Relax, Refresh your English knowledge 71
346. Is it okay to say ‘revert back’?
We very often hear people using the word ‘back’ with both ‘revert’ and ‘return’. ‘We will be returning back to Hyderabad on the 20th.’ ‘The software company has asked us to revert back to the older version.’ In both these sentences, the word ‘back’ is unnecessary. When you revert to something, you are ‘returning’ or ‘going back’ to it. There is no need to use the word ‘back’ with ‘revert’. *The new schedule is creating too many problems. Should we revert to the old one? In legal contexts, the word ‘revert’ can be used to mean ‘to become the property of a person again.’ *If I lose the case, the property will revert to my brother.
347. What’s the difference between ‘all in all’ and ‘all and all’?
When you say, ‘All in all, it’s been a really bad week’, what you mean is that everything considered, it’s been a terrible week. The expression can also be used to mean ‘everything’. *Cricket has become the all in all for Ananya. Dictionaries do not list ‘all and all’. “The only imaginative fiction being written today is income tax returns.” — Herman Wouk
348. What is the meaning of the word ‘abnegate’?
First, let’s deal with the pronunciation of this formal word. The ‘a’ is like the ‘a’ in ‘ant’ and ‘apple’, and the ‘e’ sounds like the ‘i’ in ‘sit’ and ‘bit’. The final syllable sounds like the word ‘gate’; the word is pronounced ‘AB-ni-gate’ with the stress on the first syllable. This is just one of the ways of pronouncing the word. When you ‘abnegate’ something, you give up your claims on it; you deny yourself the pleasures of something. *The ailing King was unwilling to abnegate his powers to his son. The word can also be used to mean ‘to renounce’ or ‘deny’. *We were shocked when everyone in their family abnegated their god.
349. What is the meaning and origin of ‘even Homer sometimes nods’?
This is an expression which is not heard very often these days. Homer is the Greek poet who wrote two great epics: the Iliad and the Odyssey. The word ‘nod’ in this context means to ‘fall asleep’. What happens when you are at work and feel drowsy? As you are unable to think clearly, you begin to make numerous mistakes. What the idiom means is ‘nobody is perfect’: even someone as great as Homer ended up making mistakes in his two epics. *When I told Anjali there were a couple of errors in her report, she replied that even Homer sometimes nods. *Anand has been doing a brilliant job. Every now and then, he slips up. Even Homer sometimes nods, I guess. The idiom is actually a translation of a line from the Roman poet Horace, who in his ‘De Ars Poetica’, wrote: “I think it is a shame when the worthy Homer nods: but in so long a work it is allowable if drowsiness comes on.”
350. What is the meaning of ‘thick and fast’?
The idiom is mostly used in informal contexts to mean that things are coming at you very quickly and in great numbers. Another expression which has the same meaning is ‘fast and furious’. *During the press conference, the questions came thick and fast. In Old English, both ‘thick’ and ‘fast’ meant ‘close together’. The idiom suggests that things are coming at you so quickly that they seem to be joined or ‘fastened’ to each other. Since the flow is uninterrupted, you get little or no time to react.
A collection from the Open Page Supplement of The Hindu Newspaper
Courtesy: Sri Upendra, the writer of the above
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