Casting Dispersions used the Wrong Way
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Several friends of mine are always asking for assistance in trying to understand English. One of their problems with learning English is not knowing which word to use in certain situations. Using the wrong word is called a malapropism. The term is named after Mrs. Malaprop, a comic character in Richard Brinsley Sheridans The Rivals, who constantly seeks to sound high-flown but fails catastrophically because she doesnt know what the words she is using really mean. So, she says of her daughter, She should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; and as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries. An example of this is the usage of cast dispersions instead of cast aspersions" . Many people, even native English speakers tend to use cast dispersions because of the misunderstanding that disper is a form of disperse (to spread out). In this case, aspersion is a relatively uncommon word and dispersion has usage that is more common. Originally, aspersion was the action of sprinkling somebody with something, usually waterit was commonly used in Christian baptism, for example. It comes from slightly older verbs asperse and asperge, both of which can be traced back to Latin aspergere, to sprinkle. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, aspersion began to refer to the figurative idea that a person was sprinkling his neighborhood with damaging imputations, false statements, or spiteful remarks. The term dispersions is used to describe how a certain mixture of two or more items interact with each. For instance, colloidal dispersions are mixtures that have characteristics like a solution and a suspension. They sometimes appear to be homogenous, but are heterogeneous. However, unlike a suspension, colloidal dispersions will not settle over time. An example of colloidal dispersion is mayonnaise, which includes oil, vinegar, and an egg that is used to bind the mixture together. Now that you know the difference between dispersions and aspersions perhaps, you can tell me what supercilious means. A |
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6/24/2005 11:36 am |
supercilious is the name of a band
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6/24/2005 11:36 am |
Isn't supercilious the name of a band?
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6/20/2005 9:56 pm |
supercilious-patronizingly haughty A woman once told me that when she fell down the stairs, she got the morals knocked out of her, when what she meant was wind. tee hee
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6/20/2005 9:14 am |
A, You're preaching to the choir!! It's my job to listen, record, and produce records of various proceedings (not necessarily court, either), and I hear on a daily basis the degree to which the English language is mangled. I must confess, though, my favorite malapropism comes from the testimony of an inmate. We were there to take his testimony on some matter which I cannot remember at this date. Counsel asked the witness to describe his symptoms, and the witness responded "I have Disney spells." Counsel choked, and Madam Court Reporter had a brain freeze at the moment. Counsel asked the witness to elaborate, and the witness did so by going into great detail about his "Disney" spells. The witness obviously was having "dizzy" spells. Dark
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