If you are preparing for GRE or any other exam which tests your vocabulary you'll find this chunk of information interesting. Many of the words in common use today are actually COLLAPSED forms of bigger words. Knowing the collapsed form can help in remembering the original ones.

Here are a few of them :
1) mask - derived from "masquerade" which means "assuming a false identity".
2) extempore - derived from "extemporaneous" which means "not planned or IMPROMPTU"
3)manure - derived from "maneuver" which means "to cultivate by manual labor"
4) desire - derived from "desideratum" , do I need to tell what it means?
5) flail - derived from "flagellate" which means "thresh grain by hand; strike or slap; toss about"
6) maim - derived from "mayhem" which means "to injure", most people may have heard the word "mayhem" more often than "maim".
7) melee - derived from "medley" which means "fight". Medley means "mixture" but it may also have a connotation of fight. I would encourage the readers to cross -check.
8)palsy - derived from "paralysis" .Again we recognoize "paralysis"better.
9) Hi-fi - derived from "high fidelity". This one is part of communications jargon now.
10)ping - derived from "impinge" which means "to strike or dash with a sharp collision;infringe". The original has a negative connotation but the collapsed form - ping,is part of IT jargon. In IT Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network. So it is a kind of infringement but not always in a negative sense.😁

If you are interested in more of these , refer "All About Words - An Adult Approach to Vocabulary Building - Nurnberg,Rosenblum".

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