Essay On Bully Words

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During my search of the Oxford English Dictionary, I specifically looked for words that were relevant in today’s society, but also held multiple meanings throughout history. My search concluded with the following words, bully, nervous, gay and liberate. Each word has held an alternative meaning at some point in history and when grouped together have a distinct relevance in today’s American culture. Readers will be presented the history of each individual word, while also gaining an understanding of the words meaning and relevance to the present time.
The first of the words that attracted my attention was bully. I initially became attracted due to the relevance in society. The meaning of bully and its function has been a major focal point in
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This word has changed vastly over the course of history. Not only has the meaning evolved over time, but the spelling has had variations as well. When the word was first introduced in the year 1400, it was spelled neruous and was meant to signify strength in relation to muscles or tendons. Much of the early history of the word is found in medical text. The term was often used to describe body parts of animals and humans. In 1747, author Hannah Glasse used the word to describe how to cook a piece of veal in her book The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. She wrote “Roast a piece of veal, cut off the skin and nervous parts”. An interesting observation is to recognize that the meaning remained the same even though the spelling differed from the original. In the late 1700’s the meaning began to evolve to describe what we now know as our nervous system. The word nervous maintained the spelling Glasse had used, but now referred to the way in which humans and animals were affected emotionally. A current compound of the word is nervous-handed, as used in Joyce Carol Oates 1996 novel We were the Mulvaneys , where she writes “A shy frowning nervous-handed boy”. The compound refers to the mental state of the boy, using nervous as a way to emphasize the issues he was experiencing throughout his body, and most notably his hands. I was surprised by the original meaning of nervous as the two meanings of the word seem to be very different in my

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