I am very thesaurus-minded and express myself precisely when possible, so I don’t have any words I just forget, but once in a while I might not be able to find a word that embodies what I’m trying to get across, which is always frustrating as someone whose first language does have an equivalent to the missing word in question.
I had to look it up for this post. My brain’s inability to recall the word for detonation velocities lower than the speed of sound wasn’t an issue until rotating detonation engines started to make news and I’ve needed to explain the difference between explosions and deflagrations to people.
That’s fair. Had an opportunity to use “e.g.” today but just said “for example” instead.
I had another interesting one. Reviewing a document someone else wrote that said an old thing was “grandfathered” in and the document didn’t apply to it. A Chinese-american coworker (who has been speaking English for decades) didn’t know that one, “grandfathered”. Another unnecessary term when “previously approved” or “previously authorized” would be so much clearer.
This is all reminding me of a Wikipedia article I stumbled on ages ago about people who want English kept “pure” to Germanic and early modern English roots. …m.wikipedia.org/…/Linguistic_purism_in_English. E.g. (lol), saying birdlore instead of ornithology, and bendsome instead of flexible.
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