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Can't is a contraction of cannot. Cant has a number of different meanings, including a slope or slant, or a kind of slang or jargon spoken by a particular group of people. "Canting arms" is a coat-of-arms that represents meaning of the bearer's surname. Standard: I can't understand the dialogue in this book because it is written in cant.
In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations , which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very different meanings.
The word crap did not originate as a back-formation of British plumber Thomas Crapper's apt surname. The word crap ultimately comes from Medieval Latin crappa. The word fuck did not originate in the Middle Ages as an acronym. Proposed acronyms include "fornicating under consent of king" or "for unlawful carnal knowledge", used as a sign posted ...
Lexical ambiguity can be addressed by algorithmic methods that automatically associate the appropriate meaning with a word in context, a task referred to as word-sense disambiguation. The use of multi-defined words requires the author or speaker to clarify their context, and sometimes elaborate on their specific intended meaning (in which case ...
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 ...
The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to refer to false friends, but the two phenomena are distinct. [1] [2] False friends occur when two words in different languages or dialects look similar, but have different meanings. While some false friends are also false cognates, many are genuine cognates (see False friends § Causes). [2]
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 ...
A mondegreen is a misinterpretation of a word or phrase, often within the lyrics of a specific song or other type of performance, and need not make sense within that context. [22] An eggcorn must still retain something of the original meaning, [ 22 ] as the speaker understands it, and may be a replacement for a poorly understood phrase rather ...