Relax, Refresh your English knowledge 3

 

11. What is the difference between ‘nervous' and ‘edgy'?

A person who is nervous or edgy is tense or worried about something. Of the two, ‘nervous' is the more general term. Someone who is nervous need not necessarily show that he is worried about something. He may be outwardly very calm, but on the inside, he may be extremely agitated. A person who is ‘edgy' shows he is worried; the tension is there for all to see. He is anxious and is therefore very irritable. Small things set him off; he may argue or fight with those around him.

*Gayathri said she was nervous, but she certainly didn't look it during the presentation.

*The soldiers were edgy as they waited for their orders from the Captain.

12. Is it okay to say, ‘She was terminated by her publisher'?

In terms of grammar, there is nothing wrong with the sentence. It suggests that this person was killed by her publisher! Of course, given the times we are living in, authors getting bumped off by their publisher wouldn't be considered unusual. If you want to say that the publisher didn't kill, but merely fired the individual, then the sentence should be written in the following manner: ‘Her services were terminated by her publisher.' Not all publishers are like Arnold Schwarzenegger; they are not ‘Terminator(s)'.

13. How is the word ‘auteur' pronounced?

The ‘au' in the first syllable sounds like the ‘o' in ‘go', ‘so', and ‘no', while the ‘eur' in the final syllable is like the ‘ir' in ‘birth', ‘bird', and ‘first'. The word is pronounced o-TIR with the stress on the second syllable. In French, the word means ‘author'; nowadays it is mostly used in relation to films. We know that all well-known directors have a distinctive style of making movies. It is possible to watch a couple of scenes from a film and guess who the director is. Dictionaries define this distinctive style which enables a director to keep creative control over his work as ‘auteur'. This is just one of the meanings of the word.

14. How is the word ‘chauffeur' pronounced?

There seem to be different ways of pronouncing this word of French origin. One simple way is to pronounce the first syllable ‘chau' like the word ‘show', and the ‘er' in the second like the ‘a' in ‘china'. The British pronounce the word ‘SHOW-fe' with the stress on the first syllable. A ‘chauffeur' is someone who drives a car for rich people. When used as a verb, the word means to drive someone around.

*The Ambanis went to the airport in a chauffeur-driven limousine.

*The mother spent the afternoon chauffeuring her son from one mall to another.

The word ‘chauffeur', which in French means ‘stoker', was in use long before automobiles came into being. A stoker was someone who worked in the engine room of a ship, and his job was to shovel coal into the boiler. The first automobiles did not run on petrol, but on steam. The engine had a firebox and a boiler, and one of the functions of the driver was to keep the fire in the engine going.

15. What is the difference between ‘demise' and ‘death'?

While both words mean ‘end or ending of life', demise is mostly used in formal contexts to refer to the death of someone or something very important or well known. One usually talks about the demise of a Prime Minister or a celebrity; the word is seldom used with ordinary people.

*The sudden demise of the Prime Minister created a political vacuum.

The word can also be used to indicate the failure of an enterprise.

*The demise of the well-known company had many investors worried.

‘Death' is a much more general term, and unlike ‘demise', can be used with things and animals.

*Neelam became very upset when she heard about the death of her puppy.

*It was the death of all her plans.

 A collection from the Open Page Supplement of The Hindu Newspaper

Courtesy: Sri Upendra, the writer of the above