Sloths are slow.
Sloth, meaning laziness, is also one of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity.
Unsurprisingly enough, the sin came first, and the animal was named after it, because it seems so lazy. They’re not actually lazy of course, just slow. Though some individual sloths probably are lazy, but it’d obviously be unfair to tar them all with the same brush.
It’s a funny word, sloth, and not one we really use beyond these two contexts. Where does it come from?
“What colour are you painting the living room?”
“Ecru.”
“What?”
“You know, ecru. Kind of like magnolia, or eggshell.”
“Huh?”
“Whiteish.”
“Ah, ok! Why didn’t you just say that then?”
Is there a more useful suffix than -ish?
Sometimes we really don’t want to express ourselves in too extreme a way. If we don’t want to say something is fantastic or amazing, we can say it’s nice. Or, if it’s better than that, it’s great…ish. Continue reading
A response to the daily prompt: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/unstoppable/
As anyone who’s had to learn English knows, it can be a frustrating, illogical language at times. It can be hard to find hard and fast rules, and when there are rules, there are always exceptions.
The word unstoppable though, is a nice example of how sometimes thinking logically about English makes sense. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 