recoil, muezzin, coil, snake, filth and brutality, spears pointed at both ends

“'I'm weary of enduring now,' I replied; 'and I'd be glad of a retaliation that wouldn't recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”
--from WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Brontë


Although the Opel deal has not been finalized, Magna and Sberbank appear to have won out over Fiat, which was also looking to buy the stake in GM's European operations. Had Fiat done so, it would have become the second-largest car manufacturer in the world, after Toyota. The NYT implies that Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne lost out in the deal, but an earlier story online in the WP yesterday suggested Marchionne was just recoiling due to requests by the German government, which is leading the search for Opel's buyer, "to fund Opel on an emergency basis while the government determines the timing and conditions of financing."

NEW DELHI — Its depictions of filth and brutality fueled angry blogging and stray street protests. It drew unusually intense scrutiny, for everything from how much its child actors were paid to what the composer A. R. Rahman would wear to the Oscars.

China targets Google, Baidu in latest 'Net filth crackdown“大量淫秽色情网站链接”
Ars Technica - Boston,MA,USA
... on online pornography, but this time it singled out even ultra-popular search engines like Google and Baidu for not doing enough about the problem. ...





Visiting India in 1921, E. M. Forster witnessed the eight-day celebration of Lord Krishna’s birthday. This first encounter with devotional ecstasy left the Bloomsbury aesthete baffled. “There is no dignity, no taste, no form,” he complained in a letter home. Recoiling from Hindu India, Forster was relieved to enter the relatively rational world of Islam. Describing the muezzin’s call at the Taj Mahal, he wrote, “I knew at all events where I stood and what I heard; it was a land that was not merely atmosphere but had definite outlines and horizons.”

muezzin

発音 変化《複》muezzins 文節mu・ez・zin

━━ n. 【イスラム】モスクの光塔から礼拝の時刻を知らせる人.


recoil (GUN) Show phonetics
noun [U]
the sudden backward movement that a gun makes when it is fired
槍炮之反作用力

━━ n., vi. （バネなどの）はね返り［る］, （銃の）反動, 反動する, 後戻り（する）; いや気（がさす） ((from)); たじろぎ, たじろぐ, ちぢこまらせる ((from, at, before)); （悪い行為の結果が）はね返る ((on)).

三省堂提供「EXCEED 英和辞典」より凡例はこちら


例“I walk down the street analyzing the force of a boy on skateboard or the recoil of a carpenter using a nail gun,” he wrote. “Thank you with all my heart.”




recoil (FEAR/DISGUST) Show phonetics
verb [I]
1 to move back because of fear or disgust:
He leant forward to kiss her and she recoiled in horror.
I recoiled from the smell and the filth.
The hedge fund industry is grappling with its first shakeout in a decade as investors increasingly recoil from hedge-fund start-ups considered susceptible to the toxic shocks of this year's credit markets.

Go to Article from Bloomberg News via The International Herald Tribune»

2 to refuse to accept an idea or principle, feeling strong disgust or disapproval:
She wondered how it would be to touch him and recoiled at the thought.

Recoil

Painful though it is, this oil shock will eventually spur enormous change. Until then, beware the hunt for scapegoats: leader
玩 Rec oil 之文字遊戲

The results are visible at the Keihin mill on Tokyo Bay, run by Japan’s No. 2 steelmaker, JFE Steel. Massive steel ducts snake from the blast furnaces and surrounding buildings. These capture heat and gases that had previously been released into the air or burned off as waste. Now, they are used to power generators that produce 90 percent of the plant’s electricity. (The plant’s main fuel remains the coal used to heat its huge blast furnaces.)

filth (DIRT) noun [U]
thick, unpleasant dirt:
The floor was covered in filth.

filthy
adjective
extremely or unpleasantly dirty:
Wash your hands - they're filthy!
Look at this cloth - it's filthy!
I've never smoked - it's a filthy habit.
FIGURATIVE That girl just gave me a filthy look (= looked at me in very unpleasant, disapproving way).
UK He was in a filthy (= a very bad) temper/mood.

filthy 
adverb
filthy dirty extremely dirty

filthiness
noun [U]
the quality of being filthy




coil (MEDICAL) Show phonetics
noun [C] UK INFORMAL
an IUD (= a medical device to stop a woman becoming pregnant)

coil (CIRCLE) Show phonetics
noun [C]
1 a length of rope, hair or wire, arranged into a series of circles, one above the other:
A coil of rope lay on the beach.
FIGURATIVE A coil of thick blue smoke rose up from his pipe.

2 SPECIALIZED a twisted length of wire through which an electric current travels

coil Show phonetics
verb [I or T]
She coiled her hair into a neat bun on top of her head.
[R] The snake coiled itself tightly around the deer.

coiled Show phonetics
adjective
a coiled spring

snake (TWIST) Show phonetics
verb [I usually + adverb or preposition]
to move along a route that includes a lot of twists or bends:
The river snakes through some of the most spectacular countryside in France.
The queue for tickets snaked all the way around the block.