background preloader

Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, & more

Facebook Twitter

The free dictionary. Welcome to Pulse-Project.org | Pulse-Project.org. 10 words that might not mean what you think they do. As English evolves, word meanings shift and turn, sometimes reversing themselves altogether. These 10 words have shifted their senses over the years. In some cases, we are wise to likewise be flexible; in others, we relax our vocabulary at the expense of useful distinctions: 1. Decimate The literal meaning of this word, as all you lovers of Latin (not to be confused with Latin lovers) know all too well, is "to reduce by one-tenth," supposedly from the punitive custom of selecting one out of 10 captives by lot and killing those so selected. 2.

Commonly employed to mean "not interested," disinterested has a precise, useful meaning of "neutral, unbiased. " 3. Some people would reserve this word to mean "monstrously wicked," but, in truth, it is properly invoked to refer to anything overwhelming or an unexpected event of great magnitude, and thus it need not be invariably corrected to enormousness except when it is clearly in reference to a loathsome occurrence. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Urban Dictionary, January 18: SOPA. Wikipedia. Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary and thesaurus. Globaïa :: Creation | Research | Communication.