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The word "expletive" derives from the Latin word expletivus: serving to fill out or take up space. [5] [6] In these examples in fact and indeed are expletives: The teacher was not, in fact, present. Indeed, the teacher was absent. In conversation the expressions like and you know, when they are not meaningful, are expletives. [7]
Expletive comes from the Latin verb explere, meaning "to fill", via expletivus, "filling out".It was introduced into English in the 17th century for various kinds of padding—the padding out of a book with peripheral material, the addition of syllables to a line of poetry for metrical purposes, and so forth.
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 ...
Synonym list in cuneiform on a clay tablet, Neo-Assyrian period [1] A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. [2] For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are ...
A thesaurus (pl.: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar meanings to other words), [1] [2] sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms.
The definition of success in a given cloze test varies, depending on the broader goals behind the exercise. Assessment may depend on whether the exercise is objective (i.e. students are given a list of words to use in a cloze) or subjective (i.e. students are to fill in a cloze with words that would make a given sentence grammatically correct).
A type of gap fill where the gaps are regular, e.g. every 7th or 9th word. The technique can used to assess students’ reading comprehension or as a practice activity. Collocation The way words are often used together. For example, “do the dishes” and “do homework”, but “make the bed” and “make noise”. Colloquialism
American English has always shown a marked tendency to use nouns as verbs. [13] Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit the lobby"), factor (in mathematics), gun ("shoot"), author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was ...