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Old Tuesday, January 17, 2023
hammadtahir hammadtahir is offline
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Post 1986 Precis

Write a Précis of the following passage, suggesting a suitable title:
One of the fundamental facts about words is that the most useful ones in our language have many meanings. That is partly why they are so useful: they work overtime... Think of all the various things we mean by the word “foot” on different occasion: one of the lower extremities of the human body, a measure of verse, the ground about a tree, twelve inches, the floor in front of the stairs. The same is true of nearly every common noun or verb.
Considering the number of ways of taking a particular word, the task of speaking clearly and being understood would seem pretty hopeless if it were not for another very important fact about language. Though a word may have many senses, these senses can be controlled, up to a point, by the context in which the word is used. When we find the word in a particular verbal setting - we can usually decide quite definitely which of the many senses of the word relevant. If a poet says his verse has feet, it doesn’t occur to you that he could mean it’s a yard long or is three legged (unless perhaps you are a critic planning to puncture the poet with a pun about his “lumping verse”). The context rules out these maverick senses quite decisively.
Total Words: 220

Precis:
The outstanding fact about the power of language is its vocabulary. A single word has quite different meanings and interpretations. As a word can be used in a number of ways, one can assume it is quite difficult to comprehend the speech. What determines which particular interpretation of a word is being used is the context in which it is being used. The context selects the intended sense and eliminates all other versions.

Title: Contextualizing the sense of the words
Words in Precis: 73
Required Words: 74
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