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The words there, their, and they're are examples of three words that are of a singular pronunciation, have different spellings and vastly different meanings. These three words are commonly misused (or, alternatively, misspelled). [14] there – "The bow shot the arrow there," he said as he pointed. their – "It was their bow and arrow." the ...
Techniques that involve semantics and the choosing of words. Anglish: a writing using exclusively words of Germanic origin; Auto-antonym: a word that contains opposite meanings; Autogram: a sentence that provide an inventory of its own characters; Irony; Malapropism: incorrect usage of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with ...
When the prefix "re-" is added to a monosyllabic word, the word gains currency both as a noun and as a verb. Most of the pairs listed below are closely related: for example, "absent" as a noun meaning "missing", and as a verb meaning "to make oneself missing". There are also many cases in which homographs are of an entirely separate origin, or ...
The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo: As an attributive noun (acting as an adjective) to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, such as the city of Buffalo, New York; As the verb to buffalo, meaning (in American English [1] [2]) "to bully, harass, or intimidate" or "to baffle"; and
It is possible that some of the meanings marked non-standard may pass into Standard English in the future, but at this time all of the following non-standard phrases are likely to be marked as incorrect by English teachers or changed by editors if used in a work submitted for publication, where adherence to the conventions of Standard English ...
Punch, 25 February 1914.The cartoon is a pun on the word "Jamaica", which pronunciation [dʒəˈmeɪkə] is a homonym to the clipped form of "Did you make her?". [1] [2]A pun, also known as a paronomasia in the context of linguistics, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. [3]
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
where the words are homonyms, identical in spelling and pronunciation (/ b ɛər /), but different in meaning and grammatical function. The above examples are of etymologically unrelated words. Some homographs are also etymological doublets , meaning they come from the same source and are spelt the same way in Modern English, but their distinct ...