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Faggot: The origin of the slur usage of the word "faggot" (originally referring to a bundle of firewood) may be from the term for women used in a similar way to "baggage", i.e. something heavy to be dealt with. The usage may also have been influenced by the British term "fag", meaning a younger schoolboy who acts as an older schoolboy's servant ...
Many of these are degenerations in the pronunciation of names that originated in other languages. Sometimes a well-known namesake with the same spelling has a markedly different pronunciation. These are known as heterophonic names or heterophones (unlike heterographs, which are written differently but pronounced the same).
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word cleave can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [1] [2] enantionymy (enantio-means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.
An aptronym, aptonym, or euonym is a personal name aptly or peculiarly suited to its owner (e.g. their occupation). [1] Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post coined the word inaptonym as an antonym for "aptonym". [2] The word "euonym" (eu-+ -onym), dated to late 1800, is defined as "a name well suited to the person, place, or thing named". [3]
The Old Norse name Skaði, along with Sca(n)dinavia and Skáney, may be related to Gothic skadus, Old English sceadu, Old Saxon scado, and Old High German scato (meaning 'shadow') - compare also the Irish Scáthach, a famous woman warrior known as 'the shadowy one'. Scholar John McKinnell comments that this etymology suggests Skaði may have ...
Onomastics has applications in data mining, with applications such as named-entity recognition, or recognition of the origin of names. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It is a popular approach in historical research, where it can be used to identify ethnic minorities within populations [ 3 ] [ 4 ] and for the purpose of prosopography .
The use of strategies which, on the surface appear to be appropriate to the situation, but are meant to be taken as meaning the opposite in terms of face management. That is, the utterance which appears, on the surface, to maintain or enhance the face of the recipient actually attacks and damages the face of the recipient. ...
Other research indicates a French origin, from Salvagin, meaning "wild person", introduced during the Norman Conquest, and may well have been used as a joke, meaning someone who was the opposite of wild. It may have come from the Latin Silvanus or Salvin, a Roman clan name connected to the God of the Forest. [2]