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matt. j.a.o.b's avatar

The Govt admitting it lied by using factoids as fear and coercion tactics - hilarious until you think of the ramifications. good work, Thanks Ursula.

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Mark.Kennard's avatar

As stated in the covid propaganda

Our executions for this audience……….?????

Does this mean they were planning on executing the susceptible subset of the population who have disabilities. Looks like it to me, in words and in practise.

The executions have happened right in front of our eyes.

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Bardo Ashton's avatar

Cleave

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LoWa's avatar

Contronyms!!! Sounds like 1984. War is peace, freedom is slavery…

There were also plenty of words that had their definitions changed from the original - “pandemic,” “virus,” “isolation,” “case”, “vaccine” as seen in the dictionary.

A lot of English seems to be comprised of word inversions. Eg “conspiracy” sounds bad but “to conspire” is literally to “breathe together” (a hongi, perhaps), as respire means to breathe, inspire to breathe in, expire to breathe out. “Radical” sounds bad but — like you’re crazy, fringe, a looney — but it technically means “the part of the plant that is in the ground; the root” and has the same etymology as words like radish, radix etc. Radical is the opposite of apical, the part of the plant pointing up towards the sun (apex).

Also I am struggling to understand Bound’, ‘Finished’, ‘Clip’ as contronyms…any help much appreciated eg putting them in a sentence that makes it obvious. 🙏🏾

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Karin's avatar

Bound is to leap, jump, also to be tied, bound up

Not sure about finished. I know 2 meanings of it, but don't think they are opposite - finished as in ended, and to give something a finish, like a varnish or nice appearance.

And same with clip - a horse can trot along at a fine clip, meaning going fast, or to clip something as in cut it. Don't see that those are complete opposites, although they could be seen as such, I guess

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Ursula Edgington, PhD's avatar

Fellow language lubbers - something to amuse you: https://spellingsociety.org/uploaded_misc/poems-online-misc.pdf

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LoWa's avatar

Brilliant, love it!!! Te reo looks like a walk in the park by comparison 😂

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Ursula Edgington, PhD's avatar

The beauty of Te Reo is it was always only oral. Then some stupid Pakeha ‘academic’ had to write it down. 🙄😂

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Karin's avatar

and a right balls-up he made

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Ursula Edgington, PhD's avatar

That’s right, clip is similar to ‘trim’, one of my carpentry (ESOL) students found it useful to think about how he could ‘trim’ a piece of timber to fit, or fit a piece of ‘trim’ to provide extra decoration. English is such a tricky language to learn from afar!

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LoWa's avatar

Thank you, English is my first language (and I speak a few others) but even I was bamboozled!

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Mark Halliday Sutherland's avatar

Interesting article Ursula! Good to have some terms (of which I wasn’t aware) to describe more precisely the techniques for deception. In Australia, you see stickers for “It’s Our ABC” which I thought was brilliant messaging to include the collectivists and tell the others to b*gg*r off!

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Jason's avatar

The Power of Words in Medical Diagnosis and ACC Claims

https://www.garymoller.com/post/the-power-of-words-in-medical-diagnosis-and-acc-claims

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