Lexigame Community
General Category => Words => Topic started by: ridethetalk on January 14, 2022, 04:24:19 PM
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SERENESS – the state of being dry, withered
BRIBERIES – oh, if only they were rare; look out for a whole raft of them descending upon us in our upcoming Australian federal election…
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I feel like you’re just making words up.
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Not so Jacki, I'm serious about sereness AND it's in the Merriam-Webster... https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sereness (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sereness)
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Briberies? They’re bribes.
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...and yet: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/briberies (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/briberies)
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As you say, RTT, sereness is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
I imagined it was the kind of word that would have been used a fair bit in literary works, but I didn't find many examples by well-known writers. One example was in the Scott Moncrieff translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way:
And this pleasure, different from every other, had in the end created in him a need of her, which she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as another need which characterised this new period in Swann's life, when the sereness, the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a sort of spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and seems for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery:—this other need, which, too, developed in him independently of the visible, material world, was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it.
The above quote is one sentence, and reminds me why I gave up on reading Proust. Speaking of unreadable authors, it seems Jack Kerouac also used the word sereness.
A more recent example, from a non-fiction work, is found in The Road to Botany Bay (2010) by Paul Carter:
They derive their distinctness from our ideas of sereness and dullness. Their efficacy as metaphors of human life depends on our ideas of stale and withered age. But a tree eternally green offers the poet nothing.
I'll add sereness as a rare word.
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The above quote is one sentence, and reminds me why I gave up on reading Proust. Speaking of unreadable authors, it seems Jack Kerouac also used the word sereness.
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I'll add sereness as a rare word.
You make me chuckle, Alan... Thanks (for adding the rare word AND making me chuckle...) :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
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Briberies is definitely a word - otherwise we wouldn't accept it currently as rare. However, while bribes may be common in many societies, the word briberies is not so commonly used. In fact some dictionaries label bribery as an uncountable noun - i.e. one without a plural - reflecting the infrequency of use of the plural. I suppose bribes are batches of money or other rewards, while briberies are multiple acts of bribery.
An example, from singer Southside Johnny, quoted in the NY Times in 2018: "There were briberies going on. The fire inspector would come in and we’d be way over capacity, and bills would change hands." However, such examples are few and far between, so I think the word should remain rare, unless someone can come up with an offer that might change my mind.
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However, such examples are few and far between, so I think the word should remain rare, unless someone can come up with an offer that might change my mind.
;D ;D ;D ;D
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How much will it take??? >:D >:D >:D