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10 Insulting Words You Should Know

10 Insulting Words You Should Know
There is a crisis of insults on the Web. On one hand, the volume of flames is very high yet the quality is poor. Gone are the days of the razor-sharp wit of Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill*, only to be replaced by a string of four letter words typed in ALL CAPS by n00bs (the latest of which is “FAIL”, itself a failure of coming up with a more scathing insult, if you think about it). *For example:"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go," says Oscar Wilde.George Bernard Shaw wrote to Winston Churchill, "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend....if you have one." Well, it’s hard to teach wit - but all of us can learn the next best thing: the approximation of it by obfuscation, i.e. using big, difficult, and obscure words. 1. Definition: 1) To make French in quality or trait 2) To make somewhat effeminate, and 3) To contract a veneral disease (a 19th century slang). Analysis: We have the English to thank for this word. 2. 3.

10 Curse Words You Don't Know | Words You Dont Know That’s one version of what happened at Waterloo and it’s a load of old cambronne, but the fact is that no-one seems to know the truth. After-battle commentary included both Cambronne saying “Merde!” and Cambronne saying “La garde meurt et ne se rend pas!” (The Guard dies and does not surrender!) Cambronne, who survived but was wounded, denied saying either of these things. 4. Norman Mailer tried to reintroduce the word in his novel The Naked and the Dead in 1948. By 1950 James Jones’ From Here to Eternity was published with the inclusion of 50 f-words. 5. Later on in life, when I saw Reservoir Dogs at the movies, I realized that Quentin Tarantino must have run into exactly the same group of guys. 6. I remember, for example, a relative of mine working on a boat engine. My mother, from whom I never heard a single swear word in my life, was inclined to simply shout “Damn! Personally, my habit is to make a lot of noise. Pages: 1 2 3 4

First, Second, and Third Person You probably know what it means to write in the first person, but you may not be as confident about using the second- or third-person point of view. Today we’re going to focus on each of these three points of view. In grammatical terms, first person, second person, and third person refer to personal pronouns. Each “person” has a different perspective, a “point of view,” and the three points of view have singular and plural forms as well as three case forms. First Person In the subjective case, the singular form of the first person is “I,” and the plural form is “we.” I (first-person singular) look forward to my monthly book club meeting. The first-person point of view is used primarily for autobiographical writing, such as a personal essay or a memoir. Besides “I” and “we,” other singular first person pronouns include “me” (objective case) and “my” and “mine” (possessive case). For further clarification regarding the eight first-person pronouns just used, here’s a table: Next: Second Person

20 Obsolete English Words that Should Make a Comeback | Matador Network - StumbleUpon Photo: Katherine Hodgson If we all start using them, these words can be resurrected. DURING MY UNDERGRADUATE studies as a Linguistics major, one of the things that struck me most is the amazing fluidity of language. The following words have sadly disappeared from modern English, but it’s easy to see how they could be incorporated into everyday conversation. Words are from Erin McKean’s two-volume series: Weird and Wonderful Words and Totally Weird and Wonderful Words. 1. Verb trans. – “To confuse, jumble” – First of all this word is just fun to say in its various forms. 2. Verb intr. – “To take one’s pleasure, enjoy oneself, revel, luxuriate” – Often I feel the word “enjoy” just isn’t enough to describe an experience, and “revel” tends to conjure up images of people dancing and spinning around in circles – at least in my head. 3. 4. 5. Adj. – “Apt to be a subject of jest or mockery” – This word describes a person, thing or situation that is likely to be the butt of jokes. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Kumo - Java Word Cloud Kumo On GitHub: here The goal of Kumo is to create a powerful and user friendly Word Cloud library in Java. Kumo can directly generate an image file, or return a BufferedImage. Please feel free to jump in and help improve Kumo! Current Features Draw Rectangle, Circle or Image Overlay word clouds. Download from Maven Central Example to generate a Word Cloud on top of an image. Example to generate a circular Word Cloud. Example to generate a rectangle Word Cloud Example of tokenizing chinese text into a circle Create a polarity word cloud to contrast two datasets Create a Layered Word Cloud from two images/two word sets 10 Insulting Words You Don’t Know | Words You Dont Know “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” That’s what we used to chant as kids when we got into name calling contests in the school yard. Of course, it’s untrue and it’s disingenuous. It implies that the name callers are pursuing a stupid strategy when, in truth, the right insult is deeply wounding. Consider, for example, Jean Harlow. Nevertheless, Jean Harlow escaped lightly when compared to Lord Castlereagh, a despised British politician, who was held responsible for the massacre at St. Posterity will ne’er survey A nobler scene than this. This four line poem distills the essence of insult. 1. As few of us spend much time in the company of horses you may no longer appreciate the distinctive nature of this insult, but if you’ve read The Tempest by Shakespeare, you’ll have no doubt of the putative unpleasantness of the odor. 2. 3. Pages: 1 2 3

Tagxedo - Word Cloud with Styles Another 25 Words you Don’t Know Humans Following on from our first list of words you don’t know, we present another 25. Learn one a day and impress your friends! Words 25 – 21 25. 24. 23. 22. 21. Words 20 – 16 20. 19. 18. 17. 16. Words 15 – 11 15. 14. 13. 12. 11. Words 10 – 6 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. Words 5 – 1 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Jamie Frater Jamie is the founder of Listverse. What Jane Eyre Can Teach You About Mind-Blowing Heroines | The Procrastiwriter What Jane Eyre Can Teach You About Mind-Blowing Heroines How to craft a three-dimensional, empowered, compelling heroine? It’s a buzzing question, even among female authors. The Bechdel Test, which slaps the sexist label on any story that fails to feature at least two female characters discussing something other than a man, continues to be a hot topic. But what does all that really mean? What are the requirements for a strong female character? For tips on creating female characters who are strong, empowered, and compelling in their own right, let’s take a look at one of our earliest examples of a mind-blowing heroine: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (whose character arc I analyze in-depth in my book Jane Eyre: The Writer’s Digest Annotated Classic). 1. The first requirement in creating a fabulous character (of either sex) is making sure you’ve given her both phenomenal strengths and staggering weaknesses. Jane Eyre is such a beautiful example of this. 2. 3. 4. 5. Like this: Like Loading...

What concepts do not exist in the English language? Carl Honoré (In Praise of Slow) says Canada's Baffin Island Inuit "use the same word—'uvatiarru'—to mean both 'in the distant past' and 'in the distant future.' Time, in such cultures, is always coming as well as going." In an essay by Louise Edrich (Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart), she writes about learning Ojibwemownin and how "nouns are mainly desginated as alive or dead, animate or inanimate...once I began to think of stones as animate, I started to wonder whether I was picking up a stone or it was putting iteslf in my hand." I'm fascinated by language reflecting culture and vice versa. Any reference you've run across in passing or even know about as a multi-lingual MeFite is welcome. Moreover, if English isn't your primary language, what words/concepts made you take pause?

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