Word of the Day
More about splore
The Scots excel at having words and phrases of obscure origin, and splore is one of them, but because Robert Burns uses the word, it’s a keeper. Splore may be a shortening of explore, but that is just a guess. Splore entered English in the 18th century.
how is splore used?
… it’s only a hunter’s shanty, but it has seen many a merry splore in its time ….
The morn’s Auld Yule, you know, and like enough the folk have kept him to join in some splore.
twenty-twenty
adjective
keenly or acutely perceptive: an opinion based on twenty-twenty hindsight.
More about twenty-twenty
Twenty-twenty “keenly or acutely perceptive,” as is often remarked of the advantages of hindsight, has its roots in vision. In ophthalmology, twenty-twenty means “having normal visual acuity,” and is based on the Snellen chart developed by Dutch ophthalmologist Herman Snellen in 1862. Many will recognize this chart as the array of letters one reads when taking an eye test. Snellen calculated fractions to determine visual acuity, or the clarity or sharpness of one’s vision, and twenty-twenty refers to the fraction that corresponds to what someone considered to have normal vision can see at a distance of 20 feet. By the middle of the 20th century, twenty-twenty was a jazz term meaning excellent. By the early 1960s, the disillusioned, regretful expression twenty-twenty hindsight had emerged in the business world.
how is twenty-twenty used?
Yes, well don’t forget, sir, we’re viewing this with twenty-twenty hindsight, but at the time no one gave a thought to geckos or what they ate—they were just another fact of life in the tropics.
And sure, with twenty-twenty hindsight, I know I could have swum out from underneath the boat, but at that moment it didn’t occur to me.
More about finito
When the ball drops at midnight on December 31, you can say the year is finito. It’s “finished; ended.” It’s done. Over with. Finito is an informal adjective borrowed directly from the past participle of Italian finire, from Latin fīnīre “to end, finish, limit,” source (via French) of English finish. Latin fīnīre is based on the noun fīnis “end, utmost limit, highest post,” ultimate source of such English words as fine, final, and finite. In French, Latin fīnis became fin “end.” Viewers of French cinema may recognize this term as displayed at the conclusion of a film: Fin, “The End.” Finito entered English in the mid-1900s.
how is finito used?
It’s done. Over. Finished. Finito.
The experiment was done. Lesson learned. Finito.