New Word: Not Really Similar

New Word #103

These are all words I encountered today while reading. Most are commonly used words, but several are not, like distonic, tropism, truckle. My interest in reading increases a lot when I skip and skim in portions I dislike. And always there are chunks that I don’t like even in a book that I really like. So from now on, whenever I say I read something, I am not telling the whole truth since I only read a portion of it. Probably a big portion of it, but still it’s not the whole thing. I guess not reading the whole thing is the only way to go. You know I used to lap everything up and digest every word as much as possible, but not anymore. Even with my favorite books, I find certain things I disagree and object to. I just have to jump over these in order to proceed. Otherwise, I won’t be able to endure the book.

I mentioned Thomas Edison several days ago since the town I am living in is Edison, where Thomas Edison had a workshop, in which he worked on many of his major inventions, including light bulbs. And Pooja commented that she’s interested in knowing more about him. So I went online and found a biography about Edison published in 1920s. The opening pages talked about something I totally disagree. It seems to suggest that Edison’s creativity is a product of the larger trend of worldwide colonization and expansion. I really can’t agree with this for obvious reasons. It even mentions Russia’s unstoppable expansion of its land map in central Asia and Siberia–how could Edison have anything to do with that? It’s more likely Edison invented light bulbs for his own amusement. He had no intention of helping colonizers in their expansion efforts.

Annals & Annual

• annals: historical records in chronological order. This word doesn’t have a singular form. It exists only in its plural form.
• annual : every year

Assignment & Assignation

• assignment: homework or a task
• assignation: an appointment to meet somewhere

Bath & Bathos, Path & Pathos

• bathos has nothing to do with bath and pathos has nothing to do with path. Bathos means an disappointing anticlimax in a literary work in which a climax becomes trivial and insignificant. Pathos means something that cause sadness

Dystopia & Distonia

• dystopia: an imaginary society that’s corrupt and bad
• distonia: According to Wikipedia, it refers to sustained or repetitive muscle contractions result in twisting and repetitive movements.

Slop & Sloppy

• slop: spill due to careless handling.
• sloppy: casual, careless

Stolid & Stoic

• stolid: calm, disinterested, unemotional
• stoic: a hardy person who can endure a lot of pain

Truck & Truckle

• truckle: behave in a submissive and obsequious manner

Tropic & Tropism

• Tropism has nothing to do with tropical areas. According to Wikipedia, tropism means the growth or turning movement of a biological organism, usually a plant, in response to an environmental stimulus