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Word of the Week
INNOCUOUS: 1 : producing no injury :
harmless *2
: not likely to give offense or to arouse strong feelings or hostility : inoffensive, insipid
Example Sentence: Bella was surprised when her seemingly innocuous
remark enraged her classmates. Did you know? "Innocuous" has harmful roots
-- it comes to us from the Latin adjective "innocuus," which was formed by combining the negative prefix "in-"
with a form of the verb "nocēre," meaning "to harm" or "to hurt." In addition, "nocēre"
is related to the truly "harmful" words "noxious," "nocent," and even "nocuous." "Innocent"
is from "nocēre" as well, although like "innocuous" it has the "in-" prefix negating the
hurtful possibilities. "Innocuous" first appeared in print in 1598 with the clearly Latin-derived meaning "harmless
or causing no injury" (as in "an innocuous gas"). The second sense is a metaphorical extension of the idea
of injury, used to indicate that someone or something does not cause hurt feelings, or even strong feelings ("an innocuous
book" or "innocuous issues," for example).
quoted
from Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary
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Temporally related topics:
Behind the Mirror supplemental term: Realpolitik Revisited If i were an influential,
key political figure in US Republican politics, what would I possibly do a few months before the election, an election that
seems not to be going the way I want it? Here's what I'd do. I'd most probably call up my friend Vladimir Putin and tell him
the following: "Hey Vlado, remember Henry? Not the king! I mean Henry Kissinger. Yeah! Well, why don't I do a Kissinger
on Georgia and pucker up that Saakashvili guy to send troops against the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, making
him believe we will support him if you ever decide to counter-attack. So he sends his troops in, you then hit him back, the
whole area lights up like a nitroglycerin dump, and we have a tense political video game on our hands which we are now running
online. It's that easy. You just say you won't leave Georgia or give in to anyone's demands, we say we will counter
what you do and stand against you, the whole political arena gets charged up, and we have political capital to play up our
military industrial complexes during the next four years, which we shall of course consider as a stalemate period, where the
only thing we have to do is be a little provocative and belligerent to each other, spicing things up and cashing the money
and influence in. Come on, what do you say? Where are you going to strike a better deal than this after all? With Obama? Pff!
That no good idealist is riding the liberal high horse and will spoil it for all of us if he gets elected. Come on, play the
game and we can all benefit from this. We get re-elected and you have someone to play the game with who actually understands
how this game ought to be fucking played!" If I were an influential, key figure in US Republican politics, that's what I would do on
rough terms. It's that simple! It's that innocuous, on the surface anyway. A couple of behind the scenes deals
and there you have it: a game that raises my chances (or my favourite candidate's chances) to be elected president. Thank
God I am not up for office, right? Then again, if I were to do that, what would the people who have the actual connections,
the motives, and the immense capability to carry out ungraspable to the common mind things do? What would they do? What
are they doing right now, as you are finishing your lunch, contemplating your work, and talking about the meltdown, or the
taxes, or the weather? Think about it! And the big question is: What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do? What can you do?
VOTE with your heart and mind, not with your political affiliation. VOTE for change
that will make a difference. Even republicans can now see that the GOP is losing its way, associating itself with fear- and
war-mongering. I have to vote against that. I have to vote for change, whatever my political beliefs and dispositions may
be. Right winger, left-winger, libertarian, or just plain unaffiliated, indifferent, or disillusioned, I have to put my two
bits down to get some necessary change, coz the way things are going right now, the future ain't promising. What will you do?
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