 It has been said that the English language is one of the hardest langages to become fluent in because of all the strange spellings and pronunciations, the hard to spell words with their inconsistent spelling rules, the unusual idioms, the frequent use of hyperbole and periphrasis, allusions which only make sense if you're well-read, and words that are just strange. On this page we're going to look at some unusual words that aren't spelled the way you'd think, that have strange origins, or just don't seem to make sense. All the definitions here come from Merriam-Webster.com and Vocabulary.com. sacrilegious An adjective; this word means 'committing or characterized by sacrilege : having or showing a lack of proper respect for a sacred person, place, or object'. For example: 'It would be sacrilegious to cut down such beautiful trees'. The Latin word sacrilegus, 'thief of sacred things', was used to describe robbers who plundered graves and temples. Anything that's sacrilegious is essentially as disrespectful as a graverobber towards things that others find holy or solemn and serious. Etymologically, as indicated by the different spellings, 'sacrilegious' has no direct relationship to 'religious'! bellwether A noun; this word means 'one who takes the lead or initiative', a 'leader', also an 'indicator of trends'. For example: 'She is a bellwether of fashion'. In a flock one sheep must lead the way. Long ago, it was common practice for shepherds to hang a bell around the neck of one sheep in their flock, thereby designating it the lead sheep. This animal was called the bellwether, a word formed by a combination of the Middle English words belle (meaning "bell") and wether (a noun that refers to a male sheep that has been castrated). Eventually bellwether came to refer to someone who takes initiative or who actively establishes a trend that is taken up by others. Note that it has nothing to do with weather, as indicated by the different spelling. cacophony A noun; this word means 'a harsh mixture of sounds'. For example: 'I couldn't hear over the cacophony of alarm bells'. It's from a Greek word phon which means sound or voice, and is joined with the Greek prefix kak-, meaning bad, to create creating the meaning 'bad sound'. In a similar way, the word symphony (which means a harmonious arrangement of instruments) traces to phon and the Greek prefix syn-, which means 'together'. And of course Telephony means 'sounds at a distance'. verisimilitude A noun; this word means 'something that merely seems to be true or real'. For example: 'She was experiencing a nightmare of the most extraordinary verisimilitude'. It's from the Latin 'veri similis', meaning 'having the appearance of truth'. Many writers or filmmakers try for some kind of verisimilitude in their stories, to make them believable. Including a great many details in a novel, for example, adds to its verisimilitude. This word is on most lists of the hardest English words to spell correctly. serendipity A noun; this word means 'finding something valuable or interesting when you are not looking for it'. For example: 'It had to be serendipity that I found my dream house during a random drive in the country'. This word was made up by English author Horace Walpole in the mid-1700s. He credited it to a fairy tale he read called 'The Three Princes of Serendip'. In the tale, three Persian princes sail to an island called Serendip (today known as Sri Lanka) to find their fortunes, making wondrous discoveries along the way. Colonel In English we don’t pronounce this word Col-o-nel, but in French, where the word is from – they do! In the UK and USA, it’s pronounced ‘kernel’. No-one is quite sure why! flammable and inflammable Despite what you've heard, flammable and inflammable do not mean the same thing, although the distiction is subtle. If something is flammable it means it can be set fire to, such as a piece of wood, or paper. The word inflammable means that a substance is capable of bursting into flames without the need for any ignition, or with an ignition temperature that is very low. Unstable liquid chemicals, liquified natural gas, gasoline vapour, and certain types of fuel, all fall into this category. The opposite of both words is non-flammable. octopuses or octopi Our language gets its words from a variety of sources; generally when a noun enters into English it is pluralized as an English word, rather than in its original form. However, sometimes words will come into English and keep an ending from their original language, particularly if that original language is Latin. So the plural of bacterium is bacteria, rather than bacteriums. But certain words of Latin extraction may be pluralized with either English or Latin endings: multiple stadium may be either stadia or stadiums. The word whose plural is the most contentious is octopus, which, depending on which dictionary is consulted, may be written in three different ways: octopi, octopuses, and octopodes. The three plurals for octopus come from the different ways the English language adopts plurals. Octopi is the oldest plural of octopus, coming from the belief that words of Latin origin should have Latin endings. However, octopus is not originally from Latin, but from Greek. So the plural octopuses, as an English word with an English ending, is perfectly correct, even if it sounds a little peculiar. (Octopodes could be used as a plural form of octopus if you prescibe to the belief that this is a Greek word and should have a Greek ending, even if it makes it less comprehensible). |