Miscellaneous Entries.
tolerance; toleration. The former is the quality, the latter the act or practice.
tome refers not to any book, but only to one that is imposingly or forbiddingly large.
tornadic (= of or relating to a tornado or tornadoes) is often a pomposity because “tornado” generally serves as its own adjective {tornado activity}. But some writers seem to like the mock-technicality of “tornadic” — e.g.: “The peak of the storm hit Brockton and Mary D in Schuylkill Township, where tornadic [read ‘tornado’] damage was a quarter-mile wide.” Kristen Klick, “Schuylkill Was Ripped by Twister,” Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.), 15 May 1996, at B1. “Tornadic” is pronounced either /tor-NAY-dik/ or /tor-NA-dik/.
tortellini; tortelloni. “Tortellini” are usually small squares of pasta that are formed into rings or hat shapes after stuffing. While “tortellini” is both singular and plural in English, the Italian singular is “tortellino” (= a small cake or fritter). Depending on the cookbook you consult, “tortelloni” either refers to a larger version of “tortellini” or is another name for “ravioli.”
tortfeasor (= one who commits a civil wrong) was once spelled as two words (“tort feasor”), then was hyphenated, and now has been fused into a single word.
tortoise. The standard pronunciation is /TORT-uhs/, not /TOR-toyz/ (a spelling pronunciation).
For information about the Language-Change Index click here.
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Quotation of the Day: “It is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express: It is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.” William Hazlitt, Table Talk (1821-1822), in Classics in Composition 123, 124 (Donald E. Hayden ed., 1969).
