Word for sound made by tongue and teeth The twins held up their hands in amazement, ‘tcht-tcht-tchting’ simultaneously The "tch" is used as you say (i) implying simplicity, or in dismissing something as trivial (ii) implying annoyance disapproval (iii) as Bender uses it, as an encouragement to do something that is a little risky but enjoyable
How did the silent t come into all these tch words? It seems to me that the 'tch' behaves in English spelling the way a doubled consonant would, and the 'ch' the way a single consonant would That is, 'tch' is more likely to occur after short vowels
Why do we write Tsk for the sound of disapproval? The Full OED has this for their 1947 "first citation": L Pike Phonemics ii 41 1 Do you get a sound resembling the noise of commiseration which is sometimes written in literature as ‘tsk-tsk’, or ‘tut-tut’ Fairly obviously the implication is that it was well-established by then Personally, I doubt the writer would have been particularly thinking of cartoons as "literature", and I
Why is karma a bitch? - English Language Usage Stack Exchange I came across this saying "karma is a bitch" a few times while reading some comments online recently I understand karma as a religious concept to mean "what goes around, comes around" I also unde
single word requests - English Language Usage Stack Exchange While I know you can attribute 'bitch' to a male, I feel there is a sense of femininity I was wondering if there is a colloquial equivalent that describes someone with the qualities of a 'bitch'
Where when did the *idea* of bad words come from in English? Bad Words: f*ck sh*t *ss d*mn b*tch Ok, so there's no point in listing them all The thing I'm interested in is this: Why is it that in English we have a strong sense of a group of words t