Euphemisms

Euphemisms.

What an ugly word! And it means a nice way to say something negative or unpleasant. Like when we say someone has "passed on" instead of died. Some better examples:
"barf" instead of puke;
"eccentric" instead of insane;
"went away" instead of committed to an institution;
"put to sleep" instead of euthanize.

Wait! Euthanize is a nice way to say kill, and it's related to the word euphemism.

Eu phe mis (u)m is definitely from the Greek language.

Con or Sen?

I just discovered a new word, and it happens to describe me, sententious. What does sententious mean? Terse, aphoristic, or pithy. That means I use brief meaningful statements. Origin: Latin.

I had gotten this confused with contentious, which means argumentative (which I never am). Contentious means argumentative, belligerant. From Latin also.

Exuberant Soliloquy

There are some interesting words in the newspaper today. Discombobulate is one of them of course. And sententious, copious and soliloquy.

I always liked discombobulate and its cousin discombuberated. I think one is just a mispronunciation of the other. Why would we need 2 words so closely related in sound and meaning?

Sententious I think means argumentative, or is that contentious? See next article (above).

I think copious is wordy or unnecessarily long. It also means abundant, full. My dictionary actually says one of the meanings is "profuse or exuberant in words, expression, or style."

Is soliloquy a monologue? Yes. It means talking to oneself, or a dramatic monologue that gives the illusion of being a series of unspoken reflections. That means that this blog is a soliloquy. Oooh, I like the way that sounds!

I love words! But I'll end now, because I don't want to be copious in the sense of wordy. However, I do want to be copious in the sense of exuberant.