শুরুতেই একটা ছোট পরীক্ষা হয়ে যাক। দেখি তো গতকালের শব্দ গুলো মনে আছে কিনা। সব তো আর ধরা সম্ভব না। বলেন তো Covenant শব্দের অর্থ কি ? কি মনে পরছে না ? তাহলে ছবিটি মনে আনার চেষ্টা করুন। কি মনে পরছে ? ঐযে একটি ant হাতে কলম নিয়ে van এর পাশে দাঁড়িয়ে আছে কিছু করবে বলে। একটু চেষ্টা করুন, নাহলে গতকালের পোস্টটি ঘুরে আসুন।

আজকে আর গতকালের মত সাথে বাংলা অর্থ দিব না। একটু অন্যভাবে প্রতিটি শব্দের উৎপত্তি ও ব্যাখ্যা সহ ইংরেজিতে দিব। ইংরেজি শিখতে হলে তো ইংরেজি পড়তে হবে তাই না? ভয় পেয়ে বসে থাকলে তো আর হবে না। বেশী কথা না বলে কাজে আসি।

আজকের শব্দঃ
১।

Part of Speech: Verb, transitive

Meaning: To discourage, to make fearful, to undermine someone's self-confidence in being successful.

Notes: Sometimes the very meaning of a word precludes derivational families. What would a daunter, for example, refer to? It once referred to a horse trainer but not since the verb lost its sense of breaking in wild animals. You might run into dauntless "who cannot be daunted", but the word today is rather rare. In some English dialects, this word is pronounced the same way as don't. Don't let this disparity daunt you; just be careful how you spell today's word.

In Play: We probably hear the present and past participles of today's Good Word more often than the verb itself. We seldom hear expressions like, "The task of inventing a helicopter ejector seat so daunted Tom that he gave it up before trying." We are more likely to hear utterances like this one: "Undaunted by his previous failures, Troy flung himself into the daunting task of inventing a helicopter ejector seat, hoping it would make him a fortune."

Word History: This Good Word is a modified version of Old French danter, the French remake of Latin domitare "to tame", a variant of domare with the same meaning. The original sense of this verb was "to housebreak", obvious from its root, domus "home, house", also underlying the English borrowing domesticate. Why we borrow such words is a bit puzzling, since the Proto-Indo-European word behind Latin domus was inherited by English through its Old Germanic ancestors as tame. The best explanation I can imagine is that English is a lexical kleptomaniac. (We are so happy that Janice Ramey of Ashville, Ohio, was not daunted by the task of suggesting today's very Good Word for our series.

২।

NOUN

[MASS NOUN]

The action or process of manufacturing or inventing something:
the assembly and fabrication of electronic products

EXAMPLE SENTENCES

They can also be made directly into structural shapes during fabrication.

In 1943, The Alloy Engineering Co. was founded to supply alloy fabrications for high-temperature industrial applications.
Berkeley's innovation extended to the craft of costume fabrication.

1.1 [COUNT NOUN] An invention; a lie:
the story was a complete fabrication

EXAMPLE SENTENCES

The very rationale of the exclusion at common law of a confession by a third party is the risk of fabrication.

Simply asking about it seemed tantamount to an accusation of fabrication.

The story, it was later revealed, was a fabrication.

৩।

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Trite, commonplace, drearily pedestrian, boringly ordinary.

Notes: Today's word is one that many English-speaking folk avoid using because we are not sure how to pronounce it. In addition to the two pronunciations given above, the British tend to prefer [bê-nahl]. Do use this very Good Word with whichever pronunciation fits the flow of your sentence; they are all correct. The noun is banality and the verb, meaning "to make banal", is banalize [bay-nêl-aiz].

In Play: Banal combines the senses of commonplace and boring: "Reality television has helped those of us who think their lives banal understand the banality of the lives of others." If it is boring, it is likely to be banal: "Francis, what could be more banal than dinner and a movie? Take me bungee-jumping or white-water rafting, for heaven's sake!"

Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Old French banal "related to compulsory feudal service", based on ban "summons to military service". The meaning of our word today then comes from the French sense related to the lives of serfs, which were very ordinary and uninteresting to the keepers of the language in those days. In Old English bannan meant "to proclaim, speak publicly", reflecting the original meaning of the root (bha- "to speak"). This root emerged in Latin as fari "to speak". The present participle of fari is fan(t)s "speaking", so "not speaking" would be infan(t)s—a word which also meant "infant", a non-speaking human being. (Today we thank Kathleen of Norway for suggesting a Good Word that is itself anything but banal.)

৪।

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Talkative, loquacious, given to wordy speech. 2. Long, rambling, wordy speech or writing.

Notes: Today's Good Word is easily misspelled, so keep a sharp eye out for it. Remember to double the R and use a U for the middle vowel. The state of being garrulous is garrulousness and garrulous talkers talk garrulously.

In Play: People who are good at talking are garrulous: "Riesa Bull is so garrulous she could talk a politician into taking truth serum." People who are boring or irritating because they talk too much are also garrulous: "Myna Bird and her assistant are so garrulous we seldom accomplish anything during office conferences."

Word History: Today's word is Latin garrulus "talkative" with an O the French inserted into the ending. The Latin word comes from the verb garrire "to chatter, prattle, babble" from the Proto-Indo-European base gar- "to cry or cry out". The same root came to Old English as cearu or caru "sorrow, grief", which today is care in the sense of a concern or worry. Chary "cautious, wary" is another descendant of the PIE root; it originally meant "causing sorrow or grief". Since the Germans call themselves Deutsch, we are naturally curious as to the outside source of the word German. The famous German linguist, Jakob Grimm who, with his brother Wilhelm collected folk tales on the side, thought that the ger- in German may have come from Irish gairm "battle-cry". Gairm is another descendant of PIE gar-. (Today we thank our rather garrulous Italian friend, Gianni Tamburini, for suggesting this Good
Word in the Alpha Agora.)

৫।

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Difficult to understand, recondite.

Notes: Abstruse reading matter, speeches, or situations may be arcane, complicated, or by any other measure difficult to understand. The important measure of a situation for the use of this word is simply that it is hard to comprehend. The adverb for this adjective is abstrusely and the noun is abstruseness.

In Play: My former home, the academic world, is probably where today's Good Word and the concept it represents were invented: "Norman French invited me to an abstruse lecture on why people scratch their heads when frustrated." Abstruseness is not limited to the ivory towers of Academia, though: "The reasoning Phil O'Dendron offered for starting a garden supply store after finishing medical school was abstruse to say the least."

Word History: Today's Good Word is a light makeover of Latin abstrusus, the past participle of abstrudere "to hide". The Latin verb comprises ab(s) "(away) from" + trudere "to push". The same root that produced Latin ab(s) also emerged in English as both of and off, and in German as auf "on, to". In Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, it appeared as the prefix öf on öfugr "backward." The Vikings loaned this word to English on one of their many 'visits' to the English coast in the 10th and 11th centuries. In Old English it became awke "wrong", a word that was combined with -ward "in the direction of" (backward, westward, forward) to create awkeward "in the wrong way", today's awkward. (Let's now thank Gianni Tamburini, our favorite Italian reader, who is never abstruse in suggesting such Good Words to us as this one. We also owe Larry Brady a grateful nod for supplying the name of one of the characters in play above.)