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Nitwit, a colloquial noun for a stupid person, may refer to: an idiot; Nittany Nation, formerly known "Nittwits", a student organization; Dr. Nitwhite, a scientist in Between the Lions commonly called "Dr. Nitwit", much to his chagrin; Sid Millward and His Nitwits, a British parody band between the 1930s and 1970s
The word's true origin is unknown, but it existed in the Middle Scots period. [32] [33] News: The word news has been claimed to be an acronym of the four cardinal directions (north, east, west, and south). However, old spellings of the word varied widely (e.g., newesse, newis, nevis, neus, newys, niewes, newis, nues, etc.).
The meanings of these words do not always correspond to Germanic cognates, and occasionally the specific meaning in the list is unique to English. Those Germanic words listed below with a Frankish source mostly came into English through Anglo-Norman, and so despite ultimately deriving from Proto-Germanic, came to English through a Romance ...
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.
The Online Etymology Dictionary or Etymonline, sometimes abbreviated as OED (not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary, which the site often cites), is a free online dictionary that describes the origins of English words, written and compiled by Douglas R. Harper.
An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's, will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology. [1] Etymological dictionaries are the product of research in historical linguistics. For many words in any ...
Etymology (/ ˌ ɛ t ɪ ˈ m ɒ l ə dʒ i /, ET-im-OL-ə-jee [1]) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. [2] In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics , etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. [ 1 ]
The dictionary is widely used by British crossword solvers and setters, and by Scrabble players (though it is no longer the official Scrabble dictionary). It contains many more dialectal , archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions.