According to my Duden Dictionary of Etymology , followers of the school of Cynicism were, in a sense, like dogs (the origin of the word cynic is to be found in the Greek word Kyon "dog"), in that they attacked their victims in a vicious and shameless manner. It's from the same root as the word "hou...

sluggo, sluggo, sluggo, have you learnt nothing? The compulsory response is that, although several have pointed out various difficulties with the statements as presented, it is optional for people to present thoughts however they wish, even if suspecting that they may give us a mixed message. All u...

Hindustan is a Persian noun (meaning 'the land of Hind') and it is in Persian that you could make it into an adjective by adding -i. Why Persian? Because, in the 19th century and before, Persian was an official language in northern India. Persian isn't a Semitic language, of course, it's an Indo-Eu...

anders,
It looks more devanagari than ranjana to me. I think I can recognize some of the letters, especially when I turn it over.

I bought this book in India. I assumed this was an old form of devaganari. Do you know?

Just a thought, perhaps it is a subconscious part of the language like accents & dialects... I'm just trying to say that perhaps it is similar to dialect or habits, and it makes words sound better more very much hugely empathically more important, or perhaps it is just taking the place of ... uuumm...

I'd bet that the people who say "unthaw" are aware of the meaning of "thaw". They must have some reason for saying "unthaw" instead. My explanation may not be the right one, but there's an explanation somewhere. I've been listening to my friend saying "unthaw" for years and never once thought anythi...

When I have been to the museum, I have noticed that Sanskrit and Arabic alphabets have many styles. Several of them seem to have a block form and then a cursive form. Am I correct is assuming some forms of these are cursive? Also, I have seem writing from Tibet that has several styles some very cur...

I have heard unthaw before! I have a friend who uses it, but I never noticed it until now. I think "un" here doesn't mean negation, it means something more like "undo what was done" or "reverse a process". So if my friend is preparing frozen vegetables, "thaw" isn't good enough, she needs something ...

If I switch to UFT-8, I can see the IPA, but I can't see letters with umlauts. Does that make any sense?

"unloose" means "loosen" (for some speakers) "undecipher" means "decipher" (for some speakers) And this is very interesting, but it also hurts my head: "They had only just moved in; their boxes lay on the kitchen floor, still unpacked." This means that the boxes were not yet unpacked. "Do you still ...

I've never heard "unthaw" before. However "unravel" 1a. To undo or ravel the knitted fabric of. b. To separate (entangled threads). 2. To separate and clarify the elements of (something mysterious or baffling); solve. and ravel... 1. To separate the fibers or threads of (cloth, for example); unravel...

I was thinking that possibly irregardless is hypercorrection, which doesn't let the ignorant offer the hook. 'Could care less' reminds me of hot water heater.... I call it a water heater since someone pointed out to me that if I had hot water why would I then heat it? I love expressions like "hot w...

the fairyless definition from etymonline.com:

contraction of coppice, from O.Fr. coupeiz "a cut-over forest," from L.L. *colpaticium "having the quality of being cut," from *colpare "to cut, strike," from L.L. colpus "a blow"

colpus also gives us "coup" and "cope".

Yes I can! Thanks Garzo!

[quote="Garzo"]Unicode not showing up here is a bit of a worry. Try changing the character encoding (most browsers will put it under the 'view' menu) to 'UTF-8'. You might need a good Unicode font like Code2000 . That should help. I'm still not sure what would be the more correct pronunciation of Bï...