The title of The Odyssey has given us a word to describe a journey of epic proportions. Throughout his travels, Odysseus' central emotion is loneliness. We first encounter him as he pines away for home, alone on Kalypso's beach, and he is not above weeping when thinking of home at othe...
Be careful: Spend too long toiling at a dead-end job and you might find thestenchof your office hard to wash off. Young, overworked Chinese are using the term 班味 (bān wèi), or “office stench,” to describe t...
the finest warriors of their time, were known for putting up with extreme conditions without complaint. So English writers who knew their ancient history came to use laconic to describe the habit
1630s, "having two modes of existence; of doubtful nature," from Greekamphibia, neuter plural ofamphibios"living a double life," fromamphi"of both kinds" (seeamphi-) +bios"life" (from PIE root*gwei-"to live"). Formerly used by zoologists to describe any sort of animal at home on ...
would give up the information, though, Menelaus had to capture him—no mean feat, since Proteus had the ability to change into any natural shape he chose. The word protean came to describe this ability to change into many different shapes or to play many different roles in quick succession....
etc.). The bestiaries say that the particular kind of song they have suggests what they should be called. The names of birds in most languages, are of echoic origin, that often have a list of cognates that appear in Indo-European linguistic roots. The words used to describe the habits ...
When they were under ground, they "pursued activities and pleasures similar to those of humans but with supernatural speed and quality" (Rose 108). It was also thought that human time did not exist in fairyland, and many of the legends describe children that go with the fairies for festiviti...
including the fight for a certain cause, the sacrifices for a beloved person, or a call to find something that was lost inside the hero himself. The call to adventure is a key event in a hero’s journey because it ignites the passion in the hero to fight for what he believes in and...
(used to describe a molecule whose arrangement of atoms is such that it cannot be superimposed on its mirror image) [Pokorny 1.ghesor– 447.WatkinsKleinsupplies more cognates: “Seeyard, ‘enclosure’, and compare words there referred to. Compare alsochorionchoruschronic, and the second element...
“There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with… Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself” (Lee 6). Lee's allusion to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address is significant ...