either himself or the population he claims to represent.

was a large-format book with engravings, and while excellent, it was relatively expensive for people to buy. William Collins’ first pioneering contribution to dictionary publishing came

Swimming in bewilderment, Fiona somehow managed to remain relatively calm while the man who'd starred in her dreams for months sat beside her on the sofa. Relatively calm - in her dictionary - loosely translated to not drooling or humiliating herself.

Therefore, in reality what the English word 'Consciousness' refers to is a subcategory of quantitative (rather than what modern dictionaries claim it to be: qualitative) awareness. And if the English language were technically viable (as German claims to be, despite the fact that it is only so in a relative context), we would have witnessed -after removing the 'con'- the existence of a derivative of the word 'scire' to signal the verb 'to know' in modern dictionaries; but that is not the case. The conclusion that we now can draw, is that the English language intentionally inherited the word 'conscire' to signal to its speakers the real existence of the 'mutual knowing' paradigm in the universe, but it has left its own nation prone to ceaseless interpretation schemes rather than being established in linguistical rigidity on this specific topic. This explains the presence of the word/expression of 'self-consciousness' in the dictionary; it is certainly an oxymoron which has been relatively overcome by intending it to refer to a converging scheme of awareness. However it becomes incoherent with the word 'self-conscious' despite the fact that all what we took away was the suffix which is supposed to only signal a state or a condition rather than a vectorial form.

At the beginning of the fourth century, in Alexandria in the north of Egypt, a theologian named Arius began teaching that the Son was a created being, and not truly God. He did so because he believed that God is the origin and cause of everything, but is not caused to exist by anything else. ‘Uncaused’ or ‘Unoriginate’, he therefore held, was the best basic definition of what God is like. But since the Son, being a son, must have received his being from the Father, he could not, by Arius’ definition, be God. The argument persuaded many; it did not persuade Arius’ brilliant young contemporary, Athanasius. Believing that Arius had started in the wrong place with his basic definition of God, Athanasius dedicated the rest of his life to proving how catastrophic Arius’ thinking was for healthy Christian living. Actually, I’ve put it much too mildly: Athanasius simply boggled at Arius’ presumption. How could he possibly know what God is like other than as he has revealed himself? ‘It is,’ he said, ‘more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate.’2 That is to say, the right way to think about God is to start with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, not some abstract definition we have made up like ‘Uncaused’ or ‘Unoriginate’. In fact, we should not even set out in our understanding of God by thinking of God primarily as Creator (naming him ‘from His works only’) – that, as we have seen, would make him dependent on his creation. Our definition of God must be built on the Son who reveals him. And when we do that, starting with the Son, we find that the first thing to say about God is, as it says in the creed, ‘We believe in one God, the Father.’ That different starting point and basic understanding of God would mean that the gospel Athanasius preached simply felt and tasted very different from the one preached by Arius. Arius would have to pray to ‘Unoriginate’. But would ‘Unoriginate’ listen? Athanasius could pray ‘Our Father’. With ‘The Unoriginate’ we are left scrambling for a dictionary in a philosophy lecture; with a Father things are familial. And if God is a Father, then he must be relational and life-giving, and that is the sort of God we could love.

ass1 n. 1 a hoofed mammal of the horse family, which is typically smaller than a horse and has longer ears and a braying call. Genus Equus, family Equidae: E. africanus of Africa, which is the ancestor of the domestic ass or donkey, and E. hemionus of Asia. (in general use) a donkey. 2 BRITISH INFORMAL a foolish or stupid person: that ass of a young man. make an ass of oneself INFORMAL behave in a way that makes one look foolish or stupid. Old English assa, from a Celtic word related to Welsh asyn, Breton azen, based on Latin asinus. ass2 n. NORTH AMERICAN VULGAR SLANG a person's buttocks or anus. [mass noun] women regarded as a source of sexual gratification. oneself (used in phrases for emphasis). bust one's ass try very hard to do something. chew (someone's) ass reprimand (someone) severely. drag (or tear or haul) ass hurry or move fast. get your ass in (or into) gear hurry.

When we are disputing about the proper meaning to be attached to a particular word in a sentence, etymology is of little use. Only children run to the dictionary to settle an argument. But if we would consider the nature of meaning, and the relation between thought and things, we cannot profitably dispense with etymology. It is long since men gave up the notion that the variety of natural species and the secrets of their relation to each other can be understood apart from their history; but many thinkers still seek to confine the science of language, as the Linnaeans once confined botany, within a sort of network of timeless abstractions. Method, for them, is another name for classification; but that is a blind alley.

diluvial adj. relating to a flood or floods, especially the biblical Flood. mid 17th century: from late Latin diluvialis, from diluvium ‘deluge’, from diluere ‘wash away’.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces two historical trajectories for the use of the term "cross-talk" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One derives from theatrical stagecraft. The earliest example cited by the OED is a reference in 1909 to a "carefully rehearsed 'cross-talk' dialogue between two knock-about artistes of the Variety firmament". "Cross-talk" of this kind has roots in the nineteenth-century minstrel show olio, which featured a "cross-fire" passage in which an interlocutor, placed centermost in a line of blackface performers, served as the straight man for a rapidly paced series of jokes delivered by the "end man". The OED flags this earlier usage when explaining the related term, "cross-talker", citing a 1907 reference to "those pioneer cross-talkers, the Christy Minstrels". A common term for a particular kind of two-person comic routine (or "two act") by vaudeville performers in the early twentieth century, "cross-talk" also survives in critical commentary on later theatrical forms influenced by vaudeville or music hall traditions, as in references to the "cross-talk" in Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

Art has become an individual statement and, for the artist himself, a means whereby he can pursue his own self-realization. Autobiography developed from the confessional. St Augustine provided the model in his Confessions. However, the word ‘autobiography’ was not introduced until much later. A quotation from Southey dated 1809 is the first example of the word’s use given by the Oxford English Dictionary. Over the centuries, autobiography changed from being a narrative of the soul’s relation with God to an enterprise far more like that of psycho-analysis. In recounting the circumstances of his life from childhood onward, the autobiographer sought to define the influences which had shaped his character, to portray the relationships which had most affected him, to reveal the motives which had impelled him. In other words, the autobiographer became a writer who was attempting to make a coherent narrative out of his life, and, in the process of doing so, hoping perhaps to discover its meaning. The modern psycho-analyst is concerned to make coherent sense out of his patient’s life-story in much the same way.

Difficulties of technical translation: features, problems, rules Technical translation is one of the most important areas of written translation in modern translation practice. Like the interpretation technique, it has its own characteristics and requirements. The need for this type of work is due to economic and scientific and technical progress, as well as the development of international relations. Thanks to technical translation, people share experience, knowledge and developments in various fields. What are the features of this type of translation? What pitfalls can be encountered on the translator's path? You will learn about this and much more from our article. ________________________________________ Technical translation is one of the most difficult types of legal translation. This is due to the large number of requirements for such work. Technical translation includes all scientific and technical texts, documents, instructions, reports, reference books and dictionaries. The texts of this plan contain a lot of specific terminology, which is the main difficulty of technical translation. A term is a word or a combination of words that accurately names a phenomenon, subject or scientific concept, revealing its meaning as much as possible. The most common technical texts in the following areas: • engineering; • defense; • physics and mathematics; • aircraft construction; • oil industry; • shipbuilding, etc. The main feature of technical translation is the requirement for its high accuracy (equivalence). The task of the translator is to convey information as close as possible to the original. Otherwise, distortions may appear in the text, leading to a misunderstanding of important information. Vocabulary selection is carried out carefully and carefully. The construction of phrases should be logical and meaningful. Other technical translation requirements include adequacy and informativeness. It is equally important to maintain the style of such texts. This includes not only vocabulary, but also the grammatical structure of the text, as well as the way the material is presented. Most often, this is a formal and logical style. Unlike artistic translation, where the main task is to convey the content, and the translator can use his imagination, include fancy turns and various figures of speech, the presence of emotionality and subjectivity is unacceptable in technical translation. Let's consider the peculiarities of technical translation in English. According to the well-known linguist and translator Y. Y. Retsker, English technical literature is characterized by the predominant use of complex or complex sentences, which include adjectives, nouns, as well as impersonal forms of verbs (infinitives, gerundial inflections, etc.). Passive constructions are also often found. In this direction, it is permissible to use only generally accepted grammatical structures. Another feature of such texts may be the absence of a predicate or subject and a large number of enumerations. In addition, the finished text should have an appropriate layout equivalent to the original. Let's consider the basic rules of technical translation for a specialist: • knowledge of the vocabulary, grammar and word structure of the foreign language from which the translation is performed (at the level required for understanding the source text); • knowledge of the language into which the translation is performed (at a level sufficient for a competent presentation of the material); • excellent knowledge of the specifics of texts and terminology; • ability to use linguistic and technical sources of information; • familiarity with the specifics of the field

In our world, 'plumb' has no relation to pipes or water. It means 'totally,' as in 'plumb wore out.' You won’t find the Southern meaning of 'plumb' at Dictionary.com but that doesn’t mean our way is wrong.

I had the word "abecedarian." It's relatively rare, on of those ten-dollar words that people whip out when trying to prove that they competed in the National Spelling Bee.

How strange, she thought, that there is no word in English for "injustice," for example, that a state of injustice is, to that language, merely the opposite or absence of justice. Whereas the Arabic thulm, which shares its root with thalam, or "darkness," is far more profound. I agreed. And, she went on, there is no word for fu'aad either. The dictionary has it as "heart." But fu'aad is not heart, but an in-between space, the correspondence or communication between the heart, the spirit, and the mind, and therefore it relates not to human anatomy but rather to metaphysics. How the English language can do without such a word, she said, is unfathomable. She also found that the genderless nature of English renders the nouns "antiseptic," that was the word she used, dispossessing inanimate objects of character. When I disagreed, she said, "I would be lost if the moon and sun had no gender.

How strange, she thought, that there is no word in English for "injustice," for example, that a state of injustice is, to that language, merely the opposite or absence of justice. Whereas the Arabic thulm, which shares its root with thalam, or "darkness," is far more profound. I agreed. And, she went on, there is no word for fu'aad either. The dictionary has it as "heart." But fu'aad is not heart, but an in-between space, the correspondence or communication between the heart, the spirit, and the mind, and therefore it relates not to human anatomy but rather to metaphysics. How the English language can do without such a word, she said, is unfathomable. She also found that the genderless nature of English renders the nouns "antiseptic," that was the word she used, dispossessing inanimate objects of character. When I disagreed, she said, "I would be lost if the moon and sun had no gender.

Foreign relations: "States receive so much benefit from uninterrupted foreign negotiations, if they are conducted with prudence, that it is unbelievable unless it is known from experience ... I dare say emphatically that it is absolutely necessary to the well-being of the state to negotiate ceaselessly, either openly or secretly, and in all places, even in those from which no present fruits are reaped and still more in those for which no future prospects as yet seem likely ... Some among these plannings produce their fruit more quickly than others. Indeed, there are those which are no sooner in the ground than they germinate and sprout forth, while others remain long dormant before producing any effect. He who negotiates continuously will finally find the right instant to attain his ends, and even if this does not come about, at least it can be said he has lost nothing while keeping abreast of events in the world, which is not of little consequence in the lives of states ... Important negotiations should never be stopped for a moment." — Cardinal Richelieu

Friends, negotiations between: Negotiations between friends proceed from common interests and shared ends; the objective is to find a means of carrying out a common course of action to realize these ends. It si a great mistake to approach such negotiations in an adversarial manner. This can only risk raising questions about the extent to which interests are truly held in common and erode the sense of partnership that is the greatest hope for success in both the negotiations and the relationship they are intended to advance. Friends, tending of:/ A first rule of foreign policy is to find out who your friends are and what their interests are, and then to help them along. If you don't, you must not be surprised if they ultimately decide to act without regard to your interests or fail to back you in times of need. Friendship between nations, invaluable: Over time, relations between nations can become so affable, honest, and reflexive that it becomes virtually unthinkable for one to act on an important matter without seeking and taking into account the views of the other. Such a relationship with a stronger state is the rarest and most valuable possession of a weaker; it must be cherished and nurtured, and never jeopardized by unilateral action.

Hatred: "The foremost art of kings is the power to endure hatred." — Seneca History: "The diplomacist should know the history of the great powers and of their relations with each other, as a competent physician would wish to know the life record of a delicate or dangerous patient, for the present is but the epitome and expression of the past. The future knows no other guide and it is from history that we are to gather the formulas of present action." — David J. Hill History: "If people always understood, there would have been no history." — Talleyrand History, diplomatic: "The narrative of brilliant campaigns and heroic military achievements may, ... at first glance, seem more attractive than the story of the reasons why battles have been fought; but, as after a storm the fallen trees in the forest, the fragments of wrecks upon the shore, and the general upheaval of nature, thought more exciting, are of less abiding human interest than a knowledge of the atmospheric conditions out of which the tempest has been born, so the plans and purposes of policies of nations are intrinsically more important than the march of armies and the carnage of military conflicts. It is the psychological factor in moments of creative action that gives history its highest instructive value and its most lasting social utility." — David J. Hill, 1906 History, worldview: Nations interpret the present by reference to their past. If that past includes traumatic events, their interpretation of the present will often diverge radically from objectively verifiable reality.

Opportunities: "He who seizes the right moment is the right man." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1808 [Doch der den Augenblick ergreift, Das ist der rechte Mann. cf. Faust Part I Scene IV] Oratory: "No one can be a perfect ambassador who is not at the same time a good orator." — Torquato Tasso, 1582 Order, justice and: "Order precedes justice in the strategy of government; but only an order which implicates justice can achieve a stable peace." — Reinhold Niebuhr, 1944 Order, legitimizing principle: "International order expresses the need for security and equilibrium ... [and] is constructed in the name of a legitimizing principle. ... [Negotiations transform] force into acceptance ... [and] must attempt to translate the requirements of security into claims and individual demands into general advantage. It is the legitimizing principle which establishes the relative 'justice' of claims and the mode of their adjustment." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964

Partisans of good relations: In every society there are natural partisans of good relations with a particular foreign country. These include graduates of study programs in that country, admirers of its culture, institutions, and artifacts, spouses of its nationals, speakers of its language, adherents to its predominant religion, and others. Such people constitute a reservoir of affection for an ambassador's country and a source of potential understanding and support for his government's perspective on troublesome bilateral and international issues. This reservoir needs continuous refreshment, however, in that form of a flow of contact and information, if it is not to dry up. Facilitating such renewal of goodwill on the part of old friends in his host country is among an ambassador's most enjoyable — and essential — duties. Patience: The capacity to outsit the other side at the table is one of the key attributes of successful negotiators in conference diplomacy. Patience: "Everything comes to those who wait." — Proverb Patriotism: The sense by individual members of a nation that it is worth sacrificing some significant portion of their personal interests to defend the common interests and well-being of their nation against challenges from others. Patriotism: "He who denies his heritage is not worthy of one." — Arab proverb

Order, new: "There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, ... and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, [as] his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger." — Niccolò Machiavelli Order, revolutionary challenge to: "Whenever there exists a power which considers the international order or the manner of legitimizing it oppressive, relations between it and other powers will be revolutionary. In such cases, it is not the adjustment of differences within a given system which will be at issue, but the system itself. Adjustments are possible, but they will be conceived as tactical maneuvers to consolidate positions for the inevitable showdown, or as tools to undermine the morale of the antagonist." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964 Order, stable: "The foundation of a stable order is the relative security — and therefore the relative insecurity — of its members. Its stability reflects, not the absence of unsatisfied claims, but the absense of a grievance of such magnitude that redress will be sought in overturning the [existing order] rather than through an adjustment within its framework. ... The security of a domestic order resides in the preponderant power of authority, that of an international order in the balance of forces and in its expression, the equilibrium." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964

volumes where it is particularly and professedly delivered; and, by proper attention to the rules of derivation, the orthography was soon adjusted. But to COLLECT the WORDS of our language was a task of greater difficulty: the deficiency of dictionaries was immediately apparent; and when they were exhausted, what was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions into books, and gleaned as industry should find, or chance should offer it, in the boundless chaos of a living speech. My search, however, has been either skilful or lucky; for I have much augmented the vocabulary. As my design was a dictionary, common or appellative, I have omitted all words which have relation to proper names; such as Arian, Socinian, Calvinist, Benedictine, Mahometan; but have retained those of a more general nature, as Heathen, Pagan. Of the terms of art I have received such as could be found either in books of science or technical dictionaries; and have often inserted, from philosophical writers, words which are supported perhaps only by a single authority, and which being not admitted into general use, stand yet as candidates or probationers, and must depend for their adoption on the suffrage of futurity. The words which our authours have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness, by compliance with fashion or lust of innovation, I have registred as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others against the folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the injury of the natives. I have not rejected any by design, merely because they were unnecessary or exuberant; but have received those which by

Many leaders in the church do not want to deal with things that relate to the devil.

who speaks without moving his or her lips | related word: ventriloquism   ******   LOG Origin: Greek Meaning: thought Examples: dialogue -- conversation or discussion | related word: lexically epilogue -- words that are

Words often give clues to the origin of things, and I hoped to learn much about the history of the pie from the word 'pie'. The Oxford English Dictionary gives its first known use as being in the expense accounts of the Bolton Priory in Yorkshire in 1303 (although the name 'Pyman' is recorded in 1301), but admits that its origin is uncertain and that 'no further related word is known outside English'. It suggests that the word is identical in form to the same word meaning 'magpie' (...). The suggested connection is that a pie has contents of 'miscellaneous nature', similar to the magpie's colouring or to the odds and ends picked up and used by the bird to adorn its nest.