Internet giant is purchasing Maktoob.com, a leading online community in the Arab world. The acquisition is part of company’s strategy to reach emerging markets.
Archive for August, 2009...
Filed under Nerd Central
Comments (0) Posted by CNET News.com on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
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Comments (0) Posted by Jason Calacanis on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
Filed under English, Language, LearningNerd, Weekly Word
The adjective abstruse means “hard to understand”.
Photo by polandeze
Some examples found on Google News include “America’s abstruse tax code”, “abstruse terms and conditions”, and “abstruse mathematics”. The abstruse sign pictured on the left is another prime example of something that’s hard to understand.
Interestingly, abstruse and extrude both share a Latin root: trudere, which means “to thrust” or “to push”. So abstruse literally means “to thrust away”, while extrude means “to thrust out”. The word extrude matches its literal Latin meaning perfectly, but abstruse doesn’t. How does “thrust away” mean “hard to understand”? Well, it turns out that abstruse has a second, obsolete meaning: “hidden”. I imagine an old book pushed under the bed, hidden from sight.
Comments (0) Posted by LearningNerd on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
