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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 ...
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.
Middle English also has the verb jargounen meaning "to chatter", or "twittering", deriving from Old French. [18] The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is the first known use of the term "jargon" in English literature. The first known use of the word in English is found within The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and ...
Synonyms are often from the different strata making up a language. For example, in English, Norman French superstratum words and Old English substratum words continue to coexist. [11] Thus, today there exist synonyms like the Norman-derived people, liberty and archer, and the Saxon-derived folk, freedom and bowman.
Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] Developments in print technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works, while the digital era had blurred the lines between online electronic literature and ...
Contrary to Fowler's criticism of several words being used to name the same thing in English prose, in many other languages, including French, it might be thought to be a good writing style. [20] [21] An inquiry into the 2005 London bombings found that verbosity can be dangerous if used by emergency services. It can lead to delay that could ...
English has many polysemous words. For example, the verb "to get" can mean "procure" (I'll get the drinks), "become" (she got scared), "understand" (I get it) etc. In linear or vertical polysemy, one sense of a word is a subset of the other. These are examples of hyponymy and hypernymy, and are sometimes called autohyponyms. [7]
Modern English has no Germanic words for 'animal' in the general sense of 'non-human being'. Old English dēor, gesceaft, gesceap, nēat and iht were all eclipsed by 'animal', 'beast', 'creature' and 'critter'. ācweorna: squirrel. Displaced by Anglo-Norman esquirel and Old French escurel, from Vulgar Latin scuriolus, diminutive of scurius ...