"overblown" ??

"Ich gratuliere Ihnen zu Ihrem zukuenftigen Ruhestand!"
Werde spaeter ueber Leben, Vorteile und Schattenseiten des Rentnerdaseins an Ruhestranden berichten, wenn ich es komplett erledigt habe. Leider gibt es hier ganz in der Naehe nur zehn Strande......

"This means A LOT coming from a teacher of English!!"
So often, in the classroom, we are groping for some real English word to make the meaning of a latinate word understandable. Take "unconscious" for instance: what springs to mind: "unknowingness" (since the root "sci" is to know) => "unawareness", "witlessness", "unwiitingness"....
The next step is to wonder why we teach it in the first place! Well because people use it, of course. I can forgive the use of latinates as medical terms, but even that has its drawbacks: as one nurse wrote: "In the anterior paragraph" (meaning "in the paragraph above"). That's make English so laughable...

rel "link": sadly we already use "linking" "linkers" when talking about conjunctions and linking adverbs like "however". Most textbooks now use "linking words"; and also "lead-in" instead of "introduction", so some headway is being made.

Or there is unevenness ....
"Inequality and the wealth divide" => Unevenness and the wealth gap.
"Wealth is spread unevenly across the world."

Whilst struggling to uncloud "intransitive" and "iranstitive", I began using "no-object-verb" and "must-object-verb", which is really good pidgin. Later I thought we could use "no-yoke" and "cross-yoked" when talking about verbs; unless you come up with better.

Ængelfolc: re "headstrong": thanks; part of my job is to make student aware of rude/polite/formal/informal nuances. In hindsight I guess if I am not sure it matters not.
I must say this blog has made me far too aware of how laughable today's English is.
Today I unclouded the word "premonition" as "forewarning"; which was quickly understood. "Deja-vu" I brought over as "already seen"; but I mark that in German it is not " das Schon-gesehen-Erlebnis", as I would have thought. You have some housekeeping of your own to do !
Struggled with "inequality": in Portugese it is not quite the same: "desiqualdade" .
What happened to "gleich" in English? (cf Ungleichheit)
Ich erreiche bald Rentenalter ! My days are numbered!

Anwulf: "wite = blame (both noun and verb)" : would be befuddled with "white" in today's speech.
Also, we blame someone for something, or blame something on someone. How do we use "wite".
Don't wite me!!
"overweening" (like me!) is still in today's speech.
I'm not altogether sure about "ween" = doubt; isn't it more like "Wahn" as in wahnsinnig?
"threap" sounds like a better bet....
I think that what you you are doing in finding OE words to revive which are still in today's wordbooks is a very good approach. :)))
(as against words from OE which have long since died and leave folk floundering)

So: twice-wed, twice-sundered?

"Oh, and sh*t(e... " so THAT's what the garden shed is for.....

Is "hosp" or "frack" still in German?? I can't seem to come up with it

Anwulf: so those of us who do not know OE are unworthy???