The street lights were fuzzy from the fine rain that was falling. As I made my way home, I felt very old, but when I looked at the tip of my nose I could see fine misty beads, but looking cross-eyed made me dizzy so I quit.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960.
cross-eyed adjective
having one or both eyes looking inwards towards the nose:
I’m going cross-eyed, working on those hand-written texts all day. [OALD]
There’s a catch-22 for wine lovers who have really caught the bug: The more desirable a wine is, the harder it is to get. And the harder it is to get, the more desirable it is.
Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan, Wine for Dummies, 4th Edition, Wiley, 2006.
catch-22 n
1) a situation in which a person is frustrated by a paradoxical rule or set of circumstances that preclude any attempt to escape from them
2) a situation in which any move that a person can make will lead to trouble [CED]
Catch-22 n [U]
an impossible situation that you cannot solve because you need to do one thing in order to do a second thing, but you cannot do the second thing until you have done the first:
It’s a Catch-22 situation ー without experience you can’t get a job and without a job you can’t get experience. [LDCE]
‘You left Paris yesterday, sir?’ he said to Monseigneur, as he took his seat at table.
‘Yesterday. And you?’
‘I come direct.’
‘From London?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have been a long time coming,’ said the Marquis, with a smile.
‘On the contrary; I come direct.’
‘Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long time intending the journey.’
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859.
on the contrary
used to show that you think or feel the opposite of what has just been stated:
“Didn’t you find the film exciting?” “On the contrary, I nearly fell asleep half way through it!” [CALD]
on the contrary Idiom
used to introduce a statement that says the opposite of the last one:
‘It must have been terrible.’ ‘On the contrary, I enjoyed every minute.’ [OALD]
on the contrary Idiom
In opposition to what has been stated or what is expected:
I’m not sick; on the contrary, I’m in the peak of health. [AHD4]
In discussing science we also need to define its scope, as well as the methods and views (concepts) involved in its pursuit. It is also useful to think about what science is not, although this can sometimes become controversial. Significant and important studies such as those concerned with the field of sociology, politics, or economics increasingly use methods that previously were associated only with the physical and biological sciences or mathematics. However, I believe these are not in a strict sense “hard sciences.” The name “science” these days is also frequently hyphenated to varied other fields (from animal- science to culinary science to exercise science, etc.). Such studies indeed may use some of the methods of science, but they hardly fall under the scope of science. There is a Dutch proverb that says “Everything has its science, with the exception of catching fleas: This is an art.” It may overstate the point, but sometimes to make a point it is necessary to overstate it.
George A. Olah, A Life of Magic Chemistry : Autobiographical Reflections of a Nobel Prize Winner, Wiley-Interscience, 2001, pp.4-5.
hyphenate tr.v.
To divide or connect (syllables, word elements, or names) with a hyphen. [AHD4]
hyphenate transitive verb
to connect (as two words) or divide (as a word at the end of a line of print) with a hyphen [MWCD]
hyphenate verb
to join two words together using a hyphen; to divide a word between two lines of text using a hyphen:
Is your name hyphenated? [OALD]
A down-to-earth, painless example of the Doppler shift principle is when you stand on a sidewalk and a police car speeds by in hot pursuit of a stolen motorcycle. The pitch of the police siren increases as the car approaches you and then drops sharply as it moves away.
Joel McNamara, GPS For Dummies, Wiley, 2004, p.50.
down-to-earth adjective
(approving) sensible and practical, in a way that is helpful and friendly:
She was friendly and down-to-earth and quickly put me at my ease. [OALD]
down-to-earth adj
practical and direct in a sensible honest way:
Fran’s a very friendly, down-to-earth person. [LDCE]
In our American system, government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), and various Department of Defense (DoD)-related research offices [i.e., Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency)] are some of the major sources of support. These research agencies are basically independent of each other and are even in some friendly competition. In my view, this helps to keep American science vibrant, highly competitive, and active. In most other countries there is generally a single central research support agency.
George A. Olah, A Life of Magic Chemistry : Autobiographical Reflections of a Nobel Prize Winner, Wiley-Interscience, 2001, p.228.
DOD abbreviation
Department of Defense (the government department in the US that is responsible for defence) [OALD]
Like many of the Mother Goose rhymes, the verse about the Tommyknockers is deceptively simple. The origin of the word is difficult to trace. Webster’s Unabridged says Tommyknockers are either (a) tunneling ogres or (b) ghosts which haunt deserted mines or caves. Because “tommy” is an archaic British slang term referring to army rations (leading to the term “tommies” as a word used to identify British conscripts, as in Kipling—“it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that …”), the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, while not identifying the term itself, at least suggests that Tommyknockers are the ghosts of miners who died of starvation, but still go knocking for food and rescue.
Stephen King, The Tommyknockers, 1987
deceptively adv.
In a deceptive or deceiving manner; so as to deceive.
Usage Note: When deceptively is used to modify an adjective, the meaning is often unclear. Does the sentence The pool is deceptively shallow mean that the pool is shallower or deeper than it appears? When the Usage Panel was asked to decide, 50 percent thought the pool shallower than it appears, 32 percent thought it deeper than it appears, and 18 percent said it was impossible to judge. Thus a warning notice worded in such a way would be misinterpreted by many of the people who read it, and others would be uncertain as to which sense was intended. Where the context does not make the meaning of deceptively clear, the sentence should be rewritten, as in The pool is shallower than it looks or The pool is shallow, despite its appearance. [AHD4]
deceptively adverb
used for saying that something is different from how it appears:
The house looks deceptively small from the outside (=but really it is big). [MEDA]
With the little time he had left, he had to make a number of stops, a number of acquisitions. At a roadside flea market, he bought an electric eggbeater, though all he wanted was the solenoid motor. A strip-mall Radio Shack sufficed for a cheap cell phone and a few inexpensive add-ons. At the Millington grocery store, he bought a large round container of butter cookies, though all he wanted was the steel can. Next was the hardware store on Main Street, where he bought glue, a canister of artist’s powdered charcoal, a roll of electrical tape, a pair of heavy-duty scissors, a compressed-air atomizer, and a locking extensible curtain rod. “A handyman, are you?” asked the blonde in denim cutoffs as she rang up his purchase. “My kinda guy.” She gave him an inviting smile. He could imagine the counterman across the street glowering.
Robert Ludlum, The Janson Directive, 2002.
atomizer or atomiser n
a device for reducing a liquid to a fine spray, such as the nozzle used to feed oil into a furnace or an enclosed bottle with a fine outlet used to spray perfumes or medicines [CED]
atomizer n.
A device for converting a substance, especially a perfume or medicine, to a fine spray. [AHD4]
With the little time he had left, he had to make a number of stops, a number of acquisitions. At a roadside flea market, he bought an electric eggbeater, though all he wanted was the solenoid motor. A strip-mall Radio Shack sufficed for a cheap cell phone and a few inexpensive add-ons. At the Millington grocery store, he bought a large round container of butter cookies, though all he wanted was the steel can. Next was the hardware store on Main Street, where he bought glue, a canister of artist’s powdered charcoal, a roll of electrical tape, a pair of heavy-duty scissors, a compressed-air atomizer, and a locking extensible curtain rod. “A handyman, are you?” asked the blonde in denim cutoffs as she rang up his purchase. “My kinda guy.” She gave him an inviting smile. He could imagine the counterman across the street glowering.
Robert Ludlum, The Janson Directive, 2002.
eggbeater n
1) Also called: eggwhisk
a kitchen utensil for beating eggs, whipping cream, etc.; whisk
2) chiefly US and Canadian an informal name for helicopter [CED]
It was an eventuality he had prepared for; but again, with his rough-and-ready tools, the chances of success were far less than with the kind of instruments he was accustomed to having at his disposal. Certainly, his magnetic picklock was not an impressive-looking piece of equipment, having been jury-rigged with electrical tape and epoxy. He had removed the core of the solenoid and replaced it with a steel rod. At the other end of the rod, he had attached a thin rectangle of steel, which he had cut from a tin of butter cookies using heavy-duty scissors. The electronic part ー a random noise generator ー was a simple circuit of transistors he had extracted from a Radio Shack cell phone. Once he connected a pair of AA batteries to the apparatus, a quickly oscillating magnetic field was created: it was designed to pulse at the sensors until they were activated.
Robert Ludlum, The Janson Directive, 2002.
jury-rigged adj chiefly nautical
set up in a makeshift manner, usually as a result of the loss of regular gear [CED]