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Category: English
What is the difference between egoism and egotism?
As I harrumphed in Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is the etymology of the word “egotism”?: There is a recherché distinction that some people have made between egotism and egoism in English: egotism is a bad thing, egoism isn’t. But that distinction is pretty much made up, and noone really bothers with it any more. […]
Why is Cæsar pronounced “seezer” and not “sayzer” or “sahzer”?
Traditional English pronunciation of Latin – Wikipedia One of the characteristic features of Anglo-Latin is that the diphthongs æ and œ merged with e. This is fully represented in the American spelling of Latin loanwords, though the simplified spelling is not consistently applied: æon and eon, æther and ether, amœba and ameba, anæmia and anemia, […]
Why is the letter x doubled in neologisms such as doxxing and anti-vaxxers?
Speculation, but I’m assuming there’s a direct line from haxxor to doxx(er) to vaxxer. Leetspeak, the affective use of creating spellings in hacker communities, has taken up the use of -xxor or -xx0r as a creative spelling of –cker; thus, haxxor for hacker. haxxor – Wiktionary. The duplication of <x> is an affectation. In fact […]
equitable
Definition of EQUITABLE having or exhibiting equity : dealing fairly and equally with all concerned an equitable settlement of the dispute existing or valid in equity as distinguished from law: an equitable defense Michael Masiello’s answer to What do you hate about Quora as of March 2017? So here’s the deal. I’m not writing any […]
Could someone tell of “owt” or “nowt” regarding Yorkshire?
Well, this is what the Googles gets me (with a peek at the OED): http://www.yorkshiredialect.com/… Owt and Nowt are shibboleths for Yorkshire: they are very common dialect words. The historical pronunciation seems to be something like /ou/. They are indeed derived from aught and naught; the spelling with an au is from Early Modern Southern […]
Technically speaking, is Doggo a pidgin language?
Hate to bring the serious to the answer, but I’m with Jiim Klein: Pidgins are called that because of their origins, rather than their grammar, although they do tend to be remarkably similar. “Foreigner talk”, the way people dumb down language when talking to non-fluent speakers, are informally called pidgins, and indeed foreigner talk is […]
querent
A queer little word, querent, and one that tripped me up when I beheld it come from the Magister: Michael Masiello’s answer to Why do many students believe that their major will limit or prevent them from getting jobs or degrees in other fields? Sure, there are other means of finding this out, but Quora […]
Could someone tell why the words bind, band and bundle haven’t got more similar spelling?
I’m a bit incredulous at the other reactions to this question; but of course, you’ve A2A’d the right person. You’re right, OP. bind and band and bundle all mean similar things. A band is something that you bind things with. An bundle is a bunch of things that have been bound together. Hey, bound is […]
eudaimonistic
Michael Masiello’s answer to Which would be better for humanity in the long run, everyone being a Catholic Christian or everyone being an atheist? I would argue that what would be better for humanity in the long run has something to do with the cultivation of eudaimonistic virtues — ethical and civic values that aim […]
Why are the Latin and Greek alphabets the only ones with capital/minuscule letters?
There are a few others, but they are mostly neighbours of Greek and Latin, or else motivated by them. Letter case – Wikipedia Writing systems using two separate cases are bicameral scripts. Languages that use the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, Adlam, Varang Kshiti, Cherokee, and Osage scripts use letter cases in their written form […]