Mouth gestures and their meanings around the world (2005)

That is horrible if true (I find it hard to believe that US military personnel is trained to use "tactical" hand signals when trying to communicate with the general public).

However, it says that the policy is to first hand signal, then fire warning shots, and then they are authorized to use deadly force.

So, if these killings are because people don't understand hand gestures, and assuming policy is followed, they also don't understand warning shots, which seems like a stretch.

Only four or five of these have fingers actually go into the mouth, though. Plus, I don't know how superior not putting your hands in your mouth is at expressing things.

I’d say it depends, I’ve seen the gesture used like that in movies/shows.

> AFAIK, this is the wrong explanation. The gesture is still in use today in Italy, and its meaning is different.

What does it mean in Italy today?

the author is French.

these are just Latin derived words.

English is my 3rd language. I read only English not in my native tongue. I used to keep a booklet with me write down words I didn't understand. Looked them up later. After a while had a big list which I regularly. Kindle shows you the meaning automatically now and keeps also a list of words which I regularly review.

Over time your vocabulary gets much wider. I have native English speakers asking me where I got certain words from because they are not often used spoken.

Another trick is when you write look up synonyms instead of using the same word over and over again.

But in the words you dropped I learned at least 1 new one. To simper :)

Sounds like a Romance language.

They're still used, but they sound a bit historical outside of specific contexts such as ... simper in written fiction, adoration in Catholicism, interlocutor in learning about language and communication, amorous to describe the nature of an adult relationship or activity in a way that's humorously obvious but safe for work. A French author studying communication and writing in English could reasonably encounter all of them multiple times.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=simper%2Cadora...

As a native English speaker, I consider all of these just barely outside the range of common. "adoration", "amorous", and "put on airs", especially -- I'd be very surprised if a college-educated, native speaker had never heard these.

English as 2nd language, only "simper" was new to me (and is actually close-ish to the modern "simping").

My favourite new word I learned is from "Malazan Book of the Fallen": "susurration" [0], a word that, in my experience, even many native speakers don’t know, yet is uniquely beautiful (to me).

[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/susurration

if you've read literature from 1850 to 1950 you've encountered these words, stuff like Dickens, Twain, Bronte, Mann, Eliot, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, etc.

I think listening to endless cassette audiobooks of Just William and Jeeves and Wooster on car journeys was probably the single best thing to happen to my English learning as a child. The vocabulary of the first half of the 20th century is much wider than I expect from more recent books. I'd actually be surprised if any of those words didn't occur at least once. "Simper" certainly did: Violet Elizabeth did so at every opportunity when adults were around.