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What is the meaning, origin and usage of word ‘Patina’?

Meaning: A noun, patina means the green film that forms on copper and bronze after their exposure to moist air. This occurs following long exposure.

Origin: The origin of the word dates back to the 17th century. Italians started using the word patina to refer to the green film that formed on the surface of copper. It was a reference to Latin, where patina means “a shallow dish”. Come the 18th century and English speakers also started using the word. Over time, it was used to refer to things that have become beautiful with age as well.

Usage: Though I didn’t take care of the heirloom my mother passed on, the patina that developed on it has added an old-world charm to it.

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What is the meaning, origin and usage of word ‘Obliterate’?

Meaning: The word obliterate refers to utterly destroying something or wiping it out without a trace. The word is also used to imply making something invisible or indistinct by covering or concealing it.

 Origin: The word has been there from around 1600 and is derived from Latin obliteratus, past participle of obliterare. After slipping in popularity from the 1850s to the 1950s, the word now sees steady usage.

Usage: The stunning views were suddenly obliterated by the fog.

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What is the meaning, origin and usage of word ‘Flummox’?

Meaning: This verb means to confuse.

Origin: No one is completely sure where the word flummox comes from, but Charles Dickens was aware of it and used it in his 1837 novel The Pickwick Papers. It became quite common in both British and American English by the end of the 19th Century. One theory expressed by some etymologists is that it was influenced by flummock, a word of English dialectical origin used to refer to a clumsy person

Usage: This actor gets easily flummoxed by any changes in the script.

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What is the meaning, origin and usage of word ‘Solitary’?

(pronounced sol. i. tri, soli. tary, sol. it. ary)

Meaning: Solitary refers to the state of being alone. In other words, it means “existing alone without companions”. The term can be used to describe a person, place, or a thing.

Origin: This adjective meaning “alone, living alone” has been in use in English since the mid-14th Century. The term is borrowed from Old French solitaire, from Latin solitarius “lonely, isolated,” from solitas “loneliness, solitude.”

Usage: After my mom’s demise, my dad leads a pretty solitary life.

He seems to have completely lost his sense of humour.

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What is the meaning, origin and usage of word ‘Lycanthropy’?

Meaning: A noun lycanthropy means the delusion that one has become a wolf.

Origin: The word lycanthropy comes from the Greek words ‘ lykos’ and ‘anthropos’. The Greek root word is lykanthropos, meaning “wolf-man.” While lykos means “wolf’, anthropos means “human being.”

Usage: His new novel centres around a native American tribe which is cursed with lycanthropy.

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What is the meaning, origin and usage of word ‘Bizarre’?

Meaning: This adjective refers to strikingly out of the ordinary such as odd, extravagant, or eccentric in style or mode, or involving sensational contrasts or incongruities.

Origin: In use since the 1640s, it is derived from the French word bizarre, meaning odd, fantastic, in turn, from the Italian word bizarro, meaning irascible, tending to quick flashes of anger. The sense in Italian evolved to unpredictable, eccentric, then strange, weird, in which sense it was taken into French and then English.

Usage: His behavior was bizarre.

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Who was the father of popular science fiction?

English writer H.G Well is considered one of the great fathers of science fiction, for developing and popularising the genre. Let us look at his novella The Invisible Man and see what makes it relevant today.

About the author

Herbert George Wells one of the fathers of modern science fiction (sci-fi) was born on September 21, 1866, in Bromley. England. He was the youngest of four children of Joseph (Joe) Wells, a gardener and cricketer-turned-shopkeeper, and his wife Sarah.

Wells had been a voracious reader from a very early age. When a broken leg immobilised him at the age of seven, the adventures his paperbound friends offered became his favourite pastime. By the time he was 13. he had already finished his first literary work The Desert Daisy, all the while excelling in school But growing up in a financially impoverished household he had to stop his formal education at the age of 14 and was employed (with his two elder brothers) to become an assistant to a draper and contribute to his family’s income. When he was fired by his first employer, he became an assistant to a chemist. This was followed by an apprenticeship under another draper, till he won a scholarship to study biology at the Normal School of Science in London at the age of 18. There he met T.H. Huxley, a vocal supporter of Darwinism and a person who will instil a love for zoology and set him up for the next stage of his life.

In school, he dedicated most of his time to literature and politics. It was during this phase of his life that he started writing in the genre we identify as science fiction and wrote The Chronic Argonauts, a story that would later turn into one of his most celebrated books, The Time Machine (1895).

The scientific romance

The Time Machine was the first example of what Wells called scientific romance. This was a blend of serious social and scientific commentary intricately woven with a fast pace entertaining page-turner. These scientific romances laid the foundation for the modem sci-fi genre.

What makes it a classic?

The individual and the society

The end of the novella reveals that Griffin is an albino, who was shunned by his fellows in university because he looked different. It is this rejection and society’s inability to look past his physical difference to the intelligent man within, that has instigated his turn to the bad side.

Griffin’s story can also be seen as a parable that educates the readers to debate the role society plays in creating the evils that plague it.

Invisibility

Jamaican-born Canadian speculative fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson defines sci-fi as “that branch of literature that deals with the consequence of humanity’s use of tools for manipulating nature”. In Griffin’s case, this need to manipulate oneself physically stems from the bitterness and cruelty he faced growing up and stands as a metaphor for how insubstantial and worthless people have made him feel of his appearance.

The story’s resolution with the death of the invisible man can also be seen as moral symbolising the detriments of using science and technology for selfish means instead of the betterment of the world.

The art of education

The hallmark of Well’s 50-year writing career is the lesson his stories entail. He would always say that he recognised himself as a teacher and a journalist before an artist. According to him, the function of art was to educate and enrich the lives of the people it comes in contact with.

Professor Simon James from the Department of English Studies at Durham University says that “Education is Well’s panacea (universal cure) for the social divisions that he sees in the world he inhabits. It’s about seeing the world in an informed way that allows you to address it and fix it and try to make it better.” Well’s use of sci-fi to address anxieties of the world regarding the extraordinary development of technology, to reflect on the nature and essence of humanity, and explore how we understand each other, is what makes him stand out from his peers as the indispensable proponent of the genre.

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Did you know that some of the words were contributed by the authors themselves and those words became popular among the masses?

Ever wondered how words are formed? Our language is ever-evolving. Every year, hundreds of words get added to our vocabulary. Did you know that some of the words were contributed by the authors themselves or that those words became popular among the masses? Some even found a place in the dictionaries. Let’s take a look at some of the authors who have offered us their repertoire of words which subsequently became famous.

PANDEMONIUM – BY JOHN MILTON

A word used to refer to chaos and uproar. “pandemonium” is a highly mainstream word. The word is created by poet and writer John Milton. It was in the poem “Paradise Lost that Milton referred to the capital of Hell as Pandemonium. And the word came into being! And that is not all. He is credited with introducing as many as 630 words to the English language. Did you know that the oft-used words such as “liturgical”, “debauchery”, “besottedly”, “unhealthily”, “padlock”, “dismissive”, “terrific”. “embellishing”, “fragrance”, “love-lorn” and “complacency” were created by the poet?

SERENDIPITY- BY HORACE WALPOLE

 Serendipity is one of the magical words in the English language. It refers to happy accidents, the fact of finding something interesting or valuable by chance. There is even a movie titled “Serendipity,” starring John Cusak. And we credit Horace Walpole for the word. He is said to have been inspired by a fairy tale called “The Three Princes of Serendip” and used the word and announced his coinage in one of his correspondence letters. He uses the word in a letter to his friend Horace Mann. Did you know that “serendip” was actually another name for Sri Lanka?

CHORTLE – BY LEWIS CARROLL

The man who wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” gave us not just remarkable characters such as the Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat or Alice but also new words. “Chortle” is one such word coined by the author. A word that means a kind of laugh which is a mix of a chuckle and snort, the word was used in the nonsense poem by the author Jabberwocky. “Galumphing” is another word from the poem that is also used in modern language that means “galloping in a triumphant manner. Another word invented by the author is “portmanteau word. The word portmanteau did exist already but the author created a portmanteau word which means a word made by joining two words. “Frabjous” is a word in the dictionary that has been coined by Carroll that means joyous. “Mimsy” is yet another word coined by him which means prim or underwhelming.

ALLIGATOR – BY SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare has been credited with having invented hundreds of words by scholars. Let’s take a look at some of the words he came up with. Did you know that the word “alligator first appeared in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet? It is the anglicised version of the Spanish words ‘el lagarto’. Some other words include “arch-villain”, “green-eyed”, “dauntless”, “besmirch”, “lackluster”, “dwindle” and so on.

TWEEN – BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN

Tolkien gifted us Middle Earth, a fantastical universe with wizards, elves, dragons, dark lords, trolls, dwarves, orts, and so on. The fictional land has a fictional language too, containing many new words. His fictional works “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” have many words coined by him. Did you know that ‘Hobbit’ was included in the Collins English Dictionary? It is defined as ‘one of an imaginary race of half-size people living in holes’. The word ‘orc’ was also made popular by him. Derived from the Italian word Orco, which means man-eating giant, the word orc was reimagined by him. ‘Tween’ is another word that we have borrowed from the author. The word is used to refer to a preteen, someone who is nearing teenage but who is not yet a teenager. The word was used by Tolkien to refer to the hobbit’s “irresponsible twenties”. ‘Mithril’ is yet another word. A fictional metal found in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Mithril is also a popular word.

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Meet Ayushman Kalita, a grade 7 student who has been recognised as the ‘Young Author’ of the non-fiction science book “Black Holes in a Nutshell” by the Asia Book of Records.

What are black holes? How are they formed and what will happen if you go into a black hole? Even as the concept is lost on most of us because we are still exploring black holes, a 12-year-old has written a book and tried to explain black holes in simpler words. ‘Black Holes in a Nutshell: The Hungry Matter no one can Escape’ has fetched the young author a spot in the Asia Book of Records even.

Meet Ayushman Kalita, a grade 7 student who has been recognised as the “Young Author’ of the non-fiction science book by the Asia Book of Records.

“Black holes are always mysterious. We do not really know a lot about them and this is what caught my interest,” says Ayushman. And in his book, ‘Black Holes in a Nutshell’, Ayushman has tried to explain the celestial object in a way anyone can understand.

“I have broken down the concept into a simpler format so that kids my age can understand,” he says. The book is published by Orange Book Publication and is available on Kindle, Amazon and Flipkart.

It was during the pandemic that Ayushman started writing the book. Having read “The Theory of Everything” by Stephen W Hawking, Ayushman got inspired to write about black holes.

“The lockdown was a blessing in disguise for me. I spent the entire time writing the book,” says Ayushman who studies at Orchids The International School-Koparkhairane.

The book was written using information available through books, instructional videos, and YouTube and was completed in a period of over six months. This is his third book. When he was nine, he wrote a book on rocket science titled “Sky Skip 0.2” which was followed by his second book titled “Morse Code”. He says that he feels humbled after this rare feat. “My friends are all proud of me. My principal and teachers are very encouraging and I feel so humbled now. I have to keep going.” he says.

Ayushman also has a YouTube channel titled “The Animation World” where he explains science and space concepts. Having learned animation by himself, the young boy uses the visual medium to explain concepts better. Ayushman also has a YouTube channel titled “The Animation World” where he explains science and space concepts. Having learned animation by himself, the young boy uses the visual medium to explain concepts better. Ayushman says that as students, one should always be in search of knowledge. “Science is very important. Always look forward to gaining knowledge. Change is constant. Everything around you keeps changing,” he says. Ayushman’s dream is to become a rocket scientist. “We are suffering on Earth with global warming.

The population is growing at a fast pace and we will need more space. We need to explore the habitability of other planets. I want to be part of that science exploration. I want to join NASA and after gaining enough experience, I will open my own space organisation in India,” says an ambitious Ayushman.

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