Accost vs Caustic - What's the difference?

accost | caustic |

As a verb accost

is to approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.

As a noun accost

is (rare) address; greeting.

As an adjective caustic is

caustic.

accost

English

Verb

(en verb)

To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.

*{{quote-news, date = 21 August 2012

, first = Ed , last = Pilkington , title = Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die? , newspaper = The Guardian , url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/21/death-penalty-trial-reggie-clemons?newsfeed=true , page = , passage = The Missouri prosecutors' case against Clemons, based partly on incriminating testimony given by his co-defendants, was that Clemons was part of a group of four youths who accosted the sisters on the Chain of Rocks Bridge one dark night in April 1991. }}

(obsolete) To join side to side; to border; hence, to sail along the coast or side of.

* So much [of Lapland] as accosts the sea. - Fuller

(obsolete) To approach; to come up to.

(Shakespeare)

To speak to first; to address; to greet.

* Milton

Him, Satan thus accosts .

* 1847 , , (Jane Eyre), Chapter XVIII

She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request—"She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink."

(obsolete) To adjoin; to lie alongside.

* Spenser

the shores which to the sea accost

* Fuller

so much [of Lapland] as accosts the sea

To solicit sexually.

Derived terms

* accostment

Noun

(en noun)

(rare) Address; greeting.

Anagrams

caustic

English

Adjective

(en adjective)

Capable of burning, corroding or destroying organic tissue.

Sharp, bitter, cutting, biting, and sarcastic in a scathing way.

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=8 , passage=The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;

Synonyms

* (capable of destroying tissue ): acidic, biting, burning, corrosive, searing * (severe, sharp ): bitchy, biting, catty, mordacious, nasty, sarcastic, scathing, sharp, spiteful

Quotations

* 1843': "How now!" said Scrooge, '''caustic and cold as ever. — Charles Dickens, ''A Christmas Carol * 1843': The bargain was not concluded as easily as might have been expected though, for Scadder was '''caustic and ill-humoured, and cast much unnecessary opposition in the way — Charles Dickens, ''Martin Chuzzlewit * 1853': Madame Beck esteemed me learned and blue; Miss Fanshawe, '''caustic , ironic, and cynical — Charlotte Bronte, ''Villette * 1857':The Secretary and the Assistant-Secretaries would say little '''caustic things about him to the senior clerks, and seemed somewhat to begrudge him his new honours. — Anthony Trollope, ''The Three Clerks * 1886': this set of worthies, who were only too prone to shut up their emotions with '''caustic words. — Thomas Hardy, ''The Mayor of Casterbridge * 1930s???': though he came too late / To join the martyrs, there was still a place / Among the tempters for a ' caustic tongue / / To test the resolution of the young / With tales of the small failings of the great — W.H.Auden, 'The Quest'

Derived terms

* caustic curve * caustic potash * caustic soda * caustic surface

Noun

(en noun)

Any substance or means which, applied to animal or other organic tissue, burns, corrodes, or destroys it by chemical action; an escharotic.

(optics, computer graphics) The envelope of reflected or refracted rays of light for a given surface or object.

(mathematics) The envelope of reflected or refracted rays for a given curve.

(informal, chemistry) caustic soda

Derived terms

* lunar caustic