|
Skeleton In The Closet
Skeleton in the closet or skeleton in the cupboard is a colloquial phrase and idiom used to describe an undisclosed fact about someone which, if revealed, would damage perceptions of the person. It evokes the idea of someone having had a human corpse concealed in their home so long that all its flesh had decomposed to the bone. "Cupboard" may be used in British English instead of the American English word "closet". It is known to have been used as a phrase, at least as early as November 1816, in the monthly British journal ''The Eclectic Review'', page 468. It is listed in both the Oxford English Dictionary, and Webster's Dictionary, under the word "skeleton". The "Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary" lists it under this but also as a separate idiom. In the most derisive of usage, murder, or significant culpability in a years-old disappearance or non-understood event (a mystery), may be implied by the phrase. See also *Closeted, describing nondisclosure of sexual or gender ide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culpability
In criminal law, culpability, or being culpable, is a measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible for action and inaction. It has been noted that the word, culpability, "ordinarily has normative force, for in nonlegal English, a person is culpable only if he is justly to blame for his conduct". Culpability therefore marks the dividing line between moral evil, like murder, for which someone may be held legally responsible, and a randomly occurring event, like naturally occurring earthquakes or naturally arriving meteorites, for which no human can be held responsible. Etymology Culpability descends from the Latin concept of fault ('' culpa''). Concept The concept of culpability is intimately tied up with notions of agency, freedom, and free will. All are commonly held to be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for culpability. In law From a legal perspective, culpability describes the degree of one's ''blamew ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphors Referring To Objects
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared with other types of figurative language, such as antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy, and simile. One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature comes from the "All the world's a stage" monologue from '' As You Like It'': All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts, His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant... :—William Shakespeare, '' As You Like It'', 2/7 This quotation expresses a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage, and most humans are not literally actors and actresses playing roles. By asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses points of comparison between the world a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphors Referring To People
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared with other types of figurative language, such as antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy, and simile. One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature comes from the "All the world's a stage" monologue from '' As You Like It'': All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts, His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant... :—William Shakespeare, '' As You Like It'', 2/7 This quotation expresses a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage, and most humans are not literally actors and actresses playing roles. By asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses points of comparison between the world a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English-language Idioms
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigger In The Woodpile
''Nigger in the woodpile'' or ''nigger in the fence'' is a figure of speech originating in the United States meaning "some fact of considerable importance that is not disclosed—something suspicious or wrong". Commonly used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its usage has since drastically declined owing to its use of the ethnic slur ''nigger'', and use of the phrase by public figures has often been criticized owing to use of the slur in the term. Origin Both the "fence" and "woodpile" variants developed about the same time in the period of 1840–1850, when the Underground Railroad was flourishing. The evidence is slight, but it is presumed that they were derived from actual instances of the concealment of fugitive slaves in their flight north under piles of firewood or within hiding places in stone walls. Another possible origin comes from the practice of transporting pulpwood on special railroad cars. In the era of slavery, the pulpwood cars were built with an ou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elephant In The Room
The expression “the elephant in the room” (or "the elephant in the living room") is a metaphorical idiom in English for an important or enormous topic, question, or controversial issue that is obvious or that everyone knows about but no one mentions or wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable and is personally, socially, or politically embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory, or dangerous. It is based on the idea/thought that something as conspicuous as an elephant can appear to be overlooked in codified social interactions and that the sociology/psychology of repression also operates on the macro scale. Various languages around the world have words that describe similar concepts. Origins In 1814, Ivan Krylov (17691844), poet and fabulist, wrote a fable entitled "The Inquisitive Man", which tells of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant. The phrase became proverbial. Fyodor Dostoevsky ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Closeted
''Closeted'' and ''in the closet'' are metaphors for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and other (LGBTQ+) people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and human sexual behavior, sexual behavior. This metaphor is associated and sometimes combined with coming out, the act of revealing one's sexuality or gender to others, to create the phrase "coming out of the closet". Etymology Nondisclosure of one's sexual orientation or gender identity preceded the use of 'closet' as a term for the act. For example, surgeon James Barry was only discovered to be born female post-mortem, which may allow him to be defined as a closeted transgender man. Similarly, the writer Thomas Mann entered a heterosexual marriage with a woman, but discussed his attraction to men in his private diary, which by contemporary terms would have designated him a closeted homosexual man. D. Travers Scott claims that the phrase 'comin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Missing Person
A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, death in a location where they cannot be found (such as at sea), or many other reasons. In most parts of the world, a missing person will usually be found quickly. While criminal abductions are some of the most widely reported missing person cases, these account for only 2–5% of missing children in Europe. By contrast, some missing person cases remain unresolved for many years. Laws related to these cases are often complex since, in many jurisdictions, relatives and third parties may not deal with a person's assets until their death is considered proven by law and a formal death certificate issued. The situation, uncertainties, and lack of closure or a funeral resulting when a person goes missing may be extremely painful with long-lastin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.") This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction (area), jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is killing committed in the absence of Malice (law), ''malice'',This is "malice" in a technical legal sense, not the more usual English sense denoting an emotional state. See malice (law). brought about by reasonable Provocation (legal), provocation, or diminished capacity. Involuntary manslaughter, ''Involuntary'' manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Webster's Dictionary
''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758–1843), as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in honor. "''Webster's''" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles. Merriam-Webster is the corporate heir to Noah Webster's original works, which are in the public domain. Noah Webster's ''American Dictionary of the English Language'' Noah Webster (1758–1843), the author of the readers and spelling books which dominated the American market at the time, spent decades of research in compiling his dictionaries. His first dictionary, s:A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, ''A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language'', appeared in 1806. In it, he popularized features which would become a hallmark of American English spelling (''c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
