Acute, chronic. These two are sometimes confused, which is a little odd as their meanings are sharply opposed. Chronic pertains to lingering conditions, ones that are not easily overcome. Acute refers...
Amoral, immoral. Amoral describes matters in which questions of morality do not arise or are disregarded; immoral applies to things that are evil.
At Birkenhead, near Liverpool, designed and built the world’s first municipal park. This park so captivated the American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted that he modeled Central Park in New Y...
Camouflage (rather oddly from camouflet, meaning to blow smoke up someone’s nose, a pastime that appears on the linguistic evidence to be specific to the French),
Designed and built the world’s first municipal park. This park so captivated the American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted that he modeled Central Park in New York on it.
Further research has shown that there is or may well be a bacterial component in all kinds of other disorders46 – heart disease, asthma, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, several types of mental disorder...
Get a peek at them was seldom matched by more engaging qualities, like respect. I’m afraid we always used to adopt—let’s say a patronizing attitude toward her, Crick later recalled. Two of these men w...
Growth. Often used contrarily by economists and those who write about them: ‘It now looks as if growth will remain stagnant until spring’ (Observer); ‘… with the economy moving into a negative growth...
Journal Science in 1980 contending that women are genetically inferior at mathematics.
Lifelong. ‘Jesse Bishop was a lifelong drug addict who had spent 20 of his 46 years in prison’ (Guardian). You might be a lifelong resident of New York or a lifelong church-goer or, at a stretch, a li...
Nemesis. ‘Instead, the unions directed their wrath toward another nemesis, the European Community’s Executive Commission …’ (Time magazine). A nemesis (from Nemesis, the Greek goddess of vengeance) is...
Noticed on my city map that just up the road was the Musée International de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge (the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Breakfast Roll), which sounded much...
Ocean vents harbour some of the most extraordinary life on the planet.
Pair of Stephens Island wrens, which were found only on a small, isolated island in New Zealand’s Cook Strait. All were killed by a lighthouse keeper’s cat.
Personal, personally. When it is necessary to emphasize that a person is acting on his own rather than as a spokesman or that he is addressing people individually rather than collectively, personal an...
Radiocarbon dating works only for objects up to forty thousand or so years old. Curiously,
Second largest and other similar comparisons often lead writers astray: ‘Japan is the second largest drugs market in the world after the United States’ (The Times). Not quite. It is the largest drugs...
Supernova explosions could have generated the necessary heat to create the heavy elements that led to the formation of rocky planets and, eventually, us. (credit
Tend to think in terms of words and not letters, so it is molecules they count, and these are numerous to say the least. At sea level, at a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius, one cubic centimetre of ai...
The mightiest and most extensive mountain range on Earth was—mostly—under water.
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