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to which the response given would be something like, "Yeah right, and cows fly". Other variations slightly fallen into disuse include cuando las ranas crien pelo ("when frogs grow hair") and cuando San Juan agache el dedo ("when Saint John bends his finger"). The latter is a reference to the common depiction of St. John with one or two extended ...
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 ...
The words listed below are frequently used in ways that major English dictionaries do not condone in any definition. See List of English words with disputed usage for words that are used in ways that are deprecated by some usage writers but are condoned by some dictionaries.
Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words (ISBN 0-7679-1043-5) is a book by Bill Bryson, published under several titles since 1984, that catalogues some of the English language's most commonly misused words and phrases in order to demonstrate preferable usage. It helps writers and editors to think about how to make written communication clearer.
Other terms were developed by the public to explain the technology that they used. Some of these terms were initially widely used, then fell out of the common vernacular. Others failed to "catch on" and never entered common usage in the first place. Sometimes, the technologies themselves were superseded, and the term fell into disuse.
In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language, often regarded as impolite, but persisted, sometimes in an altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland, [4] as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. The use of the pronoun is also still present in Christian prayer and in ...
List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom; List of British words not widely used in the United States; List of South African English regionalisms; List of words having different meanings in American and British English: A–L; List of words having different meanings in American and British English: M–Z
On average, each word in the list has 15.38 senses. The sense count does not include the use of terms in phrasal verbs such as "put out" (as in "inconvenienced") and other multiword expressions such as the interjection "get out!", where the word "out" does not have an individual meaning. [6]