Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The previous poster appeared to me (although I may have misunderstood his meaning) to be objecting to the use of the word "subniveal" on the grounds that the word has a specific meaning in the field of biology.
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In fact, it does have a specific meaning. Although the Latin background of the parts of the word do translate to 'under snow,' you have a large vocabuary, I have a large vocabulary, but you never heard the word and looked it up, while I've heard it just about every winter since I was a teenager, but never once heard it used any other way!
However, although there is nothing that says one can't use a word in a different context, when I read the originally posted sentence with it, it made no sense to me, as someone quite familiar with the word. To me, it just seemed as if the writer had used a Thesaurus to find some fancy-sounding word associated with 'under the snow' and found that one! And there is no doubt that is is associated with 'under the snow,' but doesn't really mean that, but the writer didn't know that.
Stitchawl