ONE wire is a long flexible cord or rope, usually made of thinner pieces woven together. ONE chord is “three or more music played together.”
In 1948, writer Paul Jennings coined the word, protestism, can be defined as “seemingly aggressive behavior toward inanimate objects,” or, in Jennings’ words: “everything is working against us.” This word, for the sake of humour, has been used so sparingly that it is not found in many dictionaries. Oxford English Dictionary first put it in 2010). It may not be obvious, but when one pauses to reflect on how often things really work against us, it is clear that protestism is a deeply useful word.
Your car keys mysteriously disappeared? protestism.
The nail that always sticks out from the floor and gets caught in your toe? protestism.
English language? protestism.
‘String’ means “string” which comes from the Latin word ‘chorda’. ‘Chord’ meaning “a set of musical notes” is a variation of the word “string” in Middle English. This may not be helpful in remembering which spelling corresponds to which meaning.
For proof of the antagonism of our language to those who speak it, we need look no further than the words wire (“long, thin material is usually thicker than rope but thinner than rope”) and chord (“three or more sounds are heard at the same time”).
These homonyms are sometimes confused by people, because homonyms are confusing things (a homonym is “one of two or more words that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning or origin or spelling”). It seems that the simpler the homonyms, the harder it is to tell them apart; We still don’t seem to have a collective approach to two, alsoAnd ARRIVEand these forms have been pretty static for quite some time.
Origin of strings and chords
A useful way to distinguish between two similar words is to remember some aspects of their origins. So try that with wire And chordright?
Wire (string) can be traced back to the Latin word chords (meaning “cat intestines”). And chord (collection of notes) is an alteration of the Middle English word wire. This is something that, upon initial inspection, seems to be of the “unhelpful etymology” category. However, the reality is wire from chords And chord from wire actually makes sense, if we dig a little deeper.
Middle English wire gave us music chord is an abbreviation of the word Fit (“agreement; as in opinion, will, or action”). It should be noted that there is also another meaning of chordoriginally referred to a string on an instrument (and this is chord we’re referring to when we say something “hits the audience’s mind”). This chord comes from the Latin for “catgut.” Yes, the same word gave us wire (string).
Is this helpful? We hope so, but realize that the explanation may simply cloud the water for those who have difficulty distinguishing between the two words. If this is the case you can, instead of relying on etymology, use the following mnemonic to help you: a wire is a single segment of the string, while a chord is a group of notes – so the word with more letters in it is the word for a collection of notes. It was the simplest thing we could do, and glad we didn’t recommend it cored into the problem.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
