Timeline for A lot of difference between two meanings of one word
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 3, 2016 at 15:40 | comment | added | stangdon | @ArmanMalekzade - Part of the reason English is like that is that English borrowed words from many other languages. For example, the word "checkmate" in chess has nothing to do with "check" meaning "to confirm the correctness of" or "mate" meaning "a partner"...but we borrowed it from the Persian shâh mât! | |
| Aug 3, 2016 at 12:23 | vote | accept | Arman Malekzadeh | ||
| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:57 | comment | added | Arman Malekzadeh | @someasw What is surprising is not "having" different meanings. "having unrelated meanings" is surprising for me :) By the way, I'm Iranian and my mother tongue is Persian :) | |
| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:53 | comment | added | someasw | @Arman Malekzade: Is it really so surprising that one word in a certain language can have two (or more) different meanings depending on the context? I don't know your mother tongue, but I'm pretty sure you will find such words there, too. In my opinion, this is a part of languages developing over the ages. | |
| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:46 | history | edited | shin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
changed i's to I's; added a tag
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| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:40 | comment | added | MorganFR | "Thick" and "dense" are synonyms (def 1), and "thick-headed", "thick" and "dense" are also synonyms (def 2). It is not necessarily a joke, you might simply call them stupid because you think they are. In that case, any synonym of "stupid" works, including those three. And one last thing, "thick-headed" also has 2 definitions, that of being stupid, or the literal version of having an actual thick head, like some animals. | |
| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:36 | comment | added | Arman Malekzadeh | @MorganFR what you said about thick-headed somehow convinced me about this meaning ! so, when u call a person 'dense', you mean he/she is thick-headed? ( somehow joking about them? ) | |
| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:32 | comment | added | stangdon | Many English words have different meanings that don't necessarily have anything to do with each other. For example, "rank" can mean both "a position within a hierarchy" and "an offensively strong smell". There isn't necessarily any connection between the meanings, and you just have to memorize them, unfortunately. | |
| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:29 | answer | added | shin | timeline score: 0 | |
| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:29 | comment | added | MorganFR | "Dense" as in stupid is informal. A lot of informal words are taken from actual words, not always made up (e.g. to screw -> to turn or move with a twisting or rotating motion, like a screw for instance; to screw -> to have sex (informal)). As for dense, it might come from thick-headed, which means unintelligent/stupid. And since dense means thick, thick-headed became dense. | |
| Aug 3, 2016 at 11:24 | history | asked | Arman Malekzadeh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |