whinge • \WINJ\ • verb British : to complain fretfully : whine
Example sentence: She urged her fellow workers to stop whinging about how they were victims of "the system" and to do something to change that system.
Did you know? "Whinge" isn't just a spelling variant of "whine." They are actually entirely different words with different histories. "Whine" traces to an Old English verb, "hwīnan," which means "to make a humming or whirring sound." When "hwīnan" became "whinen" in Middle English, it meant "to wail distressfully"; "whine" didn't acquire its "complain" sense until the 16th century. "Whinge," on the other hand, comes from a different Old English verb, "hwinsian," which means "to wail or moan discontentedly." "Whinge" retains that original sense today, though nowadays "whinge" puts less emphasis on the sound of the complaining and more on the discontentment behind the complaint.
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abrogate • \AB-ruh-gayt\ • verb *1 : to abolish by authoritative action : annul 2 : to treat as nonexistent
Example sentence: An old law that abrogated the right of liquor store owners to sell alcohol on Sundays was recently struck from the books.
Did you know? If you can't simply wish something out of existence, the next best thing might be to "propose it away." That's sort of what "abrogate" lets you do, at least etymologically speaking. It comes from the Latin root "rogare," which means "to propose a law," and "ab-," meaning "from" or "away." But we won't propose that you try to get away from the fact that "rogare" is also an ancestor in the family tree of "prerogative" and "interrogate." "Abrogate" first appeared in English as a verb in the 16th century, but was preceded by an adjective sense meaning "annulled" or "cancelled" which is now obsolete.
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I came across this cool word, figured I'd share:
bil·lings·gate ( P ) Pronunciation Key (blngz-gt, -gt) n. Foul, abusive language.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [After Billingsgate, a former fish market in London, England.]
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I have it on good authority that many of the creatures that attacked Saruman's castle were just guys in rubber suits -- they were foments.
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