different between example vs vaguery

English

Etymology

From Middle English exaumple, example, from Old French essample (French exemple), from Latin exemplum (“a sample, pattern, specimen, copy for imitation, etc.”, literally “what is taken out (as a sample)”), from exim? (“take out”), from ex (“out”) + em? (“buy; acquire”); see exempt. Displaced native Middle English bisne, forbus, forbusen from Old English b?sen, and Middle English byspel from Old English b?spell. Doublet of exemplum and sample.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /???z??mpl?/
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /???z??mp?/
• (General Australian, US, weak vowel merger) IPA^(key): /???zæmpl?/
• (US) IPA^(key): /???zæmpl?/
• Rhymes: -??mp?l, -æmp?l
• Hyphenation: ex?am?ple

Noun

example (plural examples)

1. Something that is representative of all such things in a group.
2. Something that serves to illustrate or explain a rule.
3. Something that serves as a pattern of behaviour to be imitated (a good example) or not to be imitated (a bad example).
4. A person punished as a warning to others.
5. A parallel or closely similar case, especially when serving as a precedent or model.
6. An instance (as a problem to be solved) serving to illustrate the rule or precept or to act as an exercise in the application of the rule.

Synonyms

• e.g.
• See also Thesaurus:model
• See also Thesaurus:exemplar

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• exemplar
• model
• pattern
• quotation
• template

Verb

example (third-person singular simple present examples, present participle exampling, simple past and past participle exampled)

1. To be illustrated or exemplified (by).

Further reading

• example in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• example in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• exempla

English

Etymology

vague +? -ery, perhaps influenced by vagary. Attested since at least the 1800s.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ve????i/
• Homophone: vagary

Noun

vaguery (countable and uncountable, plural vagueries)

1. (uncountable) Vagueness, the condition of being vague.
   • 1859, New Exegesis of Shakespeare, page 245–246:

     […] this badge of rivalry and intrusion, and of the vaguery and vacillation which restrain them through dread of danger.

   • 1977 (first publication; republication in 2003), Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: crisis and neo-nationalism - Page 68:

     As a matter of fact, the particular breadth and vaguery of residual all-British consciousness decays more readily into racialism than into a defined, territorially restricted nationalism.

   • 1988, Kenneth Pickering, How to Study Modern Drama:

     There is a sharp and effective contrast between the incisiveness and energy of his speech and the vaguery and haziness he is attacking.
2. (countable) A vagueness, a thing which is vague, an example of vagueness.
3. (countable, in the plural) An eggcorn for vagary.

Translations

See also

• vagary