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Showing posts with the label advanced vocabulary

What is Lent?

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Lent is the word Christians use to describe the forty days leading up to  Easter .

Why are Academy Awards called Oscars?

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The initial design for the art-deco influenced statuette came from a founding Academy member,  the Irish art director,  Cedric Gibbon .    In 1928  Gibbon  created the initial design for the 33 cm high gold-plated statuette. 

What is Globish?

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Globish  in British ( Ɡləʊbɪʃ     ) noun a  simplified   version  of English used by  non-native   speakers , consisting of the most  common  words and phrases only Collins English Dictionary Globish is a term invented by a French business man, Jean-Paul Nerriere. It describes the an adapted form of English used in communication between non-native speakers.

What does Kabuki mean? How is this term used in politics?

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Kabuki  theatre is a stylised Japanese dance-drama tradition. Its origins date back to the early 17th century, when it rapidly grew in popularity Initially it was performed by both sexes, causing unease about public morals in official circles. The association between female actors and prostitution lead to a shogunate ruling in 1625. Since then the female parts are all played by males.  Key characteristics of  Kabuki  include  operatic plot lines, masks and heavy make-up. Shouting at other actors is encouraged, but though are common elements pantomime the tone is more delicate. As Louis Levene puts it: a great onnagata (a male actor playing a female role) will transcend the conventions and carry you away to the floating world. Modern versions Kotohira kabuki theatre The kabuki Bayreuth is the town of Kotohira, in Shikoku province. Local geisha funded the building of a kabuki theatre there in 1835 and fans pay £100 for tickets to the annual festival every spring.  Leading actors are

Where does the word nativity come from?

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Nativity derives from the Latin 'natal' meaning birth. 

Where does the word robot come from?

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Photo by  Franck V.  on  Unsplash  The word  Robot means to 'work slavishly'. It is a rare example of a Czech word ('robota') being incorporated into English.  From Start the Week 24/01/11 Robot  first came to public attention through Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920. This  opens in a factory that makes machines that replicate human form. These machines are closer to what today would be termed androids .  As in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,  the ethical issues explored by Čapek relate to individual autonomy. A shared preoccupation is the danger inherent in 'playing God'.  Dictionary dispute Čapek credited his brother Josef with coming up with the word robot. He also wrote to the Oxford English Dictionary to correct their etymology.  Karel had originally used another neologism labori based on the Latin word for work,  labor, but was dissatisfied. His brother then pointed to the Cze

Irish English: What is cat melodeon?

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Don't shoot me I'm only the piano accordion player! Cat/ Cat melodeon   ( a): dreadful, no good, awful, very bad.   Bernard Share’s dictionary of Irish slang  Slanguage quotes Victoria White in the Irish Times calling cat melodeon “the greatest expression in Hiberno-English.”  The word cat  is used to express disappointment in the quality of something: the food is cat in that place. Where does Cat Melodeon come from? The Cat Melodeon players In his book on Irish traditional music, Ciaran Carson suggests cat melodion is a joking reference to the musicianship:  of  piano-accordion players (who often refer to their instruments as melodeons) to play two notes at once.   Source     As the nephew of a fine melodeon player, I think this is cat altogether  -   you throw in altogether  for emphasis, by the way. When was it first used? Strangely, some dictionaries cite the first use in print as being in the 1980s. This is decades after I first heard it. My guess is that it has been

Five ways Dickens expanded the English language

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A mong the 9,218 quotations from {Dickens’} works in the OED, 265 words and compounds are cited as having been first used by him in print and another 1,586 as having been used in a new sense. Source

What is the longest word in English?

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Longest words in English? The Oxford University Press English Dictionary  disqualifies the word nominated by The Readers Digest with this withering put down: 

What is the Rorschach test?

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Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922) invented the 'ink blot' personality test. It uses 10 standard black or coloured inkblot designs to assess personality traits and emotional tendencies. This diagnostic tool was initially intended to  provide insight into the mental processes involved with what was broadly termed schizophrenia. Rorschach, who died soon after completing his research paper Psychodiagnostik (1921) had cautioned that ‘that the test is primarily an aid to clinical diagnosis’. From the 1940s, the Rorschach was adapted for use in occupational assessment and other areas of social science.  In contemporary English, the term  Rorschach Test is often used metaphorically to describe what psychologists call projective assessment. Put simply, how you see something depends on your 'priors' or pre-existing assumptions. Who was  Hermann Rorschach?

Why do we say 'Good' Friday?

It may seem odd that Christians call their day  of greatest sorrow   Good Friday .  The confusion arises from how we perceive the word 'Good'. Here it is used in the archaic sense of 'holy' or momentous. Good Friday, called  Feria VI in  Parasceve  in the  Roman Missal ,  he hagia kai megale paraskeue  (the  Holy  and Great Friday) in the  Greek Liturgy ,  Holy Friday  in Romance Languages,  Charfreitag  (Sorrowful Friday) in  German , is the  English  designation of Friday in  Holy Week     source In other words,  Good marks the uniqueness of the Passion . It affirms the centrality of the crucifixion and resurrection to the Christian faith. Short essay :  Where does the word Easter come from? Passover? Good Friday?

Where does the word Easter come from?

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The word Easter is not in the New Testament. Nor does it feature in most translations of the Bible into vernacular languages.  Isn't Easter  linked to Passover? There is no direct linguistic link in English  between the  words  Easter  and   Passover .  This contrasts with the convention in Romance languages. Pâques, in French, covers both  Easter  and Passover . In Spanish,  Semana Santa (Holy Week) is the most common phrase used to describe the festival. So where does the word  Easter come from?      Scholars agree that Easter  has pre-Christian roots. Beyond that there is little consensus. According to the great Anglo-Saxon scholar the  Venerable Bede , the Old English word eastre came from Eostre, "a goddess associated with spring."   April was called Eosturmonath  ("Easter-month") because in pagan times the month was dedicated to Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring.   The Canadian Oxford Dictionary suggests a link to the Germanic goddess

Five popular phrases associated with the Titanic?

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Wallace Hartley, leader of the band that played on Few events have captured the public imagination like the sinking of the Titanic on the night of the 14th April 1912. Five phrases associated with the disaster are still in common use.

What is a portmanteau word?

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'Bah! Humbug!'? What is humbug?

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‘Bah!’ said Scrooge. ‘Humbug! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money?  For finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer?' Photo by  Annie Spratt  on  Unsplash For Scrooge (and Scrooge McDuck!)  Christmas is 'humbug'. In the modern sense of the term, 'humbug' is roughly synonymous with the more recent 'virtue signalling'. In other words, insincere or hypocritical speech aimed at gaining social acceptance. Was Scrooge an early opponent of virtue signalling? Not exactly. Scrooge's complaint is more against the idea of charity itself. He sees this as a fraudulent commercial trick aimed at 'picking a man's pocket'.  The poor, he argues, are the responsibility of the prisons and workhouses. This view contrasts with that of Scrooge's nephew, Fred: 'Christmas is a good time - a kind, forgiving, charitable time' But what is a humbug?   In British English, a striped candy/sweet.  It's boil

What is Esperanto? And why did it irritate George Orwell?

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Polish linguist and pacifist, L.L. Zamenhof invented Esperanto ('hope) which he believed could be an international lingua franca or second language. Because it had no irregular verbs and phonetic spelling esperanto was a 'perfect' language . It also had no associations with a particular nationality or country. George Orwell's aunt was an early proponent of Esperanto - see comments below . When he went to stay with her in Paris, she insisted on speaking this new language when he was hoping to practise his French.  The political element of Esperanto particularly disturbed Orwell. The attempt to control and direct language was in his view a central feature of totalitarianism. Newspeak - the language Orwell created for his dystopian novel, 1984, is clearly a variant on Esperanto. More on Esperanto here English Language 100 FAQ   -  only £1.99

Why 'as mad as a hatter'?

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'Mad as a hatter' is usually used to describe extreme eccentricity.  The phrase appears in The Clockmaker (1817) by Thomas Haliburton. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not used directly by Lewis Carroll  in either  Alice in Wonderland ' (1865) or Through the Looking Glass (1871).  Chapter VII of the former is, however, called A Mad Tea Party. It also  attended by a hatter, who the Cheshire Cat calls 'mad. It is the  zany antics at the tea party that are being referenced in modern usage. Mercury poisoning The phrase is commonly believed to allude to the grim effect of mercury poisoning on workers (hatters) manufacturing felt hats.  Mercury poisoning  affects the nervous system, with dementia a common symptom.  Victims developed severe and uncontrollable muscular tremors and twitching limbs, called 'hatter's shakes'; other symptoms included distorted vision and confused speech. Advanced cases developed hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms. source Da

Where does the word baseball come from?

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The earliest reference to baseball comes in a diary entry of a Surrey solicitor, William Bray.

What is Bloomsday?

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On June 16, 1904 James Joyce met his future wife, Nora. He later memorialised the date as Bloomsday - the day of  Leopold Bloom 's  twenty-four hour mock-odyssey around Dublin in Ulysses (1922).  Ulysses  is renowned for the daunting challenge it poses readers ( see here for a brief beginner's guide). It also weighs in at at close to a thousand pages in the paperback edition.  What happens on Bloomsday? Joyce - whose self-importance  matched his monumental talent - believed Ulysses would provide scholars with 'a lifetime' of material. Doubtless, he would think it fitting that thousands now attend public readings of his work - most famously in Dublin where Bloomsday is a major tourist event.   What happens in Ulysses? English Language Teaching Pack   -  only £1.99

Where does the word nerd come from? Difference between a geek and a nerd?

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nerd nəːd/ noun informal:  a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious. Single minded, expert:  "I was a serious nerd until I discovered girls and cars" synonyms : bore, dull person;  "a computer nerd"