2022-03-29
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – F - focus -nexus
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Dictionary.com:
ออกเสียง focus = “FOH-kuhs”
ออกเสียง nexus = “NEK-suhs”
The A-Z of Correct English Common Errors in English Dictionary:
Focus
= focused or focussed (both correct)
= focusing or focussing (both correct)
Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions:
focus & nexus
Derived from a Latin word meaning “hearth,”
focus now has basic meaning of
“gathering point,”
“center of attraction, attention, or interest,”
“point of concentration”:
‘Their home is the focus of community activity.”
“At the dance, she was the focus of everyone’s interest.”
nexus, comes from a Latin word meaning “binding”
and refers toa tie, a link, a means of connecting:
“The nexus of this student body is school spirit.”
“Respect for everyone else is the nexus of civilized society.”
“Focus down on” is wordy, trite phrase
from whichdown should be dropped.
Dictionary.com:
MORE ABOUT FOCUS
Where does focus come from?
What does the word focus bring to your mind?
Maybe you think of a photograph that is clear and sharply defined.
Or perhaps you recall a teacher tsk-tsking you to pay attention in class.
But what about a fireplace?
Well, the word focus comes directly from the Latin focus,
which meant “fireplace” or “hearth” (that is, the floor of a fireplace).
This is what focus originally meant in English when the word entered the
language around 1635–45, though that sense has been extinguished,
as it were.
But the word focus burned on in other ways.
As the 1600s unfolded,
focus was given new meanings in the great scientific literature
of that age, which were largely written in what’s known as New Latin.
In the 1650s, the influential English philosopher
and author Thomas Hobbes
used focus for a kind of fixed point in geometry.
So did Isaac Newton—you know, of gravity fame—in the 1690s.
Other applications of the word focus in the late 1600s
came about in the fields of medicine and physics.
In physics,
a focus is “a point at which
rays of light, heat, or other radiation
meet after being refracted or reflected.”
Perhaps you can imagine
how a fireplace or a hearth
—contained areas and sources of heat and light
—was likened to such a point in math and science.
Dig deeper
The word focus took on a number of senses in optics,
specifically “the point on a lens on which rays converge
or from which they deviate.”
A more familiar sense of focus
is “the clear and sharply defined condition of an image,”
as when the image isn’t blurry.
Optics has also given us the expressions in focus and out of focus,
which can be used both literally and figuratively.
From these various ideas of clarity and convergence
in optics arises one of the more common, everyday ways
we use the word focus today:
“a central point, as a of attention, activity, or activity.”
For example,
Finding a cure for cancer was the focus of his long career.
Focus also refers to ability to concentrate,
as in
The teacher felt the students struggled with their focus.
These senses of focus had spread by the early 1800s,
around when various verb forms of focus take off.
The adjective form of focus is focal.
Dictionary.com:
Motivational Words
focus
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus,”
as is commonly attributed to Bruce Lee.
Maybe you aren’t heading into battle in the new year,
but the point is that anyone can accomplish great things
if they set the intention of
maintaining focus on what’s important to them.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Focus
Did you know?
The Latin word focus meant “hearth, fireplace.”
In the scientific Latin of the 17th century,
the word is used to refer to
the point at which rays of light refracted by a lens converge.
Because rays of sunlight
when directed by a magnifying glass
can produce enough heat to ignite paper,
a word meaning “fireplace” is quite appropriate
as a metaphor to describe their convergence point.
From this sense of focus have arisen extended senses
such as “center of activity.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Nexus
Did you know?
Nexus is all about connections.
The word comes from nectere, a Latin verb meaning "to bind."
A number of other English words are related to nectere.
The most obvious is connect,
but annex (meaning "to attach as an addition," or more specifically
"to incorporate into a political domain") is related as well.
When nexus came into English in the 17th century, it meant "connection." Eventually, it took on the additional meaning "connected series"
(as in "a nexus of relationships").
In the past few decades it has taken a third meaning: "center"
(as in "the trade nexus of the region"),
perhaps from the notion
that a point in the center of an arrangement
serves to join together the objects that surround it.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Capitol Police: 'No Nexus to Terrorism'
From the Latin word that means 'to bind'’
29 Mar 2017
Nexus (“connection, link”) was among our top lookups on March 29th,
after stories about an incident in Washington DC
featured a widely reported quote that employed the word
with an unusual subsequent preposition.
Nexus comes to English from the Latin word nectere (“to bind”),
and has been in use in English since the early 17th century.
For most of the past four centuries the word has carried
the primary meaning of “connection” or “connectedgroup”;
specialized senses in grammar and biology
did not occur until the 20th century.
The combination of nexus with the preposition to
by the police spokeswoman quoted in the story is a rare one.
Nexus most often is used in conjunction with of or between.
