20100528 What's in a Nym (1)

What's in a "Nym"?

Have some fun with "nyms"!

How many "nyms" do you know? While you may not know the actual word, you probably know many words that belong to several kinds of "nyms." Words ending in "-nym" often describe different groups of words and the relationship between those words. The suffix "-nym" literally means "name." Let's look at a few:

Synonyms

English would be so simple if there were only one word for one meaning. But then language would also be extremely boring, so we have many synonyms or words that have the same or nearly the same meanings. Roget's Thesaurus lists 50 synonyms for the world beautiful, all with slight variations in meaning.

Antonyms

These are pairs of words that have opposite or nearly opposite meanings. Some examples would be slow and fast, nervous and calm, and abundant and scarce.

Acronyms

An acronym is formed from the first letter of each word in a phrase. For example, NATO comes from North Atlantic Treaty Organization or PIN for personal identification number. Acronyms are one kind of abbreviation, but not all abbreviations are acronyms. Dr. for doctor and km for kilometer are abbreviations - shortened forms of words.

liter- 文字

literally adv. 照字面上地

=> not figurative

eg: The interpreter didn't translate the speaker's words literally, because it would be kind of offensive.

=> 口譯員並沒有逐字翻譯報告人的話，因為聽起來有點兒冒犯。

literally adv. 實在地

eg: The flood literally caused over $5 million worth of damage.

=> 這場洪水確實造成5百萬元的損失。

variation n. 差異/變化

eg: The research team recorded variations in temperature at the North Pole during the last ten years.

=> 這個研究團隊記錄北極在最近十年來度的溫度變化。

eg: There are wide variations in babies' responses to this kind of music.

=> 小寶寶們對這種音樂的反應差異非常大。

abbreviation n. 縮寫

eg: "U.S.A." is the abbreviation for "The United States of America".

=> "U.S.A."是對美國的簡稱。

abbreviate v.

eg: "The United Nations" is abbreviated as "UN".

=> "聯合國"的縮寫為"UN"。

abundant adj. 大量的/充足的

=> there is more than you need

synonym n. 同義字

antonym n. 反義字

acronym n. 首字母縮略字

//== Chat room ==//

thesaurus n. 同義辭典

=> 按照字母順序排列，雖然thesaurus會提供你許多同義字，

=> 但是不同的單字往往有不同的connotations

=> 因此除非你學過的單字，要不然還是避免使用從未聽過的單字，以免用錯。

alphabetical order 字母順序

connotations n. 特別的含意/言外之意

//== Grammar on the Go ==//

While you may not know the actual word, you probably know many words that belong to several kinds of "nyms"

While you may not know..., you probably know...

eg: While you may not know who your speaker is today, you probably know her father who is a famous actor.

eg: While you may not know how to read the commands, you probably know many of the icons on the computer screen.