"risky" is an adjective meaning, "attended with or involving risk; hazardous: a risky undertaking."
"risque" is also an adjective, but means, "daringly close to indelicacy or impropriety; off-color: a risqué story."
I notice a lot of people use "risque" when they mean "risky." Why, I have no idea, but based on their drawn-out enunciation of it, I figure it's because it sounds foreign and, hence, sophisticated. But to paraphrase George Orwell, never use a foreign term when there's an English equivalent--especially when said foreign term is neither foreign nor appropriate.
"Kubrick" was chosen in honor of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. In further homage to the filmmaker, the Kubrick logo is designed in the style of the logo created for his movie A Clockwork Orange. By linguistic coincidence, the name Kubrick may also be seen as a hybrid word of the Japanese word kyu, meaning the number nine, and the English word brick.
Arlo Guthrie on Woodstock, the nature of free concerts, and why he's a registered Republican.
My favorite line:
Have you ever seen “American Idol”?
No, I have never watched it. But I’m thankful we’re living in a world where we can actually afford to waste your time. What a great thing that is.
Okay, so I give you guys the distinction between two words, now you can help me out:
What's the difference between the noun form of neglect and negligence?
Please don't paste the dictionary definitions--I read 'em already--give an explanation.
amused means "pleasurably entertained or diverted"
bemused means "lost in thought"
do you know the tasers that originated in America that are now standard issue for the police over here? Do you know what Taser stand for? You’d think it’d stood for something like a laser, which stood for Light and Stimulated Emission of Radiation, but it doesn’t. What TASER stands for is Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle. It was the idea of having some kind of generator built into a gun or a battery, and having a kind of harpoon with a way of trailing behind it, originated in a story about young inventor Tom Swift.
A fictional device that is now part of everyday urban living.
From Aestivate ("to summer") to Wherewithal ("means"), alphaDicitonary shares their 100 Most Beautiful Words in English.
Unfortunately they don't share their criterion for choosing those words; fortunately, it's not too difficult to see the beauty in many of them.
Who could resist the allure of ailurophile?
Ailurophile • Noun
Pronunciation: uh-lur-uh-fail
An ailurophile is a cat-lover, a fancier of cats—nothing more, pure and simple.
nosism
The use of a plural pronoun to refer to a single person holding a high office, such as a monarch, bishop, pope, or university rector. It is also called the Royal pronoun, the Royal 'we' or the Victorian 'we'. The more general word for the use of "we" to refer to oneself is nosism, from the Latin nos.
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Fantasticnating post on the intentionally lost in translation from my darling cousin.
Twix = "The one with the biscuit and the moo."
won this year's national spelling bee by spelling "laodicean" -- lukewarm or indifferent, esp. in religion, as were the early christians of laodicea. the word the loser kid lost to or something like that was "maecenas" -- a generous patron or supporter, esp. of art, music, or literature.
okay, these are both greek terms, but they don't seem too difficult to spell, especially since they're pronounced (well, "maecenas" would be tricky still).
so it got me wondering if the words for spelling bees are getting easier. i looked them up, and actually, it looks like they've gotten much, much harder. compare the words from the 2000-2008 with those from 1970-1978:
| 1970 croissant 1971 shalloon 1972 macerate 1973 vouchsafe 1974 hydrophyte 1975 incisor 1976 narcolepsy 1977 cambist 1978 deification | 2000 démarche 2001 succedaneum 2002 prospicience 2003 pococurante 2004 autochthonous 2005 appoggiatura 2006 ursprache 2007 serrefine 2008 guerdon |
The Funny
Dux : top of the class (n.); to be top of the class (v.) - "She duxed four of her subjects".
Kangaroos loose in the top paddock : Intellectually inadequate ("he's got kangaroos loose in the top paddock")
Pommy's towel, as dry as a : very dry - based on the canard that Poms bathe about once a month
The Obscure
Ugg boots : Australian sheepskin boots worn by surfers since at least the 1960s to keep warm while out of the water. Also worn by airmen during WW1 and WW2 because of the need to maintain warmth in non-pressurized planes at high altitudes.
Feral : V8 ute (q.v.) sporting large heavy bullbar, numerous aerials, large truck mudflaps and stickers almost all over the rear window and tailgate. Sometimes seen with a Mack emblem on the bonnet and always with large (multiple) driving lights
Spruiker : man who stands outside a nightclub or restaurant trying to persuade people to enter
Brown-eyed mullet : a turd in the sea (where you're swimming!)
Bushman's hanky : Emitting nasal mucus by placing one index finger on the outside of the nose (thus blocking one nostril) and blowing.
The ???
Dingo's breakfast : a yawn, a leak and a good look round (i.e. no breakfast)
Dole bludger : somebody on social assistance when unjustified
Gabba : Wooloongabba
Many, many more here.
"aftereffects" and "lifespan"
Huh.
**UPDATE**
Number three:
"pantyhose"
Huh. Huh.
Tyler Cowen (via MissMarketCrash) gives us words that have evidently been banned by the British local government authorities:
across-the-piece, actioned, advocate, agencies, ambassador, area based, area focused, autonomous, baseline, beacon, benchmarking, best practice, blue sky thinking, bottom-up, CAAs, can do culture, capabilities, capacity, capacity building, cascading, cautiously welcome, challenge, champion, citizen empowerment, client, cohesive communities, cohesiveness, collaboration, commissioning, community engagement, compact, conditionality, consensual, contestability, contextual, core developments, core message, core principles, core value, coterminosity, coterminous, cross-cutting, cross-fertilization, customer, democratic legitimacy, democratic mandate, dialogue, direction of travel, distorts spending priorities, double devolution, downstream, early win, edge-fit, embedded, empowerment, enabler, engagement, engaging users, enhance, evidence base, exemplar, external challenge, facilitate, fast-track, flex, flexibilities and freedoms, framework, fulcrum, functionality, funding streams, gateway review, going forward, good practice, governance, holistic, holistic governance, horizon scanning, improvement levers, incentivising, income streams, indicators, initiative, innovative capacity, inspectorates, interdepartmental, interface, iteration, joined up, joint working, LAAs, Level playing field, lever, leverage, localities, lowlights, MAAs, mainstreaming, management capacity, meaningful consultation, meaningful dialogue, mechanisms, menu of options, multi-agency, multidisciplinary, municipalities, network model, normalising, outcomes, output, outsourced, overarching, paradigm, parameter, participatory, partnership working, partnerships, pathfinder, peer challenge, performance network, place shaping, pooled budgets, pooled resources, pooled risk, populace, potentialities, practitioners, predictors of beaconicity, preventative services, prioritization, priority, proactive, process driven, procure, procurement, promulgate, proportionality, protocol, provider vehicles, quantum, quick hit, quick win, rationalisation, rebaselining, reconfigured, resource allocation, revenue streams, risk based, robust, scaled-back, scoping, sector wise, seedbed, self-aggrandizement, service users, shared priority, shell developments, signpost, single conversations, single point of contact, situational, slippage, social contracts, social exclusion, spacial, stakeholder, step change, strategic, strategic priorities, streamlined, sub-regional, subsidiarity, sustainable, sustainable communities, symposium, systematics, taxonomy, tested for soundness, thematic, thinking outside of the box, third sector, toolkit, top-down, trajectory, tranche, transactional, transformational, transparency, upstream, upward trend, utilise, value-added, visionary, welcome, wellbeing, worklessness.
The oldest words, resistant to evolution
I, Who, We, Thou, Two, Three and Five
Words that are evolving rapidly, and likely to disappear
Dirty, squeeze, bad, because, guts, push (verb), smell (verb), stab, stick (noun), turn (verb), wipe
Here's much more.
This topic came up over a point about the word "shot," as in shotgun shot: What words are the same in both singular and plural forms?
There's actually quite a few; the readiest examples are probably hooved animals:
Another type of irregular plural occurs in the register of the English upper classes in the context of field sports, where the singular form is used in place of the plural, as in "two lion" or "five pheasant". Eric Partridge refers to these as "snob plurals" and conjectures that they may have developed by analogy with the common English irregular plural animal words "deer", "sheep" and "trout".
technical: belonging or pertaining to an art, science, or the like: technical skill.
technological: based in scientific and industrial progress; a technological civilization.
hearty: warm-hearted; affectionate; cordial; jovial: a hearty welcome.
hardy: capable of enduring fatigue, hardship, exposure, etc.; sturdy; strong: hardy explorers of northern Canada.
everyday is an adjective meaning, "commonplace; ordinary":
an everyday toil
Every day I die.
Toil and death are constants in the everyday.
