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A aggravate – Some have argued that this word should not be used in the sense of "to annoy" or "to oppress", but only to mean "to make worse". According to AHDI, the use of "aggravate" as "annoy" occurs in English as far back as the 17th century. In Latin, from which the word was borrowed, both meanings were used. Sixty-eight percent of AHD4's usage panel approves of its use in "It's the ...
The abbreviation e.g. stands for the Latin exempli gratiā "for example", and should be used when the example(s) given are just one or a few of many. The abbreviation i.e. stands for the Latin id est "that is", and is used to give the only example(s) or to otherwise qualify the statement just made.
The way words are often used together. For example, “do the dishes” and “do homework”, but “make the bed” and “make noise”. Colloquialism A word or phrase used in conversation – usually in small regions of the English-speaking world – but not in formal speech or writing: “Like, this dude came onto her real bad.”
Bad or taboo words for many things far outnumber the "good" words. Hugh Rawson notices in his book Wicked Words that when looking at Roget's International Thesaurus, there are "89 synonyms for drunk, compared to 16 for sober, and 206 for bad person compared to 82 for good person. The synonyms for unchastity in the Thesaurus fill 140 lines ...
The word verbosity comes from Latin verbosus, "wordy". There are many other English words that also refer to the use of excessive words. Prolixity comes from Latin prolixus, "extended". Prolixity can also be used to refer to the length of a monologue or speech, especially a formal address such as a lawyer's oral argument. [2]
Definitional retreat – changing the meaning of a word when an objection is raised. [23] Often paired with moving the goalposts (see below), as when an argument is challenged using a common definition of a term in the argument, and the arguer presents a different definition of the term and thereby demands different evidence to debunk the argument.
Profanity is often depicted in images by grawlixes, which substitute symbols for words.. Profanity, also known as swearing, cursing, or cussing, involves the use of notionally offensive words for a variety of purposes, including to demonstrate disrespect or negativity, to relieve pain, to express a strong emotion, as a grammatical intensifier or emphasis, or to express informality or ...
The large ball crashed right through the table because it was made of Styrofoam: ambiguous use of a pronoun: The word "it" refers to the table being made of Styrofoam; but "it" would immediately refer to the large ball if we replaced "Styrofoam" with "steel" without any other change in its syntactic parse. [27]