Blog entry #49
Umpteenth | Ubiquitous
Umpteenth
In the Fatty and the Five Find-Outers series, you hear Fatty tell his friends "I'm telling you this for the umpteenth time" umpteen times! It thus became my favourite word. Enid Blyton uses a lot of rich words and phrases that come naturally to me today, thanks to binging on all her series - Famous Five to Secret Seven to Brer Rabbit. "Make room", "spill the beans", "Guy Fawkes night", and "ginger ale", were some of the phrases and terms I learnt in grades four, five and six.
Ubiquitous
I knew its synonym 'omnipresent' well before I came across this word. One of the rare words to contain three u's in it. Akin to presumptuous, superfluous, and unusual. There's also tumultuous, one with four u's, whoa! It's interesting how despite the words starting with a vowel 'u', if it has a 'you-' pronunciation, you add an 'a' in front of it, like 'a uniform', not 'an uniform.' Whereas 'u' words with 'uh' pronunciations have an 'an' at the start - 'an urn', 'an urgent request.' So for ubiquitous, it's of course 'a ubiquitous...', such as: 'Corona is now a ubiquitous phenomenon, i.e. a pandemic.'
Stay safe everyone!
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