You can of course be ruthless – having or showing no compassion or pity for others. I don’t recommend it, but it’s possible. Logically then, you can be ruthful – being full of compassion or pity of others. Normally when we add the prefix -less to a noun, we can add -ful as well to mean the opposite: careful/careless, hopeful/hopeless, and so on.
… and says Ow!
It was an iron bar!
HA!
Sorry, I do love a good bad joke. But seriously, isn’t it interesting that this joke only works because we use the same word for two very different things? And if you think about it, the word bar has a lot of uses.
What’s the difference between the following words in bold:
I’d like to protest about my treatment!
I’m going to a protest about the treatment of refugees tomorrow.
If you’re linguistically minded, or simply very smart, you may have answered that even though they look identical, the first one is a verb, and the second a noun. You can tell from the context of the sentences. But if you were listening to someone recite those sentences, there’d be another clue to help you know the difference. Think about how you’d say both, or say them both out loud, if it’s not too embarrassing, and see if you can figure out the clue.
If you’re still not sure of the difference, here’s a visual aid: 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 