28487
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
Word of the Day
complaisant
Definition: (adjective) Exhibiting a desire or willingness to please.
Synonyms: obliging.
Usage: In her behavior she was respectful and complaisant, even to servility: she attempted to flatter and fawn upon me at first, but I soon checked that.
Discuss
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Language Log
The Welsh heritage of Philadelphia
Whenever I drive through the near northwest suburbs of Philadelphia, the names of the towns and streets there make me feel as though I've been transported to Wales: Bryn Mawr, Bala Cynwyd, Narberth, Uwchlan, Llanalew Road, Llewelyn Road, Cymry Drive, Llanelly Lane, Derwydd Lane…. By chance, through some sort of elective affinity, today I happened upon the following article about that very subject:
"Welcome to Wrexham, Philadelphia and the Welsh language", Chris Wood, BBC (11/12/23) Rob McElhenney's attempts to learn Welsh provided a highlight of television show Welcome to Wrexham. But if things had been different, the language may not have been so alien to him – and he might have spoken it in school or even at home.
It was the intention of settlers in parts of his native Philadelphia for the government and people to use Welsh.
However, the attempts in 1681 did not prove as successful as those later in Patagonia, Argentina.
I knew that, early on, German was widely used in America but that, with the coming of the First World War, its prestige rapidly plummeted. The story of Welsh in America was somewhat different in its details, though the results were the same.
Despite the fact that I have been a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for nearly half a century and was well aware that our mascot is the Quaker (it seems that nobody objects), I have learned many new things about Penn's Welsh Quaker roots from this article. Quakerdom is also important for the superb colleges at Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and Haverford, as well as some of the finest high schools in the region. But I didn't realize the full extent to which Quakerdom, and its Welsh background, were intertwined with the history of the Philadelphia region. http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQABVirBXYF2ikk1J5LErPtVA8JRsdDQbMQZG-8WYJ3YwzMbdcLIDpx_fKjZCf__PJHc7LSpSFc8ibr-I4SK7sV37lqC-6PzA … It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia actor, writer and creator McElhenney started learning Welsh after buying Wrexham AFC with Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds.
But the language was spoken in his hometown on-and-off for four centuries, after two waves of immigration helped shape the state of Pennsylvania.
In fact, the original intention was to call Pennsylvania "New Wales", according to Connor Duffy, who is from Philadelphia and gives presentations on the history.
Hundreds of Welsh-speaking Quakers from rural parts of Wales began arriving in the late 1660s, after facing persecution in Great Britain for their beliefs, Mr Duffy said.
He added: "William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, converted to Quakerism at a young age and was a strong advocate of religious freedom and democratic values.
"The king granted him a massive tract of land in North America to settle a debt with the Penn family.
"Believe it or not, Penn's first idea for a name for this land was 'New Wales', but King Charles II overruled him and the name Pennsylvania or 'Penn's Woods' was chosen to honour Penn's father, whom the king owed a debt to."
The Welsh Quakers believed an agreement was reached to create a "Welsh Tract" on 40,000 acres (160sq km), where the language of government, law, business and daily life would be Welsh.
But Mr Duffy said this failed to happen, adding: "The Welsh came to know Penn as 'Diwyneb', or 'Faceless' for reneging on their agreement."
However, the settlers left their mark.
In the 1880s, when the Pennsylvania Railroad was built, laying the foundations for suburban Philadelphia, it ran through what was the Welsh Tract.
Giving new areas Welsh names was seen as a sign of affluence by the wealthy residents who moved in.
Many were named by the president of the railroad – George Brooke Roberts, a direct descendant of one of the first Welsh settlers in the 1680s.
He lived at his ancestor's estate "Pencoyd" and raised funds[...]
Language Log
"Badass"
Screenshot of a post on Threads: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/WhitmerHarris_badass.png The audio:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Why wouldn't we choose
a leader who's tough,
tested,
and
a total badass.
Of course there was extensive mass-media coverage of Whitmer's remark and others' use of the same word in evaluating Harris, as well as plenty of other social media notice. And we should note the flurry caused by Mark Zuckerberg's assertion last month that Donald Trump's response to the July 13th assassination attempt was "one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life".
The valence of the term badass is ambiguous. Wikipedia gives two glosses:
1. (US, sometimes considered vulgar, slang, negative connotation) A belligerent or mean person; a person with an unpleasantly extreme appearance, attitudes, or behavior.
2. (US, sometimes considered vulgar, slang, positive connotation) A person considered impressive due to courage, skill, daring, audacity, and/or toughness.
The OED defines the noun as "A tough, aggressive, intimidating, or uncompromising person", and the adjective form as "Belligerent or intimidating; ruthless; tough. Also as a general term of approval: formidable, superlative", with a link to the entry for bad IV.13:
Originally in African American usage. Of a person: (originally) dangerous or menacing to a degree which inspires awe or admiration; impressively tough, uncompromising, or combative; (in later use also) possessing other desirable attributes to an impressive degree; esp. formidably skilled.
It seems to me that the positively-evaluated form of badass has become increasingly common, especially as a term of praise for women. As a first step in checking current usage, I took 50 examples at random from the 1,920 instances in the Corpus of Contemporary American English.
22 (44%) were applied to women, 14 (28%) to men, 1 was ambiguous, and 13 were non-human (stapler, belt buckle, sword, dragons, moment, …) Essentially all of the examples seemed to be positively evaluated, or at least a sign of admiration.
It looks to me as if searches on current social-media platforms (X, bluesky…) give similar results…
A small sample of the female-associated examples from COCA:
Mia, you are so much like your father. Out on that field, so badass. I'm so proud of you.
I think the only legitimate reason to ban that catsuit, it was so badass that it gave her psychological advantage on the court.
Your girl seems like a serious badass.
Geraldine, you are such a badass.
That is, while she realizes nothing will make them stop believing in monsters, it's much easier to make them believe she's enough of a badass to take them.
"We get beat by J.Lo. She's a badass pirate," he added.
Female roles have continued to adapt and evolve and thanks to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, yes, even blondes can be badass monster killers.
As far as girls go, I have a really badass personality. I'm smart and I can be really funny and interesting and I can go toe-to-toe with anybody in a conversation.
Here's one worth a bit more context — "On Feeling (A Little Bit) Like A Badass", Simple Lovely 9/14/2012.
Some semi-relevant past posts:
"Root haughtiness", 8/20/2011
"Can '[adjective]-ass' occur predicatively?", 11/18/2013
"A productive-ass suffix", 1/29/2018
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: menial
This word has appeared in 38 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
hide away
If you hide away, you go to a place where very few people can find you.
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Word of the Day
tenuity
Definition: (noun) Relatively small dimension through an object as opposed to its length or width.
Synonyms: thinness, slenderness.
Usage: She marveled at the tenuity of the cotton threads delicately woven together to create a durable fabric.
Discuss
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
eyeball
to stare at someone or something
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Idiom of the Day
leather-lunged
(used before a noun) Having an extremely or inordinately loud or strong voice, as of someone with very robust lungs. Watch the video
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ast set of sayings covers friendship, including how such relationships come about, and how they shape us. 類は友を呼ぶ — Rui wa tomo o yobu. Deriving from the Yijing (Book of Changes), this phrase is awkward to translate directly, but means something like “birds of a feather flock together.” It suggests that people with similar likes or interests naturally become friends with each other. It may be used positively—or sometimes negatively, for those with undesirable shared qualities. 朱に交われば赤くなる — Shu ni majiwareba akaku naru. “Mix with vermilion and you turn red” focuses on how friends influence each other. Again, this could be seen as a good thing if the friends are nice people, or bad if someone falls in with the wrong crowd. 竹馬の友 — Chikuba no tomo. “Bamboo horse friends” is used to describe buddies who have been close since the childhood days when they played together with toy horses made from bamboo.
There is so much deep wisdom and truth embodied in these humble Japanese sayings, especially the one about en 縁: edge, fate, brink, relation, chance, connection, karma, bond, destiny, love, affinity. Selected (!) readings
* roy porat, "Layers of Ineffability in the Zhuangzi: Why Language Should Not Be Trusted", New Visions of the Zhuangzi (2015).
* Philip J. Ivanhoe, "Zhuangzi on Skepticism, Skill, and the Ineffable Dao", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Winter, 1993), 639-654.
[Thanks to Don Keyser]
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
hustler (2)
a skilled player, esp. at pool or billiards, who cheats other players by pretending to be an average player and then challenging them to play for money
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Idiom of the Day
in leaps and bounds
By very large degrees; rapidly or in quick progress forward. Watch the video
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Language Log
Triple review of books on characters and computers
Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-fourth issue: "Handling Chinese Characters on Computers: Three Recent Studies" (pdf), by J. Marshall Unger (August, 2024).
Abstract
Writing systems with large character sets pose significant technological challenges, and not all researchers focus on the same aspects of those challenges or of the various attempts that have been made to meet them. A comparative reading of three recent books—The Chinese Computer by Thomas Mullaney (2024), Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu (2022), and Codes of Modernity by Uluğ Kuzuoğlu (2023)—makes this abundantly clear. All deal with the ways in which influential users of Chinese characters have responded to the demands of modern technology, but differ from one another considerably in scope and their selection and treatment of relevant information long known to linguists and historians.
Keywords: touch-typing, computerization, Sinitic languages, politics of script reforms, national language
—
All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.
To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/
Selected readings
* "Sinographic inputting: 'it's nothing' — not" (2/22/21) — with lengthy bibliography
* Victor H. Mair and Yongquan Liu, eds., Characters and Computers (Amsterdam, Oxford, Washington, Tokyo: IOS, 1991)
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Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2024-25 Bundesliga Season Preview
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
ripped (2)
intoxicated, drunk, drugged
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Idiom of the Day
leap to (someone's) mind
To suddenly or immediately materialize in someone's mind. Watch the video
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to build the Church of St Asaph, Bala Cynwyd.
[VHM: "Pencoyd in 1291 was written as "Pencoyt". The name derives from the Celtic 'penn' with 'coid', meaning 'wood's end'." (source) Cf. Welsh coedydd ("woods"),
When I start to think about it, everywhere I turn I find how important Wales and the Welsh are for the history and character of this region, and that holds from institutions to individuals. My colleague at Sino-Platonic Papers, Paula Roberts, is of Welsh extraction, but not via the Quaker route. The first Roberts (then spelled Roberds with a D) she knows about came to Philadelphia in about 1730 from Wales, to take up lands as a farmer but refused to become Quaker. All that side were farmers. They started moving west, like many Americans. Paula's Roberts ancestors had many interesting and exciting adventures on the way, but eventually her father and mother settled in Boise, Idaho, where she grew up.
Somehow, Paula's Welsh roots called her back to the Philadelphia area, and when I met her she was living in Wynnewood. Wynnewood was named in 1691 for Dr. Thomas Wynne (< Welsh gwyn ["fair white"]), William Penn's physician and the first Speaker of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Roberts is a surname of English and Welsh origin, deriving from the given name Robert, meaning "bright renown" – from the Germanic elements "hrod" meaning renown and "beraht" meaning bright. The surname, meaning "son of Robert", is common in North Wales and elsewhere in the United Kingdom
(Wikipedia)
Lingering observation: the Welsh certainly do love "ll", "dd", and "y"! Selected readings
* "Welsh 'prifysgol'" (4/25/18) — means "university", as, for example, Aberystwyth
* "Tolkien on walh" (5/26/07) — J.R.R. Tolkien on the Germanic root of words such as Welsh, Walloon, Vlach and walnut (from his essay "English and Welsh", originally a lecture given at Oxford in 1955), highly recommended
Etymological notes on "Welsh":
From Middle English Walsch, Welische, from Old English wīelisċ (“Briton; Roman; Celt”), from Proto-West Germanic *walhisk, from Proto-Germanic *walhiskaz (“Celt; later Roman”), from *walhaz (“Celt, Roman”) (compare Old English wealh), from the name of the Gaulish tribe, the Volcae (recorded only in Latin contexts).
This word was borrowed from Germanic into Slavic (compare Old Church Slavonic Влахъ (Vlaxŭ, “Vlachs, Romanians”), Byzantine Greek Βλάχος (Blákhos)). Doublet of Vellish. Compare Walloon, walnut, Vlach, Walach, Gaul, Cornwall.
(Wiktionary)
—–
Old English Wielisc, Wylisc (West Saxon), Welisc, Wælisc (Anglian and Kentish) "foreign; British (not Anglo-Saxon), Welsh; not free, servile," from Wealh, Walh "Celt, Briton, Welshman, non-Germanic foreigner." In Tolkien's definition, "common Gmc. name for a man of what we should call Celtic speech," but also applied in Germanic languages to speakers of Latin, hence Old High German Walh, Walah "Celt, Roman, Gaulish," and Old Norse Val-land "France," Valir "Gauls, non-Germanic inhabitants of France" (Danish vælsk "Italian, French, southern"). It is from Proto-Germanic *Walkhiskaz, from a Celtic tribal name represented by Latin Volcæ (Caesar) "ancient Celtic tribe in southern Gaul."
As a noun, "the Britons," also "the Welsh language," both in Old English. The word survives in Wales, Cornwall, Walloon, walnut, and in surnames Walsh and Wallace. It was borrowed in Old Church Slavonic as vlachu, and applied to the Rumanians, hence Wallachia.
(etymonline)
* "Elective affinities: Japanese bonds of affection" (8/24/24)
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Learn English Through Football
Newspaper Headline: Ten Hag Rage at Sloppy Red Devils
In this football language post we explain the newspaper headline, 'Ten Hag Rage at Sloppy Red Devils' from the Express newspaper about the Manchester United defeat at Brighton in the Premier League.
The post Newspaper Headline: Ten Hag Rage at Sloppy Red Devils appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
QC
quality control; the methods used to ensure a product is of the required quality
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Idiom of the Day
leave (something) out of account
To ignore something; to pay little or no heed to something. Watch the video
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Language Log
"I didn’t save you because you’re not important."
[This is a guest post from Brett Powley]
I ran into something recently that I thought might be log-worthy. My wife was watching Van Helsing, the TV series, and I heard one of the characters say this:
I didn’t save you because you’re not important.
Now, what he meant was:
I wouldn’t have saved you if you weren’t important.
But the more I thought about this, the more I realised that he said exactly the opposite of what he meant. I wondered why I got the ‘right’ interpretation of this the first time, rather than the plain reading which would be something like:
You’re not important, so I didn’t save you.
There seems to be some sort of counterfactual going on here, but what made me interpret it that way when, as far as I know, the normal English markers for counterfactuals weren’t there? Is “didn’t” enough, in the right context, to be a counterfactual? Or is it really just context?
Selected readings
* "Modals of life and death" (8/22/09)
* "Real debate about unreal worlds" (8/12/08)
* "'A year ago, we don't win tonight." (4/17/15)
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
take up (1)
to fill an area of space or a period of time
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Word of the Day
juxtaposition
Definition: (noun) The act of positioning close together (or side by side).
Synonyms: apposition, collocation.
Usage: The juxtaposition of the skyscraper and the brick townhouse had a curious effect, and from a distance the cozy home looked like a dollhouse.
Discuss
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Language Log
Elective affinities: Japanese bonds of affection
One of my favorite expressions of ineffability in Chinese is yǒuyuán 有緣, which is what two people feel when they are drawn together by some inexplicable, indisputable attraction. Considerations of beauty and practicality are not what matters. They simply are fated / predestined to be together. They have an undeniable affinity for each other.
I first gained a serious appreciation for the idea of affinity in college when I read Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), the third novel of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The concept was taken up in chemistry (Robert Boyle [1627-1691] — check out his hair!), then sociology (Max Weber [1864-1920]), then in psychology to describe the magnetism between individuals, and in dozens of other fields (commerce, finance, and law; religion and belief; science and technology; business; music; literature; history; mathematics; language studies; etc.). Needless to say, "affinity" is a powerful, productive concept, just as it is an actual force in relations between entities in the microcosm and macrocosm.
Those are preliminary observations to introduce this thought-provoking Japanese article:
"Japanese bonds of affection Pockmarks Are Dimples: Japanese Proverbs and Idioms About Love, Family, and Friendship", Richard Medhurst, nippon.com (8/23/24): Someone for Everyone
Love can be forgiving in Japanese sayings, although that does not mean it will always last forever. あばたもえくぼ — Abata mo ekubo. According to the old saying “even pockmarks are dimples,” as someone who is smitten can see marks or scars, perhaps left by smallpox, as cute facial features. 割れ鍋に綴じ蓋 — Warenabe ni tojibuta. There is someone out there for everyone, just as there is “a perfect lid for any cracked pot.” 縁は異なもの味なもの — En wa i na mono aji na mono. Roughly, “love is a strange and fascinating thing.” Here, en, the mysterious force that brings people together romantically, is translated simply as “love.” 秋風が立つ — Akikaze ga tatsu. When “an autumn wind blows,” the chill air means that affections are waning. This is associated with common word play between aki (autumn) and akiru (to lose interest). Like Parent, Like Child?
Opinions are split on whether children are like their parents, while other sayings consider how parents influence their children’s lives. 蛙の子は蛙 — Kaeru no ko wa kaeru. “A frog’s child is a frog,” according to one view, as children resemble their parents in character and ability, and take the same path through life. The proverb is used particularly to say that ordinary people will not have extraordinary offspring. 瓜の蔓に茄子はならぬ — Uri no tsuru ni nasu wa naranu. Similarly, “eggplants don’t grow on gourd vines,” with the same association with predictable traits. 鳶が鷹を生む — Tobi ga taka o umu. However, “a kite gives birth to a hawk” goes against the two previous sayings by imagining an outstanding child of an ordinary parent; here the hawk is seen as superior to the kite. 親の光は七光 — Oya no hikari wa nana hikari. “A parent’s light is seven lights” is a way of saying that if a parent has a high social position or is famous, it is a great help to the child in achieving success, with the “seven lights” representing the many benefits available to the child. The phrase may be seen in the shortened form oya no nana hikari, or “a parent’s seven lights.” 可愛い子には旅をさせよ — Kawaii ko ni wa tabi o saseyo. “Send a beloved child on a journey” is a proverb offering parental advice. It suggests that rather than pampering children at home, it is better to send them out to travel so that they experience the harshness of the world, and thereby grow. Turning Red
The l[...]
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
enter into
to become involved in something like a discussion, an agreement, or a partnership.
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Word of the Day
admixture
Definition: (noun) An additional ingredient that is added by mixing with the base.
Synonyms: intermixture.
Usage: The flowers flourished in the new growing medium, a nutrient-rich soil comprised of equal parts sand and loam with an admixture of peat moss and cow manure.
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Language Log
"I" again?
From Bill Clinton's 2024 DNC speech:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
I mean look,
what does their opponent do with his voice? He mostly
talks about himself
right?
So the next time you
hear him, don't count the lies.
Count the I's.
Count the I's.
His
vendettas, his vengeance,
his complaints,
his conspiracies.
He's like one of those tenors
opening up
before he walks out on stage like I did, trying to get his
lungs open by singing, "Me, me, me, me, me, me."
This evokes the long series of false pundit assertions about Barack Obama, especially by George F. Will, from June 2019 to May 2012 and beyond.
Will's assertions about Obama's pronoun frequency were shameless lies, but they were irrelevant to his larger point anyhow, since first-person pronoun usage is not a good metric for egocentricity or narcissism or whatever. See the discussion about Chris Christie's pronouns in "First Person Singular, Redemption Plea Edition" (1/11/2014), or the more general discussion by Jamie Pennebaker in "What is 'I' saying?" (8/9/2009).
Putting aside the pragmatics and social psychology of pronoun use, Geoff Pullum suggested that I might count
[U]ses of (wordforms of) the first-person singular pronoun lexeme in (i) speeches by Harris and (ii) speeches by Trump. Tailor-made for a Breakfast Experimenthttps://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/2122.png .
So here we go — but I'll add Clinton's DNC speech to the project.
Donald Trump RNC2024: 12586 words, 265 I's (2.1%), 348 FPSP (2.8%) Kamala Harris DNC2024: 3697 words, 83 I's (2.2%), 127 FPSP (3.4%) Bill Clinton DNC2024: 2458 words, 66 I's (2.75%), 88 FPSP (3.6%)
I'll spare you the counts and percentages for the many other speeches by these personalities that I've analyzed, but suffice it to say that Bill Clinton's jibe is not empirically supported — at least in terms of pronoun counts.
A more sophisticated analysis (perhaps of a different data source) might yield a different answer. I didn't count "his vendettas, his vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies". But here as elsewhere, crude pronoun counts are not easily mapped to personality dimensions.
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: smattering
This word has appeared in 136 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
wind up (1)
If you wind up in a certain place or situation, you find yourself there by chance or because of unexpected events.
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Word of the Day
disjunct
Definition: (adjective) Marked by separation of or from usually contiguous elements.
Synonyms: isolated.
Usage: The islands were like little isolated worlds, as abruptly disjunct and unexpected as a palm-shaded well in the Sahara.
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