h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Actually, 'sacrifice' has never meant 'to make holy'. It originally meant 'to perform priestly duties' and then became 'giving something up for the sake of another' via 'to offer something to a diety'.

I have http://www.etymonline.com/ open pretty much permanently.

From that citation:

>>..from sacra "sacred rites" (prop. neut. pl. of sacer "sacred," see sacred)
+ root of facere "to do, perform" (see factitious). <<

(Factitious means 'made' or 'manufactured' - not naturally occurring.)

So we have a slightly different interpretation of "to do"
(from factitious which is also the root of factory or manufacture
IE 'make') and "sacred rights" or holiness.

Dictionarydotcom says:
>> Origin: 1225–75; (noun) Middle English < Old French < Latin sacrificium, equivalent to sacri- (combining form of sacer holy) + -fic-, combining form of facere to make, do. <<

Hence my interpretation: sacri (holy) + fice (make).

Same church different pew.

~jwf~

Fact.

That which is made.

(Good thread wings..possiblities for jamming here..)

Factoid.

That which is made up.

Chuffed.


They who are made up.

Essex.

Women who are made up.

Airfix.

Planes that are made up.

"the Roman army's practice of
killing off every tenth soldier"

I wonder whether the belief that 'inflammable' is the opposite of 'flammable' has cost as many lives.

By the way, there are some more auto-antonyms here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym

There are a lot more here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_auto-antonyms

I recently solved a "computer" problem at the uni by pointing out to the administrator that if he writes "please note: the password is case insensitive", this is not the same as "case sensitive", and users would not go through the trouble of making sure the case was right in his randomly generated 25-character alphanumeric passwords.

....and just how many people tried typing in "case insensitive" as the password

Whenever I hear politicians talking about fundamentalists or football managers talking about "fundamental" or "fundamentally speaking", I think:

fundament = arse

fundamental = about the arse

fundamentally speaking = talking out of the arse

fundamentalists = from the arse

I can't help but associate 'fundamental' with Mind.

But I popped in for another reason:

I'd just returned from an appointment I keep bimonthly, when uncertainty crept in as to whether 'bimonthly' means every couple of months, or twice a month. So I looked it up and was astonished to see that both definitions are correct! No wonder I wasn't sure.

That's all, really.........