Tricky Words in this week‘s OVI

Predísť: vyhnúť sa alebo zabrániť? I've commented before on native English speakers mixing up “avoid” and “prevent”, usually in favor of “avoid”, which suggests that they think all problems exist independently of them and all they can do is keep out of their way, rather than doing something poactively to resolve the problems in advance (too difficult??). I would say predísť is closer in meaning to “prevent”, to go ahead of trouble so that you're ready and waiting for it when it comes. Another possibility in English is “to pre-empt”, which literally means to buy something (e.g. some land) before someone else can buy it, to prevent them from acquiring it. So to pre-empt risks or threats means to prepare counter-measures (protiopatrenia) in advance so as to “disable” (znemožniť) the threats before they can have any impact.

ANDY’S WORDSHOP

Bugbear. Everyone has their own bugbear. It has nothing to do with insects or ursine animals; it’s an invented word meaning something which especially irritates you, something which risks becoming an obsession (posadnutosť), because the more you see or hear it, the more it bothers (otravuje) you. It could be a certain TV commercial (at least for a while), or the voice of a particular radio DJ, or it might be those people who take handfuls of plastic shopping bags instead of bringing their own reusable bag to the supermarket. My bugbear is dark-blue Felicia cars, because every time I see one I know that the driver is going to do something intensely irritating, like drive slower and slower towards the traffic lights, change lanes without signalling, or pull out of a side-road and then drive really slowly just in front of me all the way through Valaliky.