Not commonly, although people know what it means. Songwriters are always looking for words to avoid repetition, so they use it. And a speaker at the lectern might use it just for variety. We use this one. It's a handy word, only two syllables. There's no succinct way to replace it. "It behooves him to..." translates as "It would be appropriate for him to..." or "It would be to his advantage to..." Seven syllables and six syllables; we'll go with two. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Yes, although we manage to get along without it most of the time. Whence, hence, thence; whither, hither, thither; we seldom use those two paradigms, except "hence" in its modern sense of "therefore," rather than its basic meaning as a correlative, "from here." Whence: from where Hence: from here Thence: from there Whither: toward where Hither: toward here Thither" toward there I've never heard that. "Many a time" and "oft" are two different ways of saying the same thing, so using them together is a way of reinforcing a point. Yes, but again, primarily by poets, songwriters and orators. Everyone knows what it means, but they don't use it. We all just say "often." It's the same word; originally "oft" was used before a word that begins with a consonant and "often" before a vowel--just as the N was added to "a" to turn it into "an" before a vowel. The T in "often" has been silent for a couple of centuries. But today many Americans pronounce it by mistake to prove that they know how read. Just like the first C in "Arctic" and "Antarctic"; they were already silent when we borrowed those words from the French. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when they start pronouncing the K in "knee" and the G in "gnat." Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
More on the word "dude." When Jon Stewart interviewed President Barack Obama on "The Daily Show," he called him "dude." When he realized what he'd done, he got a panicked look on his face and said, "I can't believe I just called the President of the United States, 'dude'." But the dude didn't mind. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's customary to refer to the President's wife as the First Lady. When the Australians elected their first female Prime Minister, they began calling her husband the First Bloke. If that happens in our country, I guarantee that we'll call him the First Dude. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
But all eyes will be on Berlin for at least one day next month as the German constitutional court rules on the constitutionality of the nation's participation in Europe's new bailout fund. If the court rules against German participation, panic will almost surely sweep through the markets as the core of the rescue operation fizzles before it is even able to get off the ground. to get off the ground = to start operation?
"Dude" is just another slang word for a "man." It's the same as "fellow" or "guy," or "bloke" in the UK and Australia. It's more contemporary so it's used more by younger people. It is not an insult. Sometimes young people use it to refer to people of either sex. Girls, in particular, might address each other as "dude," as in, "Dude, why did you go out with that creep?" We joke that "dude" is an entire vocabulary unto itself, depending on the way it's pronounced. If you say, "Duuuuuude," with a falling tone, it means that you think the person you're talking to has said or done something really stupid: "Dude, why did you leave your truck unlocked?" If you say it loudly with a high tone, it means you're congratulating him for an accomplishment: "Dude, you got the highest score on the test!" Being slang, it would be inappropriate in writing or formal speech, but even in those cases it would be regarded as an error on the part of the speaker or writer, but not an insult to the person being called "dude." It's very much like "guy." You should never use that word in writing or formal speech, but it's not an insult. "Fellow" is more acceptable, although it's now rather old-fashioned. It's a metaphor from the aviation industry. Once you get off the ground, your journey has begun. That's a metaphor, referring to an electrical or electronic instrument like a voltmeter. If the needle moves, that means something is happening. If it doesn't move, then whatever you just tried to do didn't work. So if something "moved the needle," it doesn't necessarily mean that your effort or project will be successful, but at least you're off to a decent start. A stopgap solution (we don't usually write it with a hyphen) is temporary, perhaps an emergency measure. It's something that will allow us to overcome a problem for a little while, until we have the time and other resources to go back and fix it properly. Engineers, especially software developers, sometimes use the slang word kludge, which is pronounced "klooj." It's an old Scottish word that Americans picked up during WWII. It originally meant an outdoor toilet you had to use because the indoor toilet was out of order.
held its collective breath = shocked? hobbled his way around = limping? whisked away = whisked off? = sent away?
gingerly = carefully? But ginger is a plant. Why is it ginger"ly"? fairway = Sports The part of a golf course covered with short grass and extending from the tee to the putting green.
No. It's a cliche that when you're waiting to see whether something that is going will be favorable or unfavorable to you, you unconsciously hold your breath. So it means apprehensive or impatient. For an entire community to hold its breath simply means that the event they're waiting for is very important to all of them. If Tiger had suffered a relapse and had to drop out of the tournament, much of its fun and anticipation would have been lost. To hobble a horse means to tie a line between one front leg and the opposite hind leg. This allows him to walk and graze, but not to run, so you can let him feed without worrying that you might lose him. So if a person is hobbled, it means that something is impeding his movement--or other activities; the word "hobbled" is also used metaphorically for any kind of handicap. So eventually "to hobble," as an intransitive verb, came to mean "to walk as though hobbled." Not sent away, but taken away. It's a coincidence. It probably derives from the old French word genzor, which is a form of "gentle." Yes. It's the main part of the course where skillful players spend most of their time, and where most of the cameras are focused in a televised tournament. To hail means to call loudly. If you see a friend on the other side of a noisy auditorium and you'd like to talk to him, you might hail him by shouting his name and hoping he hears you and can find you in the crowd. When scientists hail a discovery, they are loudly calling it out to the public because it can help them (in this case hopefully by treating cancer) and also because they're proud of themselves. So to hail is not merely to speak loudly, but to do so for the purpose of gaining the attention of people who might not even know you're there. I saw that too. It's a little early to celebrate. Not all linguists are convinced by the evidence. There is considerable evidence for the accepted hypothesis that the Proto-Indo-European language originated on the Pontic Steppe, because it is full of words for animals, plants, weather and topography that can be found there. People have tried before to use techniques from other sciences to trace the origin of languages, and the usual result is failure. Back in the 20th century when massively-parallel computing became available, they used it to compare the word lists of all the world's languages to find relationships. They discovered enough similarities that they were convinced that all human languages evolved from a single ancestor. This is called the Nostratic hypothesis (from the Latin word nostra, "our") and it's more than 100 years old, but this research seemed to confirm it. However, further analysis with bigger and faster computers proved that the lists of cognate words discovered by the research were so small that they could easily have occurred by chance. Today "Nostratic" has returned to its original meaning, a hypothesis that only some of the world's language families are related, and this hypothesis is not widely respected. About ten years before that, scientists used blood types and dental patterns to "prove" that all the languages of the New World fell into three families, resulting from three waves of migration from Asia. But just a couple of years ago it was discovered that the Na-Dene languages (the most widely spoken member of this group is Navajo) are related to the Yenisei language of Siberia. (This finding may be disproved in the future, but for now most linguists accept it cautiously.)
No. Sometimes they are interchangeable, but not always. "In the middle" carries the sense of actually being close to the center of something--a crowd, a meal, a problem. "In the midst" can be used this way, but its basic meaning is to simply be surrounded by something or by a group of people or things, not necessarily in the center. You can be close to the edge of a large crowd and still be surrounded by the people, but you're not in their midst.
1. I rise up = I raise -- same? fidgety = restless? full of worries? backdrop =1. A painted curtain hung at the back of a stage set.Also called backcloth 2.The setting, as of a historical event; the background.
No. "Rise" is an intransitive verb. When someone (or something) rises, it means that the person himself (or the thing itself) is moving upward. "The British rise from their seats when the Queen enters the room." "The temperature rose fifteen degrees overnight; I had to get up and turn on the air conditioner." "The blimp slowly rose in the air as it filled with helium." But "raise" is a transitive verb. It must have an object. A person (or a thing) raises something (or someone) else. "I raised my flowerpot by putting a stand under it; now it will get more light from the window." "The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by one tenth of one percent." "In the new model Chevrolet, the speedometer has been raised a little bit, to make it easier to see." Of course it is both physically and grammatically possible for a person to raise himself (or a thing to raise itself). "Even though I was exhausted and only wanted to sleep, I raised myself out of bed when my brother came home and needed to talk to me about something important." Both words have a number of idiomatic meanings as well. When you put bread dough in the oven and the heat causes the yeast to expel gas, the bread expands during cooking, but instead we say "the bread rises." If you breed animals for food or for pets, you can say that you "raise cattle" or "raise parrots." You can also "raise" corn or mushrooms. We "raise" children, but that is a more limited scope. It does not include copulation, fertilization of the egg by sperm, or the growth of the fetus in the uterus. It only covers the duties of the parents from birth to adulthood. To fidget means to move restlessly, nervously or impatiently. So to be fidgety means to be restless, nervous or impatient, and to make this obvious to an observer by fidgeting. So it does not mean only to be restless, but to demonstrate your restlessness by moving in a strange manner. When people call the circumstances behind an event a backdrop, it's usually because it is not obvious and requires explanation. This is not quite the same as a background, which might be more widely known. "The interest rate on my credit card has been raised three times in two years. I don't understand this." "The backdrop behind that is that your bank lost a lot of money in the Greek financial crisis, so they're trying to compensate.
that = why not "whom" blindside = can't find this word in my dictionary Does "sexual relationship" mean intercourse?
Conjunctions tend to become "noise words" after a few centuries. Chinese has noise words, most famously de. It doesn't really mean anything, it just helps you figure out the organization of the sentence. Just as di and dei merged to become de, because the difference between them is unimportant, Americans (and to a lesser extent the British) tend to interchange "that" with "who." The word "whom" has almost vanished from American dialect, even in edited writing, although I often use it in writing. Then you need a better dictionary. I keep urging you to use dictionary.com, which is a compendium of all the most highly respected American dictionaries. A person's "blind side" is the side that he can't see very well. In a car it's that little triangle of road over your left shoulder that doesn't appear in any of your mirrors and which you can't see directly without twisting your head uncomfortably. A small car or a motorcycle could be there and you wouldn't be aware of it. In sports, a player's blind side is wherever he can't see because his head is turned in the opposite direction. So to blind-side (or blindside) someone means to sneak up and hit them from a direction that concealed you so they could not anticipate the attack and defend against it. Metaphorically, it means to attack someone where they are weakest, in an area for which they lack information or training, etc. In vernacular speech it means an ongoing (usually romantic) relationship that features intercourse as a normal activity. But in a newspaper, it is often used more derogatorily for a relationship that is illegal or at least regarded as bad, such as between an older adult and a young person way below the age of consent. (Not a 19 year-old and a 17 year-old, even though that is technically illegal in most states, but rather, for example, a 35 year-old and a 14 year-old.) To be "sexual" it must include any type of sexual activity, which need not be standard-format intercourse. No, it's a French word. English does not use diacritical marks (or diacritics), so if you see one above a letter, you can be 100% certain that it's a foreign word. I can't tell you how to type non-English symbols on your keyboard because there's no standard. Theoretically you can create them all in Microsoft Word, but that is not an easy process. What I have done is start with a blank MS Word document. Then I go to the Wikipedia article on a foreign alphabet, and I copy and paste all the symbols onto my document. Then I go to the next one and do the same thing. Then I sort them all together to make them easy to find. When I want to use one, I just copy it from this document and paste it into a new one or onto a web page like this one. For example, Á á Ä ä Â â Ă ă Ã ã Ą ą Æ æ are all together. If I want one of those letters I don't have to remember which language it belongs to. Since I do a lot of work with foreign text I have compiled a very extensive table of letters in the Roman alphabet. But there are probably still some I don't know about.
