AnWulf: I wrote "to teach how to teach": this means teaching trainee teachers so we have to cover everything. Most of these words fall into the category of technical jargon.....

Ængelfolc: 1) Some dictionaries give all possible meanings. Some are based on a statistical corpus of written and spoken English and give the most common meanings first and (depending on size) exclude uncommon meanings. 2) There are some "different" varieties of "English" around the world in places like Quebec, Jamaica, Australia, and so on; quite what is "standard" English today is a real question; BBC, CNN or ? Sometimes it is like when they put subtitles on Deutsche Welle when interviewing Austrians. I have learnt not to be too dogmatic.

This week's challenge: to teach how to teach the sounds and spelling of English in fifteen hours flat, hopefully without mentioning "articulation", "phonemes", "glottal stops", "labiodentals"(ie 't''d'), or "fricatives" (those effing sounds); can't see a way round "vowels" and "consonants" though.
BTW Cats only wonder about food food food....

"curious" does not suggest any underhand earnest whereas being snoopy or nosey really does. On the other hand one can wonder to one's heart's fullness without a smidgen of evilmindedness

I was just wondering why was the cat wondering???

AnWulf: "I'm reviewing a paper from a Tunsian woman." A model Euro-style academic paragraph usually goes like this:
1) A short sentence to introduce the topic of the paragraph.
2) A longer sentence that clarifies the exact point that you wish to make.
3) More sentences, each one dealing with evidence to support your view/assertion/point.
4) Sentences weighing the evidence or arguing you view.
5) A final sentence summarizing and/or linking to the next paragraph.
We do this almost unconsciously but people from other cultures/traditions need to learn and stick to this schema.
And Good Luck!!!

"academic" varies in meaning from "learned", "studious", "theoretical" according to the context. There seem to be many "academic" words for which there is no readymade standin, for instance: theoretical/empirical/practical/pragmatic.I think even German has greek borrowings for most of them too. "in a thinking way"/"in a working way" ??? Or is there some AS that could be requickened??

I would like to requicken the word "earnest" in the meaning of serious as an adjective, and "serious intent" as a noun. "In earnest" is a "fossil" phrase, but in the KJV bible there is the phrase "an earnest of his inheritance". Earnestly.

1)"Enlightened" !!! I think not! (Bedimmed would be more truthful)
2) The nice thing about "influence" is it covers military and economics AND rock and roll and culture in general; so "might" is only half of what I want. (It is in fact a title for a very broad open-ended essay). "Influence" might also include the way in which American values, the american dream, baseball caps, and hollywood have crept into lives around the world. It is a great shame we don't use "inflow" - it has the same roots as influence I think.
3) On being asked off the cuff what the noun from "fat" was; I thought of "fatness" but wasn't sure if it existed, so had to say "obesity". "Despite her obesity I loved her well".
It's like aliens came and wiped out half the common tongue.

A) "American inflows are far too widespread and not always of themselves helpful..
B) "We are swamped with input from the USA, which is not of itself a good thyng.
You may vote ....