Dyske, et al, you have really made me curious. Can you give some concrete examples of how this context-based vugarity works in Japanese? I'm sure you could find something that would not be lost in translation.

Oh, and just to put in my two cents, I would say that ass, as a swear word is a VERY weak one, barely a swear word at all. An intellectual, a professor in front of a class, or even a congressman in open session might exclaim "What an ass", to poke at an adversary.

It would be somewhat ruder to say "kiss my ass", and ruder still in any context to follow the word by -hole.

oops. sorry, bad edit. that should be " ...-fer is from the Latin ferre, to bear..."

Actually, Sporange is an eye-rhyme only. It really isn't pronounced similarly to orange. In sporange, the "a" vowel in the -ange part sounds like hand, lad, or cat. In orange, the "a" is a shwa, or a short 'i' sound.

Actually, the "trans-" in transmit and transfer is completely analogous to "transatlantic". Crossing a "mit" or a "fer", makes perfect sense. -Mit is from the Latin, mittere, to send, and -fer are from the Latin to bear, or carry. While the word has broader usage, compared to "send", transmit often means to send across something or over a specific medium, and transfer can be literally to carry across from one to another.

I think I see the problem here. The word "disclosed" does NOT mean "open". It means "revealed". The opposite of "disclosed" is not "closed", per se, but "unrevealed". Yes, the construction of the word is certainly "dis-" + "closed", but that doesn't mean that the word's meaning is exactly the addition of its components.

Compare the word "disease", literally made up of "dis-" + "ease". It means an illness. It does not mean ill-at-ease, or uneasy, or anything like that. The opposite is (good) health, or wellness, not "ease".

There are many words like this. Perhaps that's why the seeming double negative is OK, because you can't just remove the prefix.

By the way, "dis-" doesn't necessarily mean "not". It can also mean "apart", "away", etc. as in "discourse". I suspect that there are many "dis-" words that are so integrated that people don't think of "dis-" as a prefix for them. I wonder if there's a word to describe that. Dead metaphor comes to mind, but there might be a better word or expression.

It's "C", Pismo. You could still make it a contraction, but it would be: "this vendor isn't too bad, there're worse." I only recently noticed just how common this type of mismatched case has become. It's just plain easier to say "there's", "here's", etc. "There're" is harder to say, but correct for the plural case. Its proper use also requires forethought. Oh, and remember, "vendor" may be singular, but "there are worse" really means "there are worse vendors".

Thank you, John. That's absolutely and refreshingly true. Now here's the real question. If such words are valid but not explicitly listed in the dictionary, do they count as valid words in the game "Scrabble"?

Uh, no, tork3:
"Is any one of you coming to my party?" - singular.
"Are any of you coming to my party?" - plural.

The "...of you guys..." forces "any" to be understood only as plural. If it were "...any one of you guys..." or something similar, then it could be singular.

RenegadeX, you missed my point entirely. "Homey" and "homely" are not homonyms. "Homely" and "homely" are. Homely can mean wholesomely down to earth and attractive in a natural way, and can also mean unattractive or even ugly. That's the very dichotomy you were asking about and the very point of this post, isn't it?

The etymology is fairly obvious. Homely starts out meaning "of the home or household, domestic" (as does "homey") then "plain, unadorned, simple" then "plain-looking" and ultimately "inelegant, unrefined, course, unattractive".
Picture a middle-aged chambermaid with warts contrasted with an elegant baroness or beautiful movie star and it's pretty clear how the word evolved to mean unattractive or even ugly. Think Cinderella without the happy ending.

This is exactly the type of evolution that is a perfect example of "homonym".

See:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=homely&searchmode=none

or just look up "homely" at dictionary.com.

As for "homey" vs. "homely", you can form adjectives by adding a -y, or, in some cases, by adding -ly. What's so strange about that? You have two words that are synonyms, one of which has a homonym. Do we really need a word for that?

OK, how about cleave? it means to stick together, to cling, to remain faithful, but also means to split or divide.

The same word can enter the language more than once with similar or different etymologies, and with sometimes similar, sometimes wildly different, and sometimes opposite meanings. Such words are called homonyms (when used in its strictest sense).

For more on this see:

http://www.kith.org/logos/words/lower/h.html