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"To be, or not to be" is a speech given by Prince Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene" of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1). The speech is named for the opening phrase, itself among the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English literature, and has been referenced in many works of theatre, literature and music.
Non-standard: I could not fire because I did not have line-of-site to the target. stationary and stationery. Stationary is an adjective meaning "not moving"; stationery is a noun meaning office supplies. Standard: The train remained stationary for a few moments, before lurching forward along the track.
The circular definition "object: a thing" → "thing: an entity" → "entity: an object" has a depth of three. "Four legs" is a simple example of differentia specifica. The classic "genus-difference" dictionary definition is in terms of nearest kind (genus proximum) and specific differences (differentia specifica). This genus-difference ...
Compounds are units of meaning formed with two or more words. The words are usually written separately, but some may be hyphenated or be written as one word. Often the meaning of the compound can be guessed by knowing the meaning of the individual words. It is not always simple to detach collocations and compounds. car park; post office; narrow ...
Rap was not an acronym for "random acts of poetry" used as speech-lyrics in contemporary music. The word means "to utter forcefully" and appeared as early as 1541. [37] Shit: see under "Profanity" Swag is not an acronym for "stuff we all get," "secretly we are gay," or anything else. It comes from early-19th-century slang for a thief's booty or ...
/ "Inflammable" can only mean "not flammable." The word "inflammable" can be derived by two different constructions, both following standard rules of English grammar: appending the suffix -able to the word inflame creates a word meaning "able to be inflamed", while adding the prefix in-to the word flammable creates a word meaning "not flammable".
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 ...
Not all languages have both definite and indefinite articles, and some languages have different types of definite and indefinite articles to distinguish finer shades of meaning: for example, French and Italian have a partitive article used for indefinite mass nouns, whereas Colognian has two distinct sets of definite articles indicating focus ...