2020-11-21
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด O – oscillate & osculate
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Dictionary.com
ออกเสียง oscillate = ‘OS-uh-leyt’
ออกเสียง Osculate = ‘OS-kyuh-leyt’
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Choose the Right Synonym for oscillate
SWING, SWAY, OSCILLATE, VIBRATE, FLUCTUATE, WAVER, UNDULATE
mean to move from one direction to its opposite.
SWING implies a movement of something attached at one end or one side. the door suddenly swung open
SWAY implies a slow swinging or teetering movement. trees swaying in the breeze
OSCILLATE stresses a usually regular alternation of direction. an oscillating fan
VIBRATE suggests the rapid oscillation of an elastic body under stress or impact. the vibrating strings of a piano
FLUCTUATE suggests constant irregular changes of level, intensity, or value. fluctuating interest rates
WAVER stresses irregular motion suggestive of reeling or tottering. the exhausted runner wavered before collapsing
UNDULATE suggests a gentle wavelike motion. an undulating sea of grass
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Usage Notes
The Difference Between ‘Osculate’ and ‘Oscillate’
Or, watch your tongue when you’re near the fan.
What to Know
Osculate means "to kiss" and is usually
used humorously or ironically
to add an unnecessary level of clinical detail
to an otherwise casual action.
Oscillate means "to move back and forth,"
and it can be used to describe something
physically moving or figuratively switching between two points
(such as emotions).
Only a couple of letters separate osculate and oscillate,
two verbs with very different meanings.
Whether or not you’re liable to confuse them depends,
for starters, on how firmly each isestablished in your vocabulary.
What Does 'Osculate' Mean?
Osculate turns up mostly inhumorous contexts
as a fancy word meaning “to kiss.”
The Latin noun for “kiss,” osculum, is alsothe diminutive of the Latin noun os, meaning “mouth.” Ouradjective oral also comes from this root.
Osculate (or its related noun osculation) might be used as an alternative to kiss to avoid repeating the latter word, or to bring an ironically clinical connotation to a common action for which slangier alternatives like smooch exist.
The episode tracing Maya’s discovery of onanism is superb for conjuring the first stirrings of horniness with both gross humor and fine sensitivity. The depictions of make-out sessions, with actors seeming to osculate the lens, offer a clinical perspective.
— Troy Patterson, The New Yorker, 8 Feb. 2019
“Electric Kiss” (2008) is a walk-in hut shaped like a Hershey’s Kiss made of half-round, colored acrylic ribs tied to a steel frame. It gleams and sparkles in the sunlight and invites lovers to enter and osculate.
— Ken Johnson, The New York Times, 8 July 2016
A priest was expected to kiss the missal's image of Christ on the cross, but repeated kissing harmed the painting, so artists occasionally provided at the base of a miniature a smaller crucifix, designed to withstand osculation.
— Israel Shenker, The New Yorker, 29 May 1989
A lesser-known use of osculate is found in contexts pertaining to geometry.
A pair of curves or surfaces osculate whenthey have a common tangent at the point of contact.
A circle that is tangent to a curve at a given point is termed an osculating circle.
What Does 'Oscillate' Mean?
The verb oscillate means to move back and forth.
Its most common use might be in itsparticipial adjective form oscillating, which describes something with a part that moves back and forth often at timed intervals.
An oscillating fan has a head that swivels as it blows air;
an oscillating sprinkler sends water in a range of directions.
Hoenselaar built a prototype of what would become the first spiral ham slicer in 1936 and patented the device in 1944, according to Honey Baked Ham's website. It cuts hams individually to the bone with an oscillating blade. — Kurt Nagl, Crain’s Detroit Business _, 19 Apr. 2019
Unrelated to _osculate, oscillate derives from the past participle of the Latin verb oscillare, meaning “to swing.”
Other things that oscillate include pendulums, cables, and brain waves:
As long as Earth's mass distribution is unbalanced--as long as its axis of symmetry is tipped away from its spin axis--it will tend to wobble on a 14-month cycle, the way the pendulum of a grandfather clock naturally oscillates on its own cycle of, say, one second.
— Shawna Vogel, Discover, August 1989
When the first wire snapped it went like a guitar string, the two-inch steel cable quivering faster and faster until it oscillated at a thousand cycles a second and then just flew apart, one end flailing over the ice water toward Terror — David R. Masiel, 2182 KHZ, 2002
When people consume the compound, their brains produce waves oscillating at between 8 and 13 cycles per second, a range of frequencies called the alpha band, which is prominent during relaxed but focused concentration. — Carl Zimmer, Discover, July/August, 2012
Figuratively, one can oscillate between two moods, opinions, or points, often with each marking the end of a range.
In this use, oscillate is a synonym of waver or alternate:
Most novels are narrated in the past tense, some in the present tense, but a few, like The Constant Gardener, oscillate between the two. — John Mullan, How Novels Work, 2006
This first version of Montaigne's book was quite different from the one usually read now. It filled only two fairly small volumes … most chapters remained relatively simple. They often oscillated between rival points of view, but they did not wash around like vast turbulent rivers or fan out into deltas, as later essays did. — Sarah Bakewell, How to Live, 2010
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
os′cil·la′tor n.
os′cil·la·to′ry (-lə-tôr′ē) adj.
Word History:
The history of the word oscillate showshow English words referring to technical or scientific concepts often come from Latin words describing everyday objects and ordinary life in ancient times.
In a passage in his Georgics, a long poem celebrating rural life,
the Roman poet Virgil describes
how Bacchus is honored in the countryside by hanging small masks from pine trees.
He uses the Latin word ōscillum (plural ōscilla) to refer to these hanging religious decorations, which were common in the ancient Roman world. The house of a wealthy Roman family was usually built around one or more courtyards or gardens enclosed by rows of columns, and in each space between these columns, an ōscillum was often hung.
It is probable that this word ōscillum, "something that swings back and forth," is simply an extended use of the word ōscillum meaning"a small mouth, a small face" (a diminutive of ōs, "mouth"),
since the swinging objects most often consisted of masks or tondi depicting faces.
From the word ōscillum, "something that swings back and forth,"
the Romans derived the verb ōscillāre, "to ride in a swing,"
and the noun ōscillātiō, "the action of swinging."
These are the sources of English oscillate and oscillation, words
that entered English during the 1600s and 1700s
as technical terms mainly used in scientific writings and similar works.
Dictionary of Problem Words and Expression
Oscillate & osculate
Oscillate means “to swing to and fro,” “to vibrate,” “to fluctuate”:
“His mood oscillated between despair and fury.”
Osculate mean “to come into close contact” and specifically “to kiss.”
It is possible that one who osculates a loved one will begin to oscillate, but even that person should know what each action entails.
