Today's Word has interesting etymology. "grex" meant herd. So an animal could
be different from the others, and so stand out. For either good or bad. And
"gregarious" means preferri;ng to be part of the herd!
In the example sentence for egregious Anu (or someone else) wrote Azzuri meaning the Italian football players.
The meaning is obvious because the national shirt is sky-blue= azzurro.
My question is: why so often English writers mispell Italian names in double letters?
Even my name Emanuela is very very often written as Emanuella, and I cannot figure out why.
Just a curiosity:
We call Principe azzurro your Prince Charming - I suppose because he wears a sky-blue cloak
I love the quote today:
We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. The most alarming spectacle today is
not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the
spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths
and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
-E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)
You could transpose the word Communist with Terrorist today and it would still apply.
-Michael
---
Information is not knowledge,
knowledge is not wisdom.
-Frank Zappa
Back to grex and the herd.
In my understanding of the concept "out of the herd," how then would I read "egregious sin"? Would this be a sin so bad that it was even "out of the herd" of sins--uncommon, more horrid?
In reply to:
Back to grex and the herd.
In my understanding of the concept "out of the herd," how then would I read "egregious sin"? Would this be a sin so bad that it was even "out of the herd" of sins--uncommon, more horrid?
That's how I would read it.
You could transpose the word Communist with Terrorist today and it would still apply.
Excellent point, MM! And welcome to the Board.
It is not really very easy for an English speaker to see (or hear) any MEANING in these double letters but obviously sometimes letters are doubled in Italian. So, it is probably a good idea to double a letter every now and then, especially if an Italian letter is likely to be double in that position. For example, an English speaker would be likely to know that Italian has words spelled "tarantella" and "bella" and so forth. Those things might even come to mind when writing to an Italian in Italy. That makes it seem "logical" to call you "Emanuella" with two ells.
chow,
- ph
not really very easy for an English speaker to see (or hear) any MEANING in these double letters
Good point, pgrew. A classic case is the difference between ano and anno, which any native speaker can easily hear and which causes such hilarity when a foreigner tells someone how old he is.
And it would be much nicer to say someone was born " in anno 1950" than to say
he was born "in ano....." But we all know some people of whom we suspect that.
And don't bother telling me the logical preposition would be "per" taking accusative, I guess.