Barbara's Random Thoughts

Monday, December 13, 2004

Nefarious

The Word of the Day for Dec 13 is:

nefarious \nih-FAIR-ee-us\ adjective

: flagrantly wicked or impious : evil

The word "scheme" has a different connotation in the United States than it does in England. In England, it pretty much just means "program" and has no negative connotations to it. As a child, I participated in the "Summer Reading Scheme" at the library every year, and thought nothing of it. Here, however, the word has connotations of plotting or conniving which I didn't always realize. At a former job, I used to prepare the outline/agenda for the weekly staff meeting. One week, I included an item about "Paul's New Booking Scheme" and thought nothing of it. Paul, however, took mild offense because of the plotting/conniving connotation of the word, and this provided much hilarity at the meeting. So, the next week, our meeting agenda included an item entitled: "Paul's Nefarious Plot."
| posted by Barbara | 7:46 PM