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Word of the Day
LEGERDEMAIN (Noun, English) Skilled, dexterous use of the hands when performing magical tricks. Has also taken on a pejorative meaning of deceit or trickery. Note: Cited originally in English during the 16th century. From the French phrase 'léger de main' (light of hand).
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Tag Archives: word formation
We’re All Verbs Now
Maybe, maybe not. Are there any English speakers today who don’t accept text as a verb? It was an easy move to permit text as a verb, follownig the paradigm of other communication channel noun-verb pairs in English — the … Continue reading
Posted in language change, Word Formation, Word Usage
Tagged acronyms, English verbs, language change, word formation
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Gates
The word gate is a good old English word, the form being geat in Old English (plural geatu) and whose meaning was ‘an opening or entrance’. A watergate (from the 15th century) is a channel for water; the first element … Continue reading
Freewheeling Expression
Do printed dictionaries still matter? I doubt most people use them much nowadays to check spellings — spellcheckers are nearly ubiquitous in word-processing software of all types. There are also myriad sources for usage examples, including many online resources that … Continue reading
Posted in Word Formation, Word Usage, writing
Tagged language and technology, word formation
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What’s up with up
The word ‘up’ in English has many uses and functions: it occurs as an adverb (we need to liven up our presentation), a preposition (the mouse crawled up the drainpipe), an adjective (the mood was definitely up at the meeting), … Continue reading
Posted in language change, Word Formation
Tagged prepositional meaning, word formation, word meaning
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Words without Pictures
A lot of lists get published on blogs and twitter feeds. The 10-item list seems to be especially popular: the 10 things you need to know before the market opens each day, the 10 stupid mistakes made when pitching to … Continue reading
The Age of Peccaries
Leave it to a computer to rub our noses in the nitty-gritty of semantics. Mostly, as we go about our day, we toss out words and sentences to our fellow language speakers and communication takes place, more or less. Building … Continue reading
Posted in computer language understanding, Word Formation
Tagged NLP, word formation
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Ever notice how easy it is to create new words in English with certain suffixes? Consider ‘marathon’ which actually was the name of an ancient Greek city and famous as the starting point for a runner who ran from there … Continue reading
