Friday, July 30, 2010

Words . . .

Two words that I recently encountered have piqued my interest. The first one is:

meretricious
adjective:
1. Appealing in a cheap or showy manner: tawdry.
2. Based on pretense or insincerity.

Until I looked up that word I assumed that it meant having merit or being valuable. I was wrong.

The other word is:

invalid

Of course that word is actually two different words each having differing pronunciations and differing definitions.

in-VAL-uhd
adjective:
definition -- not valid

IN-vuh-luhd
noun:
definition -- impaired

Words, words, words... always fascinating.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting and sad to note the implication of the adjectival form of invalid when one considers its use to describe the nominal form of that same word. No?

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