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In historical linguistics, the process of an inoffensive word becoming pejorative is a form of semantic drift known as pejoration.An example of pejoration is the shift in meaning of the word silly from meaning that a person was happy and fortunate to meaning that they are foolish and unsophisticated. [3]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word entered English because of an anonymous proto-feminist play, Swetnam the Woman-Hater, published in 1620 in England. [37] The play is a criticism of anti-woman writer Joseph Swetnam, who it represents with the pseudonym Misogynos. The character of Misogynos is the origin of the term misogynist ...
Due in large part to their work on the topic, by 1980 when The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing was written the movement supporting non-sexist language was gaining traction. Nearly 20 years after its publication, the Handbook was still considered the standard reference book on how to avoid degrading women with words. [9]
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.
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 ...
MILF: [27] An acronym slang term meaning "mother I'd like to fuck"; considered sexist and ageist by some and positive or neutral by others. Mrs. Robinson: [28] Originating from the song "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon & Garfunkel; slang term referring to an older woman pursuing someone younger than herself, typically an adolescent male. (see "cougar ...
The English language, along with other European ones, adopted the word and used it as similar meaning, slow and delayed. In English, the word "to decelerate " would become a more common term than "to retard", while in others like French [ 9 ] or Catalan, [ 10 ] retard is still in common usage to mean 'delay' ( tard ).
In literature, writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. [1] As Bryan Ray notes, however, style is a broader concern, one that can describe "readers' relationships with, texts, the grammatical choices writers make, the importance of adhering to norms in certain contexts and deviating from them in others, the ...