NonP
Legend
Sextant - astronomical measurement tools sized to 1/6th of a circle
Septuplets - seven kids from same birth event
Octopus - marine animal with 8 arms
Novena - prayers repeated for 9 days
Decathlete - olympian who competes in an individual competition with 10 different events
I might have come across this term while browsing the Catholic Encyclopedia but can't recall it being used elsewhere. Great choice.
If you come to this thread, then you are interested in language an words.
Another person interested in their uses and abuses was George Orwell.
I came across this while looking up something else, and found it interesting.
"Politics and the English Language" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell that criticised the "ugly and inaccurate" written English of his time and examines the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language.
The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". Orwell believed that the language used was necessarily vague or meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than express it. This unclear prose was a "contagion" which had spread to those who did not intend to hide the truth, and it concealed a writer's thoughts from himself and others.[1] Orwell encourages concreteness and clarity instead of vagueness, and individuality over political conformity.
Orwell's essay is a classic and I personally found it far more instructive than The Elements of Style, but it's marred by his obsessive focus on politics and, as Merriam-Webster has pointed out, Orwell himself does not always heed his admonition to avoid the passive voice where possible. His rules are better treated as shorthands than as infallible gospel for all modes of writing.
So, what is the difference between...
Androgynous and epicene
I have seen the terms used interchangeably, but are they really the same thing?
Perhaps, in a sense they are opposites.
Androgynous means having characteristics of both sexes, both masculine and feminine.
Think Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka, Stargate's Jaye Davidson (Ra), Tilda Swinton...
Epicene means displaying characteristics of neither sex.
Think the SNL character, it's Pat.
Unisex, a neologism of the 1960s usually refers to clothing or hair styles that are suitable for
either sex
That's not quite accurate about "epicene" which is more generally used to mean having characteristics of the opposite sex. Or at least that's the definition that would make the most sense in Sontag's famous Notes on "Camp" and in pretty much every other instance I've come across (including my own where I compared the Robert Taylor and Paul Newman types of epicenism).
Amuck (or amok)
As in "gone amuck" or "run amuck"-
Out of control, raging, wild, disruptive.
Compare to "berserk" as in Viking days.
The mother let her children run amuck in the supermarket.
Pretty sure "amok" has been the more common variant at least since the mid-20th century. Not sure I've ever seen "amuck" in any recent publication.