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"paraphrase"
Definition: A restatement of a text or passage in another form or other words, often to clarify meaning.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "to show, explain alongside"
Examples:
- "Yesterday I met with the Russian foreign minister and when he left the meeting, he kindly said this is a man who--I'm going to paraphrase him and you need to check the facts--but--sophisticated thinker."
(George W. Bush in an interview with Jim Lehrer, April 27, 2000)
- "In the famous sketch from the TV show 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' the actor John Cleese had many ways of saying a parrot was dead, among them, 'This parrot is no more,' 'He's expired and gone to meet his maker,' and 'His metabolic processes are now history.'
"Computers can't do nearly that well at paraphrasing. English sentences with the same meaning take so many different forms that it has been difficult to get computers to recognize paraphrases, much less produce them.
"Now, using several methods, including statistical techniques borrowed from gene analysis, two researchers have created a program that can automatically generate paraphrases of English sentences."
(Anne Eisenberg, "'Get Me Rewrite!' 'Hold On, I'll Pass You to the Computer,'" The New York Times, December 25, 2003)
 Pronunciation: PAR-a-fraz |
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