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See List of English words with disputed usage for words that are used in ways that are deprecated by some usage writers but are condoned by some dictionaries. There may be regional variations in grammar , orthography , and word-use , especially between different English-speaking countries.
There may also be instances in which conflicting definitions of the same word may lead to unintentional dysphemism. The pejorative use of the word terrorist is a salient example, as definitions of the word terrorist may vary across cultures and even among individuals in the same culture. Typically, the word "terrorist" refers to one who uses ...
If separating words using spaces is also permitted, the total number of known possible meanings rises to 58. [38] Czech has the syllabic consonants [r] and [l], which can stand in for vowels. A well-known example of a sentence that does not contain a vowel is Strč prst skrz krk, meaning "stick your finger through the neck."
Oxymorons are words that communicate contradictions. An oxymoron (plurals: oxymorons and oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction. As a rhetorical device, an oxymoron illustrates a point to communicate and reveal a paradox.
Antiphrasis is the rhetorical device of saying the opposite of what is actually meant in such a way that it is obvious what the true intention is. [1] Some authors treat and use antiphrasis just as irony, euphemism or litotes. [2] When the antiphrasal use is very common, the word can become an auto-antonym, [3] having opposite meanings ...
An unpaired word is one that, according to the usual rules of the language, would appear to have a related word but does not. [1] Such words usually have a prefix or suffix that would imply that there is an antonym , with the prefix or suffix being absent or opposite.
Words that are incompatible create the following type of entailment (where X is a given word and Y is a different word incompatible with word X): [2] sentence A is X entails sentence A is not Y [3] An example of an incompatible pair of words is cat : dog: It's a cat entails It's not a dog [4]
This list contains Germanic elements of the English language which have a close corresponding Latinate form. The correspondence is semantic—in most cases these words are not cognates, but in some cases they are doublets, i.e., ultimately derived from the same root, generally Proto-Indo-European, as in cow and beef, both ultimately from PIE *gʷōus.