New answers tagged meaning-in-context
1
I'm afraid not. The only correct thing to do with ablutions is to perform them, i.e. "she is performing her ablutions." (It's not "ablution", singular, but "abutions", plural.)
1
There's a small set of figurative rhetorical figures (intentional or not) that capture this idea of strange, inappropriate, inconsistent, or incorrect use of terms. It is headed by the term:
catachresis.
There's metalepsis, hyperbole, acyron, acyrologia (malapropism and separately cacozelia are subsets of this), even puns (paranomasia). (note that ...
0
As in: Vocabulary.com verb: to foil
... it hindered or prevented the efforts, plans, or desires
of the Anglo-American ways.
As a verb, if you foil someone's plans or attempts to do something, you cause them to fail.
1
As KillingTime said in his comment, it's intentional metaphorical usage.
That said, and the example aside, the word the OP is looking for must be malapropism in its broader sense, of just misuse.
Malapropism is defined as using an inappropriate word that is usually (but not necessarily) similar sounding to the one that should have been used.
0
I have always understood a foil to be a noun form of the verb.
foil
VERB
Prevent (something considered wrong or undesirable) from succeeding.
I see it as a metaphorical use of the "light fencing sword" you mention: a strategy to deflect something undesirable.
2
The Butterfly Effect is an allegory, example or metaphor devised by Edward Lorenz to help explain Chaos Theory to a wider audience.
Chaos Theory is a branch of mathematics which deals with situations that arise when small differences in initial conditions result in widely different final results. This doesn't mean that anything can happen but does mean ...
1
In the first example, the "statement" is that "the internet works as a contemporary CV". The writer thinks that it is obvious that this statement is true.
As to your second example, the words "form of lengthy" don't belong together. The book "makes demands of its reader". What form do these demands have? "Lengthy exercises to be done". (The word "lengthy" ...
0
(first) dibs (on something). TFD an idiom
slang The rights to something, or the rights to have first choice of
something. "Dibs" are usually claimed verbally.
Literary uses of English are given poetic license. This idiom ... is the idiomatic use of English, and in your example there is the variation 'tibbies'.
0
I think it refers to the following connotation:
To shoo:
to request or force (a person) to leave:
I'll have to shoo you out of here now.
(Dictionary.com)
.
(transitive)
to drive away by or as if by crying "shoo"
(Collins)
2
Yes it is reasonable to apply 'rare' to one of a kind. For two reasons.
First is that it is reasonable to consider that "unique" is just an extreme form of 'rare'. But being an extreme form of rare does not stop it being rare. If there were only three of something it would be rare, or if there were two - therefore it does not make sense to everybody that ...
5
Is rare an appropriate descriptor for something that is one-of-a-kind?
No. Something that is one-of-a-kind is unique. Something that is uncommon but not unique is rare.
The Mona Lisa is unique.
Gold is rare on our planet.
A custom-made guitar is unique, built to particular specifications and reflecting the capabilities of its maker.
Guitars that have ...
0
This is, as another answer noted a bit of wordplay. Specifically, it hinges on the subtle distinction between "were" and "was" in marking the subjunctive mood, which even native English speakers tend to mess up.
"If it were so..." is expressing a hypothetical in the present tense. Thus, "If it were so, then it would be." is saying that if a thing is ...
3
crack the door OED definition and an example use:
1964 Spectator 14 Feb. 205 Mr. Kennedy..made it his practice..to
leave the door to his office cracked a little so that any personal
assistant who felt the need to talk to him might walk right in.
definition:
trans and intrans. Of a door: to be slightly ajar; to leave slightly
ajar. Cf. ...
1
Even after having read it in context I'm not certain, but I think the gust of wind was a metaphor for Miles' progress along the hallway. The Disney book Miles Morales Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds is juvenile fiction (and I'm going to leave that as an ambiguity), so ease of reading will have taken precedence over literary form.
I think a simile would have ...
0
It is an idiomatic expression:
throw the book at someone
to punish someone as severely as possible:
The judge was not lenient – he threw the book at him.
(Cambridge Dictionary)
1
The expression "lowest common denominator" has appeared in figurative (in this case, non-mathematical) contexts for quite a while—indeed for almost as long as it has been used in a mathematical sense.
Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) offers this entry for the term:
lowest common denominator n (1854) 1 : LEAST COMMON DENOMINATOR [...
3
‘Why’ isn’t being used here with the same meaning as ‘because’, it is being used as an exclamation. Imagine that, instead of using ‘why’, the animal speaking used ‘Hell’, as in: “Hell, I knew a macaw once who could...”
Check out the second definition of ‘Why’ on the Cambridge English Dictionary site: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/why
...
3
It means the kid had urine on his behind, because he had peed himself in bed.
pissy
adj.
Irritable; cranky.
adj.
Covered in piss.
adj.
Resembling or smelling like piss.
piss
noun
Definition of piss (Entry 2 of 2)
1 usually vulgar : urine
butt
noun (1)
\ ˈbət
\
Definition of butt
(Entry 1 of 6)
1 : buttocks
slipped and fell on his butt
1
Lowest Common Denominator has been a term of art in the television industry since the formation of the national broadcast networks, originally CBS, NBC, and ABC.
Because the broadcasts were national, available to anyone with receivers, the content had to appeal to the broadest audience possible.
This came to be associated with mediocre content, but ...
1
An ethic is a set of moral principles. Here it means 'an appeal to people whose ethic sees overriding value in scaling the greatest possible heights of human achievement.' He means Rockefeller was directing his appeal at people who believed the most important thing we could do was to achieve greatness.
An appeal is a heartfelt call; an urgent request.
You ...
1
The word stunt used as a noun does mean a feat of daring and skill but, even in that sense, there is a connotation of the feat being done to impress or entertain. For instance someone climbing up a tower block to unfurl a political banner might be said to said to have pulled a stunt but a winchman on a rescue helicopter dropping to the deck of a small boat ...
0
In your context it is a clear place in a wood (a forest) — probably there were trees sometimes ago, but people chopped they down.
2
Children of the revolution :
is a concept associated with the generation growing up after revolutionary activity. It refers to the first generation of persons born after a revolution. The children of the revolution are a blank slate on which the values of the revolution are imposed. Because the generation have no shared memory of the prior world they ...
2
In the U.K., a shovel is a particular tool, used by unskilled and until recent times casual labourers on building projects of all kinds, including railway construction, and the digging of the canals that preceded them. A shovel looks like this: https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/garden-spade-picture-id185074028?s=612x612. I myself used one as an ...
1
ran TDF one of many senses
To cause to function; operate:
As in:
But the Dooleys operated the place as if they were kings and he was
their servant.
The Dooley operated as 'imperial' employers and treated their employee as a servant.
2
Neither Alex nor Ali can achieve their dream.
If they are unsuccessfully pursuing a dream put forward by one of them it matters which: John dreams of being able to fly. Neither Alex nor Ali can achieve his dream.
-1
I would say,
Neither Alex nor Ali can achieve her dream.
The pronoun will refer to the subject closest to it. In this case, pronoun refers to Ali.
1
work out, a phrasal verb Collins
to result in some way
As in your question:
It is merely the result, in some way, of the law of nature and a law
of God.
Working out meaning it happens in a certain way, leading to, producing, or resulting in a certain outcome, often well.
4
"Treated" means processed in this context, here's a relevant quote from wikipedia:
To make the parchment more aesthetically pleasing or more suitable for
the scribes, special treatments were used. According to Reed there
were a variety of these treatments. Rubbing pumice powder into the
flesh side of parchment while it was still wet on the frame was ...
3
This procedure has been described in other work from our laboratory
Could be paraphrased:
This way of doing things has been described in other research/papers/books written by the researchers from our laboratory
0
The phrase "to the extent" never means "as long as". "To the extent" is actually a well known expression which is used for adding emphasis on what's being stated. It just means that the speaker reached the point beyond which he/she is unable to tolerate it.
In the following sentence "The Supreme Court on Friday gave the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) “a last ...
2
The have to meaning, especially when got is not preceded by have, is typically used in spoken speech in very informal contexts (if it appears in writing, it is normally just a transcription of something spoken). In such spoken contexts, this got to is typically pronounced as gotta, and in writing it is often transcribed as such (see e.g. here). Thus, in ...
0
There certainly is potential for selfishness to be positive but it is complicated and more about context than semantics or philosophy! I work with the very elderly, in the cohort of 28 I work with I have 3 centenarians, 6 who might be centenarians in 2020, a few youngsters paddling around in sub 90 zone and the rest all nonagenarians. That is a bloody long ...
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