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Here, the judgmental words are "our very own sons" and "mercenaries", which imply not only professional soldiers but rather soldiers of fortune. This argument is also a false dilemma : nothing implies that coercion and fear of punishment produces better soldiers than voluntarily, and that a professional army could not be assembled from the ...
Principal is an adjective meaning "main" (though it can also be a noun meaning the head of a college or similar institution). Principle is a noun meaning a fundamental belief or rule of action. Standard: The principal achievement of the nineteenth century is the rise of industry. Standard: He got sent to the principal's office for talking ...
A pseudoword is a unit of speech or text that appears to be an actual word in a certain language, while in fact it has no meaning. It is a specific type of nonce word , or even more narrowly a nonsense word, composed of a combination of phonemes which nevertheless conform to the language's phonotactic rules. [ 1 ]
The word "malapropism" (and its earlier form, "malaprop") comes from a character named "Mrs. Malaprop" in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals. [2] Mrs. Malaprop frequently misspeaks (to comic effect) by using words which do not have the meaning that she intends but which sound similar to words that do.
In historical linguistics, the process of an inoffensive word becoming pejorative is a form of semantic drift known as pejoration.An example of pejoration is the shift in meaning of the word silly from meaning that a person was happy and fortunate to meaning that they are foolish and unsophisticated. [3]
Hard cases make bad law is an adage or legal maxim meaning that an extreme case is a poor basis for a general law that would cover a wider range of less extreme cases. In other words, a general law is better drafted for the average circumstance as this will be more common.
Sextus Empiricus, in the 2nd or 3rd century CE, argued for the existence of "nonassertive" statements, which indicate suspension of judgment by refusing to affirm or deny anything. [4] Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in the 6th century, argued for the existence of "non-privatives", which transcend both affirmation and denial. For example, it is ...
Lord Campbell's reference to bad law was a reference to wrongly decided cases. [20] Robert Deal said that because the "bad Ellenborough law" is no longer extant, it is not possible to be certain that it actually was bad. [21] The Law Journal said that Campbell's drawer for Lord Ellenborough's bad law was probably opened rather too arrogantly. [22]