{"id":1178,"date":"2016-03-08T11:51:05","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T11:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/?p=1178"},"modified":"2016-03-08T04:14:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T04:14:23","slug":"nice-and-egregious-shifted-meanings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/2016\/03\/08\/nice-and-egregious-shifted-meanings\/","title":{"rendered":"Nice and Egregious: Shifted Meanings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently C pointed me to a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.oxforddictionaries.com\/2011\/02\/nice-and-egregious\/\" target=\"_blank\">blog post about the etymology of the word &#8216;Egregious&#8217;<\/a>.  This is especially relevant to me, as you may guess, because of the title I chose for this blog: &#8216;Sometimes Egregious, Always Gregarious&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>At the time I chose the title, I thought that &#8216;egregious&#8217; and &#8216;gregarious&#8217; were almost anagrams of each other, and were only one letter apart.  Hence the &#8216;one letter can make a word of difference'[1].  It turns out that you need to replace the &#8216;e&#8217; in &#8216;egregious&#8217; with the &#8216;ar&#8217; in &#8216;gregarious&#8217;, but I think it&#8217;s still apropos and funny.<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, etymology.  I also chose the words &#8216;egregious&#8217; and &#8216;gregarious&#8217; because I feel they describe me.  &#8216;Egregious&#8217; because I&#8217;m often pushing the boundaries[2], or going the &#8216;third mile'[3].  &#8216;Gregarious&#8217; because I like talking to people, saying random things when I walk up to strangers.  (Come to think of it, &#8216;Garrulous&#8217; might be better in some situations, but it doesn&#8217;t anagram quite as well.  Also, it implies a talking requirement that I don&#8217;t always fulfill.) <\/p>\n<p>So, now you know more than you thought you needed to about how this blog came to have its title.  I hope you&#8217;re happy[4].<\/p>\n<p>[1]The phrase &#8216;One letter can make a word of difference&#8217; came from P, from his rotating .sig file during undergrad.  It was routinely a source of wonder for me.<\/p>\n<p>[2]&#8217;Pushing the boundaries&#8217; was the motto for my undergrad program, <a href=\"http:\/\/engsci.utoronto.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\">Engineering Science<\/a>.  I enjoy doing this in many ways, the most socially acceptable probably being attempting to solve problems with stupid and outlandish suggestions.<\/p>\n<p>[3]My grandfather was part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ecf.utoronto.ca\/~alumni\/report\/952\/952-13.html\" target=\"_blank\">3T5 class<\/a>, which decided to give back to the community by instituting a &#8216;Second Mile&#8217; award.  The &#8216;First Mile&#8217; is the things you normally do, working at work and the things you do at home.  The &#8216;Second Mile&#8217; is &#8216;going the extra mile&#8217; in service to the community.  Our class decided to have an ad hoc &#8216;Third Mile&#8217; award, which is awarded when &#8216;You&#8217;ve gone too far&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>[4]Really, I do. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently C pointed me to a blog post about the etymology of the word &#8216;Egregious&#8217;. This is especially relevant to me, as you may guess, because of the title I chose for this blog: &#8216;Sometimes Egregious, Always Gregarious&#8217;. At the time I chose the title, I thought that &#8216;egregious&#8217; and &#8216;gregarious&#8217; were almost anagrams of &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/2016\/03\/08\/nice-and-egregious-shifted-meanings\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Nice and Egregious: Shifted Meanings<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,26,25,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1179,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions\/1179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}