Origins -'Allness'.

Latin omnis, all, is the origin of:
1.omnipotent – all-powerful, an adjective usually applied to God; also, to any ruler whose governing powers are unlimited, which allows for some exaggeration, as King Canute proved to his sycophantic courtiers when he ordered the tide to come so far up the beach and no further. He got soaking wet! (omnis plus Latin potens, potentis, powerful, as in potentate, a powerful ruler; impotent, powerless; potent, powerful; and potential, possessing power or ability not yet exercised).
2.omniscient – all-knowing: hence, infinitely wise. (Omnis plus sciens, knowing.)
3.omnipresent – present in all places at once. Fear was omnipresent in Europe during 1939 just before World War II. A synonym of omnipresent is ubiquitous, from Latin ubique, everywhere. The ubiquitous ice cream vendor seems to be everywhere at the same time, tinkling those little bells, once spring arrives. The ubiquitous little wagon travels around everywhere in airports to refuel departing planes. ‘Ubiquitous laughter greeted the press secretary’s remark’, i.e., laughter was heard everywhere in the room. The noun form is ubiquity.
4.omnibus – etymologically, ‘for all, including all’. In the shortened form bus we have a public vehicle for all who can pay; in a John Galsworthy omnibus we have a book containing all of Galsworthy’s works; in an omnibus legislative bill we have a bill containing all the miscellaneous provisions and appropriations left out of other bills.
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Putting Nouns into the Plural - Words ending in -O.

Most simply add -s – including:
X. words where the -o is preceded by a vowel: cameos, cuckoos, embryos, radios, portfolios, studios, tattoos, zoos.
X. shortened words: hippos, photos, rhinos, typos, videos.
X. many ‘exotic’, un-English words: albinos, armadillos, dittos, Eskimos, Filipinos, infernos, quangos, stilettos.
Some, however (including many quite everyday words), take -es: cargoes, dominoes, echoes, heroes, potatoes, tomatoes.
Others use either ending, though with a preference for the one shown here: buffaloes, commandos, frescoes, ghettos, halos, mangoes, mottoes, porticoes, tobaccos, volcanoes, zeros.
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Origins - You can't go home again.

Nostalgia, built on two Greek roots, nostos, a return, and algos, pain (as in neuralgia, cardialgia, etc.) is a feeling you can’t ever understand until you’ve experienced it – and you have probably experienced it whenever some external stimulus has crowed your mind with scenes from an earlier day.
You know how life often seems much pleasanter in restrospect? Your conscious memory tends to store up the pleasant experiences of the past (the trauma and unpleasant experiences may get buried in the unconscious), and when you are lonely or unhappy you may begin to relive these pleasant occurrences. It is then that you feel the emotional pain and longing that we call nostalgia.
The adjective is nostalgic, as in films that are nostalgic of the fifties’, or as in ‘he feels nostalgic whenever he passes Vaughan Gardens and sees the house in which he grew up’.
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Grammar - Clauses as Subjects.

Clauses can act as subjects of verbs. They usually take a singular verb:
That such things should occur is surprising.
To treat 18-year-olds as children is patronising.
Caring for all aspects of home and family takes a lotof time.
What-clauses are different, however. Here agreement depends on whether the clause refers to a thing or to several things:
What was their garden is now a car park.
What seemed good reasons at the time now look
unconvincing. (That is, the reasons now look unconvincing.)
Sometimes you can choose, especially when the complement of the main verb is plural, though the singular form remains slightly preferable.
When we need is/are donations – Donations are what we need.
What I saw was/were two enormous balloons – Two enormous balloons were what I saw.
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Origins - An exploration of various good things.

A euphemism is a word or expression that has been substituted for another that is likely to offend – it is built on Greek prefix eu-, good, the root pheme, voice, and the noun suffix -ism. (Etymologically, ‘something said in a good voice!’) Adjective: euphemistic.
Other English words constructed from the prefix eu-:
1.euphony – good sound; pleasant lilt or rhythm (phone, sound).
Adjective: euphonic or euphonious.
2.eulogy – etymologically, ‘good speech’; a formal speech of praise, usually delivered as a funeral oration. Logos in this term means word or speech, as it did in philology. Logos more commonly means science or study, but has the alternative meaning in eulogy, philology, monologue, dialogue, epilogue (words upon the other words, or ‘after-words’), and prologue (words before the main part, ‘before-words’, or introduction).
Adjective: eulogistic; verb: eulogize; person who delivers a eulogy: eulogist.
3.euphoria – good feeling, a sense of mental buoyancy and physical well-being. Adjective: euphoric.
4.euthanasia – etymologically, ‘good death’; method of painless death inflicted on people suffering from incurable diseases – not legal at the present time, but advocated by many people. The words derives from eu- plus Greek thanatos, death.
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Grammar - What is a Phrase?

The word ‘phrase’ is often used loosely to mean any group of words that form a unit. In grammar, it means a word or group of words that has a single function within a clause or another phrase.
Take the sentence The boy patted the dog. Although there are five words, there are three distinct parts – the boy, patted, and the dog. So the boy is a phrase, in this case a ‘noun phrase’ acting as the subject; patted is the verb; and the dog is another noun phrase, here the object of the verb.
Now take a sentence that is clearly ambiguous: She attacked the man with the knife. The pronoun she is the subject phrase, and attacked is the verb. But what about the rest?
There are two ways of analyzing the sentence. In one (where the man has the knife), the man with the knife is one constituent part – a noun phrase, acting as the object of attacked. It can be broken down further into a noun phrase the man, plus a subordinate prepositional phrase with the knife.
In the other meaning (where she uses a knife when attacking the man), the full object is now simply the man. You could reword the sentence as With a knife she attacked the man or She attacked the man viciously. The phase with the knife is therefore an adverbial phase – it acts like an adverb.
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The Roots Of English – The World Contracts

The late 15th to 17th centuries – the English Renaissance – saw more and more borrowings. The introduction of printing by William Caxton in 1476 helped to spread new words. The voyages of exploration and the widening of European trade brought new products to England, each of which needed a name. So did the technical and scientific discoveries of the age. Above all, the spirit of enquiry and the spread of writing and reading for education and pleasure encouraged the adoption of large numbers of new words.
Just about any Latin verb could be turned into an English abstract noun by substituting -ion for the -um ending of the past participle. So tractum (from the verb trahere, to drag) gives traction; monstratum (from monstrare, to show) gives demonstration; probatum (from probare, to make or find good) gives probation, and so on. The present participles of Latin verbs provided the basis for English adjectives ending in -ent or -ant, such as permanent (from manens, present participle of manere, to remain), tolerant, and constant.
Other languages too were beginning to leave their mark on English. Greek had been studied up to a point in the medieval universities, but new access to the philosophical and scientific works of ancient Greece opened the path to a new technical stratum of English vocabulary.
Words such as anachronism, atmosphere, antithesis, chaos, climax, crisis, emphasis, enthusiasm, parasite, parenthesis, pneumonia, scheme, system, and tactics came into English from Greek by way of Latin. Direct borrowings include anonymous, catastrophe, criterion, idiosyncrasy, lexicon, misanthrope, orthodox, thermometer, and tonic.
There were loans from Arabic too. During the Middle Ages the Arabs were in the forefront of scientific and medical research. English gained terms like alcohol, algebra, algorithm (recently repopularised by computer programmers), arsenal, and syrup. Some words for Arabic luxuries and customs that had been brought back to Europe by the Crusaders also made their way into English: artichoke, carafe, jar, cotton, and sofa.
Another language whose influence became ever more important as trade increased was Dutch (or Flemish). Not surprisingly, the area of shipping owes much of its vocabulary to Dutch – deck, dock, skipper, boom, and yacht, for example. The skill of Dutch artists is reflected in loans such as easel, landscape, sketch, and etch.
For much of the Renaissance, Europe looked to Italy for inspiration. The obvious culinary terms (spaghetti, espresso, and so on) and musical terms (allegro, cello, sonata) are mostly later borrowings. But the Italian culture of the Renaissance and since has also given arcade, balcony, brigand, bronze, caress, colonel, dilettante, fiasco, graffiti, influenza, replica, scenario, sonnet, studio, and umbrella.
The great early colonial powers, Spain and Portugal, provided, English with further new words. Spanish loans into English, from then and later, include anchovy, armada, bonanza, bravado, cafeteria, cask, cigar, guerrilla, lasso, patio, ranch, siesta, stampede, and tornado. Portuguese has given English albatross, albino, brocade, cobra, creole, palaver, rusk, and the wine port.
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