140
The word musset was invented by the author (Gregory Maguire).
Having replicated the OP's lack of success in finding any online definition of the word, I acted on a whim and sent an email to ask him. He very kindly replied a few hours later with:
Ah, you have found one of my invented words, employed to make the world of
Oz that little bit more unfamiliar ...
63
What is the best way to use this terminology and be gender neutral while maintaining communication efficiency?
I would suggest that your original term, "man-in-the-middle (attack)", remains the best fit. It's not true that this can't be considered gender neutral - most dictionaries will confirm that there is a sense of the word 'man' that can ...
35
There are several gender-neutral names for a MITM attack¹:
• monster-in-the-middle
Since 1989, experts have been arguing that Internet security requires cryptographic protocols, ensuring security
against Monster-in-the-Middle (MitM) attackers.
— Cornell University
• machine-in-the-middle
There are known attacks on (D)TLS, such as machine-in-the-middle and ...
29
The word any, when used in a negation, is a Negative Polarity Item (NPI), which is defined by the paper Definite Descriptions and Negative Polarity as words that “seem happy under negation and are sometimes unhappy without negation”.
When you have a double negative, “standard” English dictates that you need to use a single negative but not both (or else you ...
27
I really think "person-in-the-middle" is the only option which satisfies both your requirements. Replacing "man" by "person" is a very standard way to avoid terms which might be perceived as gender-biased (for example "chairperson" can now be found in most dictionaries). Anyone familiar with a man-in-the-middle attack ...
20
It originates in Homer Iliad 7.219:
Αἴας δ᾽ ἐγγύθεν ἦλθε φέρων σάκος ἠΰτε πύργον:And Ajax came close, carrying a shield like a tower:
In typically Homeric fashion, the line recurs verbatim a couple of times, at 11.485 & 17.128. Translation is mine for the nonce. The link is to the Perseus Project. Both English translations available there, Butler 1898 ...
19
The problem is that "Double Negative" doesn't have any specific meaning. Like "Split Infinitive", it's a product of popular grammatical mythology, not logic.
First, there is a lot more negation around than one might have suspected.
As it says here,
... examples include syntactic constructions (This is it, isn’t it? Not any big ones, he ...
17
He has an impressive / an outstanding / a strong / a proven / ... track record.
track record: a record of past performance often taken as an indicator of likely future performance
These stocks have a proven track record.
[Merriam-Webster]
(Obviously, a positive adjective premodifier is needed here.)
As always with requests for 'opposites', not every ...
16
In Poker,
Go north often means sneaking/adding chips to the stack in front of you on the table*. It is possible that the subject got caught rearranging/hiding the chips in front of them.
Go South means removing chips from the table to reduce the stake. This is considered bad manners, and is often called 'ratholing'
It is not just Poker...the expression is ...
14
I think that rivulets is fine. Look at these examples:
Blue drops of rain trickles in rivulets on a black background. — Dreamstime Stock Video
Sun Tuff roofing with rain drops and rivulets — Alamy Stock Photo
Soap suds and rivulets of water on window glass of a red saloon car being washed in an automated car — Alamy Stock Photo
Alternatively, these can ...
11
The word is droplet
There is nothing wrong with using "droplets" as in the website you reference. A rivulet is a thin stream of water that is flowing. A droplet is a small drop that adheres to the surface.
Look at some of these images
11
One opposite could be "to be a Cassandra", that is, to be right but not be believed. This doesn't bring in the repetition implied in crying wolf, so it isn't perfect.
10
In isolation. To analyse a work of art in isolation is to analyse it alone, without consideration of anything outside of the artwork itself.
Out of context is related, but to me it can imply that the artwork has been deliberately removed from its context, whether in terms of the analysis or of the setting in which the analyst encounters it.
10
You could try "Malicious-In-The-Middle" to keep the MITM acronym.
In traditional cryptography naming, the one who performs the MITM attack is Mallory which will not help because that's a firstname but it fits the M in MITM.
9
It's still a widget. Widget was a general term for a small piece of hardware long before software existed. The term was just incorporated into software terminology.
The same thing thing applies to "bug" which originally applied to a fault in wiring, particularly complicated sensitive wiring like telephone and aircraft systems. The idea was that ...
8
I personally like the Agent-in-the-middle as it sort of fits with a scenario of an intelligence agent intercepting the information. (you'll have to drop the MITM acronym though)
8
Summary
Steven Pinker does not say that “can’t get any” is a double negative,
merely that it is no less of one than “can’t get no”.
I think he is exaggerating, to make the point that grammatical rules are arbitrary rather than logical.
What Pinker actually says
The questioner writes
I don't understand why "can't get any" is a double-negative.
...
8
Do want to sound like a professional?
put the paper to bed
..is the time-honored phrase in use since at least the turn of the previous century.
When the paper heads to press and newsroom has signed off all pages.
That said, and paraphrasing...
"Today we are putting the (February) issue to bed."
...sounds better. A professional would ...
8
‘Received things’ ≠ ‘Things received’
We don’t really use received as an attributive adjective in the sense of physical delivery and reception very often. For example, you don’t talk about received packages, but you can have packages received before noon with a participial phrase.
However, what you can have is a well-received first novel. Now the word ...
8
I'd call it a streak.
streak [noun]
a long, narrow mark, smear, band of color, or the like:
streaks of mud.
[Dictionary.com]
If your wipers are leaving streaks of water on the windshield ... (Advert on Google]
streak [verb]
to be in streaks.
Rain streaked down the window.
[Kids.Wordsmyth]
8
I'm not sure why Wikipedia says that.
Traditionally, a lock of hair refers to hair that hangs together. The word lock has been used this way since Old English ("lock, n.1," def. 1a in the Oxford English Dictionary). While locks can be cut and collected, and lock of hair most commonly specifies such severed clusters of hair, lock of hair can also ...
8
It would appear that the name comes from The Davey Company (Davey Est 1842) who invented and manufactured various types of board under the Davey trademark(s).
The company produces enough binder's board for 30 million books and has three factories and 300 employees. It is the country's largest manufacturer of binder's board and a pioneer in large-scale ...
7
What is inside a work of art are its contents....either representations or physical stuff like paint or marble.
What is outside of it, is extrinsic (as opposed to intrinsic) and part of the context in which it is produced!
as in this text:
1)
However, attempting to draw out values from that experience and thus
construct an extrinsic framework in which to ...
7
Ounce counting is outdoor-enthusiast jargon for minimising the weight of equipment. Heavy equipment wears out its wearer, so some backpackers, hunters, mountaineers, etc. pay a great deal of attention to how much external weight they carry. They are referred to as ounce-counting backpackers, hunters, mountaineers, etc.
Over the years I have touched on ounce ...
7
Canopy
Architecture A projection or shelter that resembles a roof.
‘they mounted the station steps under the concrete canopy’
6
I would like to suggest: Unauthorized Proxy attack.
The attack, of course, is to insert an unauthorized proxy between you and a resource you want to reach. In doing so, the attacker can assume control of some aspects of your communication with that resource, potentially including etc etc.
I cannot say this is a "standard" or "common" use,...
6
“Rare” (meaning “uncommon”) and “rare” (meaning “undercooked”) are actually two different words that nowadays happen to have the same spelling and pronunciation. The first “rare” 1 stems from Latin “rarus” and has cognates in most Romance languages. The second “rare” 2 is of Germanic origin, and used to be written “rere”, “rear” etc in the (distant) past.
6
I would say this is a very simple form of a "Parsing diagram".
From Wikipedia:
"Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of
analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer
languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal
grammar."
Your diagram shows an expression (an e-mail ...
5
All my life I have heard deplane instead of deboard. But it seems a difference without a distinction.
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