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Schadenfreude (/ ˈ ʃ ɑː d ən f r ɔɪ d ə /; German: [ˈʃaːdn̩ˌfʁɔʏ̯də] ⓘ; lit. Tooltip literal translation "harm-joy") is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another.
Cultural elements that may have deep meaning in the original culture may be reduced to "exotic" fashion or toys by those from the dominant culture. [ 26 ] [ 27 ] [ 28 ] Kjerstin Johnson has written that, when this is done, the imitator, "who does not experience that oppression is able to 'play', temporarily, an 'exotic' other, without ...
The term antonym (and the related antonymy) is commonly taken to be synonymous with opposite, but antonym also has other more restricted meanings. Graded (or gradable) antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous spectrum (hot, cold).
The German verb ausleihen, the Dutch verb lenen, the Afrikaans verb leen, the Polish verb pożyczyć, the Russian verb одолжить (odolžítʹ), the Finnish verb lainata, and the Esperanto verb prunti can mean either "to lend" or "to borrow", with case, pronouns, and mention of persons making the sense clear. The verb stem conveys that "a ...
Kleptocracy (from Greek κλέπτης kléptēs, "thief", or κλέπτω kléptō, "I steal", and -κρατία-kratía from κράτος krátos, "power, rule"), also referred to as thievocracy, [1] [2] is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern ...
A steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the opposite of a straw man argument. Steelmanning is the practice of applying the rhetorical principle of charity through addressing the strongest form of the other person's argument, even if it is not the one they explicitly presented. Creating the strongest form of the opponent's argument may involve ...
In a contentious situation, such as a court case, a political debate or a public relations crisis, it is a tactic used to weaken the force of an adverse point. [6] By introducing the point first and being open about it or rebutting it, the force of the opposition's argument is diminished – their thunder is stolen.
Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs and "servicing the target" for bombing), [1] in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth.