Saturday, April 3, 2010

All About Bad! (Final Part)

Prologue: Let us listen to the story of bad words! Not really! I will tell about words which mean evil things or bad things, not the slang words! All these bad things come from Latin malus, which means bad, evil.

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In my last  post I have told about some bad words. Now I am telling about others.


Our Today's journey will start with Malevolent. Add the Latin root volent (wishing) with malus and you can construct the adjective malevolent, wishing evil or harm! For example: "All About Words" site does not allow people with malevolent attitudes to become a member! 


Our next word is maleficient. Those who have watched the movie "Sleeping Beauty" (1959) by Walt Disney, already know the meaning of this word! Maleficent is a fictional character and the main antagonist of this movie.
 Maleficent in the movie "Sleeping Beauty"

Maleficent is the self-proclaimed "Mistress of All Evil" who curses the infant Princess Aurora after not being invited to the baby's christening.Add the root facio, factus, to do or to make ( also spelled as fec-, fic-, factus- or as a verb ending ,-fy in english words), to form the word maleficient, doing harm or evil! Here -ent is an adjectvite suffix. Malificent and malaign are synonymous.


This time, our word is Malefactor. Instead of adding -ent in maleficient, add -tor a noun suffix to form this word. It means a crime, an evil deed. For example: He is a well-known criminal lawyer who had saved a many malefactor from going to jail.


Malediction was made from the Latin root dico, dictus, to say or tell. That is a curse, an evil saying! For example: A malediction was pronounced by the witch against the village and ever since there has been no fresh water there. 


Our last word is Malapropism. It comes from Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play "The Rivals", and in particular the character Mrs. Malaprop. Sheridan presumably named his character Mrs. Malaprop, whose
 A Scene from the drama "The Rivals".

grandiloquent impulses led her to use slightly but ludicrously the wrong word. The most familiar amongst her blunders are ‘contagious countries’ (for contiguous), ‘a supercilious knowledge in accounts’ (for superficial) et cetera! So, the meaning of this word is: The unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar.


There are many other bad words, like: Maladroit, malicious, Malady, malice. And obviously the joint words: malpractice, malfunction, malnutrition et cetera. But all have the notion of bad or evil.

At last, to female viewers: You may think "male" comes from the root malus! But sorry to say, a big No! It comes from Latin root: masculus.


Thank you, Hopefully next time I will bring good words for you!
Adios!

Copyright © 2010, K. M. Tanvir Ahmmed.
Visit my site: All About Words

Thursday, April 1, 2010

All About Bad!

Let us listen to the story of bad words! Not really! I will tell about words which mean evil things or bad things, not the slang words! All these bad things come from Latin malus, which means bad, evil.

The first one is malign.We all know what does it mean, 'causing harm'. a malign force, a malign effect et cetera cetera ad infinitum, This word comes from Latin malus! This word comes in english via French from Latin malignus, from malus (bad) + genus (sort, kind, birth). In it's verb form, it means to speak evil about, i.e. to defame, to slander. Another adjective form is malignant. Whenever a doctor says 'a malignant growth in your body', probably he says about a cancerous (bad) one!

Let us listen to another one, malaise. This word is originated in Old French as a conflation of mal aise, i.e. bad ease; just as disease (dis ease), lack of ease! Now, we know what does malaise means: uneasiness, physical discomfort.

Anopheles  mosquito feeding on a human arm. This mosquito is a vector of malaria

Now, ready for the third one, malaria. Everyone knows about it. This word comes from Italian as a conflation of mala aria, i.e. bad air! This word was an allusion to the former belief that malaria was caused by unwholesome atmosphere and specially by vapors given off by swamps and marshes. Now a days we all know that malaria is a disease which spreads by mosquito.

Sufficient bad news for today's blog. Later I'll bring more bad news to you! Till then, take care.
Adios!

Copyright © 2010, K. M. Tanvir Ahmmed.
Visit my site: All About Words.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

All About Words

This blog is all about words. Posts are only related to English words. Origin of word, their character, their history will be posted here. This blog is a supplement of All About Words website.
All the images are taken from Wikipedia under Creative Commons license. (https://en.wikipedia.org/)