2015年7月24日 星期五

outspend, spruce, tidied, spruce up, quaint, brainiacs, drag-and-drop


“OH MY God, what have we done?” is one of the memorable lines from the HBO docudrama, “Game Change”, as John McCain’s presidential campaign team comes to see at last that it should have spent rather more time vetting Sarah Palin, the then governor of Alaska, before picking her as the senator’s presidential running-mate in 2008. Now that he has more or less tidied away his own nomination, the methodical Mitt Romney is not likely to make a similar mistake. But even for methodical candidates, choosing a running-mate is anything but simple.
 

Vetting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetting
Vetting is the process of performing a background check on someone before offering them employment, conferring an award, etc. A prospective person or ...Google Docs Gets Drag-and-Drop Support
PC Magazine
A picture is worth a thousand words, and Google is making it a little bit easier to spruce up a document with the addition of a drag-and-drop option to ...


drag-and-drop
(¦drag ən ′dräp) (computer science) A feature whereby operations are performed on objects, such as icons or blocks of text, by dragging them across the screen with a mouse.
Shanghai Is Sprucing Up Its Image
By HOWARD W. FRENCH 5:25 AM ET
SHANGHAI — The city is busy preparing for the 2010 World Expo, and is reportedly outspending Beijing’s vast Olympic preparations by a large margin.

Samsung Outspends Apple on Phone Advertising23

So Long, Lance. Next, 21st-Century Doping.

By DAVID EWING DUNCAN
Advances in bio-enhancers and technology could make steroids seem quaint.

 


brainiac - definition of brainiac by the Free Online Dictionary ...

A highly intelligent person: "These companies are not hot Silicon Valley startups swarming with Gen-X brainiacs" (Ronald Henkoff).



Spruce-up


Meaning


To make smart and trim.

Origin


Spruce-up is just a little phrase, but it has taken quite a journey to get to us in its present state. The state it started from was Prussia. The 14th century word spruce is a variant of Pruce, which was itself a shortened version of Prussia. Originally, things that were spruce were those items brought from Prussia. For example, spruce fir trees and, more to the point for this phrase, spruce leather.

From the end of the 16th century, spruce was used as a verb meaning 'to make trim and neat'. In The terrors of the night, or, a discourse of apparitions, 1594, Thomas Nashe equates 'sprucing' with 'cleaning':
[You shall] spend a whole twelue month in spunging & sprucing.
spruce-upA jerkin made from the expensive imported spruce leather was the fashion accessory of choice for Tudor and Stuart noblemen. Robert Greene, in A Quip for an Upstart Courtier - a quaint dispute between Cloth-breeches and Velvet-breeches, 1592, paints a picture of the dandy of the day:
"A fellow briskly apparelled, in a blacke taffata doublet, and a spruce leather jerkin with christall buttons."
'Spruce' moved from being an adjective, describing leather and other goods from Prussia, to a verb, meaning 'make smart and neat'.
The first mention of 'sprucing-up' comes in Sir George Etherege's Restoration drama The Man of Mode, 1676:
"I took particular notice of one that is alwaies spruc'd up with a deal of dirty Sky-colur'd Ribband."
Spruce-upIn 20th century America, the term 'spruce-up' took on a new lease of life, with a slightly modified meaning. It began to be used there to mean 'tidy-up; refurbish' - a counterpart to the English 'Spring-clean'. Up until then 'sprucing-up' had been reserved for people and their clothes.
Many of the early references to sprucing up refer to adding ribbons to clothing but it seems that, to really spruce yourself up, you need a (preferably German) leather jacket.



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outspend

  音節
òut • spénd
outspendの変化形
outspent (過去形) • outspent (過去分詞) • outspending (現在分詞) • outspends (三人称単数現在)
[動](-spent)(他)…の限界を越えた支出をする;…より多く金を遣う.

quaint

音節
quaint
発音
kwéint
レベル
社会人必須
[形](〜・er, 〜・est)
1 古風な趣[魅力]のある;風変わりで美しい, しゃれた, いきな
a quaint old village
古風な趣のある村.
2 ((皮肉))風変わりでおもしろい, 珍妙で楽しい(⇔ordinary)
She is quaint in her speech.
話し方が変わっていておもしろい.
3 巧みに作られた.
[古フランス語←ラテン語cognitus (cognōscere知る+-tus過去分詞語尾=知られた). △COGNISANCE, ACQUAINT
quaint・ly
[副]
quaint・ness
[名]

quaint  

/kwānt/
Adjective
Attractively unusual or old-fashioned.

Synonyms
odd - strange - weird - peculiar - bizarre - outlandish


spruce2 (sprūs) pronunciation
adj., spruc·er, spruc·est.
Neat, trim, and smart in appearance: “a good-looking man; spruce and dapper, and very tidy (Anthony Trollope).

v., spruced, spruc·ing, spruc·es. v.tr.
To make neat and trim: spruced up the chairs with new slipcovers.
v.intr.
To make oneself neat and smart in appearance: He was sprucing for the school dance.

tidy
(') pronunciation
adj., -di·er, -di·est.
  1. Orderly and neat in appearance or procedure. See synonyms at neat1.
  2. Informal. Adequate; satisfactory: a tidy arrangement.
  3. Informal. Substantial; considerable: a tidy sum.

v., -died, -dy·ing, -dies. v.tr.
To put in order: tidied up the house.

v.intr.
To make things tidy: tidied up after dinner.

n., pl., -dies.
A decorative protective covering for the arms or headrest of a chair.

[Middle English tidi, in season, healthy, from tide, time. See tide1.]
tidily ti'di·ly adv.
tidiness ti'di·ness n.




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