How is the word ‘esprit’ pronounced?
(S Sudhesh, Faridabad)
The vowel in the first syllable sounds like the ‘e’ in ‘yes’, ‘mess’, and ‘nest’, while the following ‘i’ sounds like the ‘ee’ in ‘free’, ‘tree’ and ‘fee’. The final ‘t’ is silent and the word is pronounced ‘e-SPREE’ with the stress on the second syllable. It comes from the Latin ‘spiritus’ meaning ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. In English, the word is mostly used to refer to someone who is witty and full of life.
*His infectious esprit ensures that his classes are seldom boring.
What is the meaning of ‘five deep’ in the following sentence: “People were standing five deep waiting to be seated.”?
(Munavar Basha, Valasaravakkam)
My first impression was the people were standing in a pool! The expression ‘x-deep’ — it could be ‘five deep’, ‘seven deep’, ‘ten deep’, etc. — is used in informal contexts to suggest that there are many people present; there is, in fact, a big crowd. The sentence that you have given suggests that there were a lot of customers who were waiting their turn to be seated. In this context, ‘five deep’ could mean that people were standing in rows and there were five individuals in every row. The expression can also be used to refer to objects standing next to each other — and not necessarily behind each other. For example, if we say taxis were standing fifty deep, it could mean that there 50 taxis standing next to each other — and not behind each other. The expression has been around for several hundred years.
*The protestors couldn’t break through because the police were standing ten deep.
What is the meaning and origin of ‘put on your thinking cap’?
(K Gayathri, Chennai)
When you ask someone to ‘put his thinking cap on’ or ‘put on his thinking cap’, you want him to stop fooling around and do some serious thinking. You would like the individual to give the matter you have raised some serious thought, and come up with a solution. The expression has been a part of the English language for several centuries.
*Please put on your thinking cap and come up with creative solutions to our problem.
*If you wish to get out of the mess you’re in, you need to put your thinking cap on.
The ‘cap’ in the expression has nothing to do with the kind of caps we wear when playing games. According to some scholars, it refers to the tight fitting cap that a Judge used to put on before sentencing a criminal. The common people believed that the cap helped him think!
Which is correct? ‘She hardly exercises, does she/doesn’t she?’
(J Maya, Nellore)
The rules for using question tags are the following: if the statement is affirmative — i.e. it does not contain a negative word — then a negative question tag is used. For example, ‘My cousin Malathy is very beautiful, isn’t she?’ If, on the other hand, the statement contains a negative element, then the question tag used is ‘affirmative’. ‘My cousin Malathy isn’t very beautiful, is she?’ Since words like ‘hardly’, ‘scarcely’, ‘seldom’, ‘barely’, etc. are considered negative, they are usually followed by a non-negative question tag.
*She hardly exercises, does she?
*You seldom eat in restaurants, do you?
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“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” — Rick Warren
Courtesy:the hindu
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