Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > English
Learn a word every day
Shampa Iftakhar:
Every day we encounter with some familiar words. Thousands words remain unused as we hardly know their meanings. So let's try to learn a word a everyday.
Whippersnapper:
A whippersnapper is someone who is younger than you are but also irritatingly overconfident and impertinent, like your little smart aleck cousin.
The word whippersnapper describes a specific kind of bratty, know-it-all kid, and it's only used by an older person who is talking about a younger person. It's a fairly old-fashioned word, having been around since the late-1600s, when it apparently arose out of "whip-snapper," which implied a general sense of lots of noise and very little importance. Around the same time, the word "whipperginnie" was a derogatory term for a woman.
Synonyms: a)Jacknapes: It means a colorful but very old fashioned way to describe a rascal or a whippersnapper. Your great-grandfather might shake his cane and yell, "Get off my lawn, you jackanapes!" when the neighbor kids lose their basketball in his yard, but they're unlikely to know what the word means. Jackanapes is from the fifteenth century, and it's thought to come from the phrase "Jack of Naples," or to have some connection to the word apes, but experts are uncertain.
b) Lightweight: Break lightweight apart — light + weight — and you see its definition right there in its root words. Someone who is called a lightweight is either a professional boxer who weighs under 135 pounds or he's someone with little importance or ability. When a company is looking to make layoffs, it's the lightweight employees, or those who just aren't important to the business that often get axed first.
Source:www.vocabulary.com
Shampa Iftakhar:
Ex gratia: An ex gratia payment is not necessary, especially legally, but is made to show good intentions:
Example: Ex gratia payments were made to all those who had been affected by the spillage.
Shampa Iftakhar:
Ass over teakettle: a) Frantically , in complete disarray.
Example: We've been scrambling ass over teakettle to get this thing done on time.
b) Head over heels. Used frequently by weird Canadian mother-in-laws.
Example: Damn, Tom got really wasted and fell out of his chair, ass over teakettle.
Shampa Iftakhar:
Te Deum: a) an early Christian hymn of praise
b) A religious service in which the singing of the hymn forms a principal part; a public thanksgiving
Mir Sadia Siddequa:
Very good, really liked it
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