Pair and Other Words Meaning Two

Pair and Other Words Meaning Two Pair and Other Words Meaning Two Pair and Other Words Meaning Two By Maeve Maddox A reader wonders about the word pair to describe singular objects: A headline from today’s National Post, â€Å"The Royal Canadian Navy is looking to buy 180,000 pairs of grey, lightweight underwear,† got me wondering about the use of the word pair when it comes to things like underwear, pants and scissors. Why are clearly singular items commonly referred to as pairs? Any ideas? I wish I could come up with some really obscure reason for the fact that modern speakers talk about â€Å"a pair of scissors† and â€Å"a pair of stockings,† but fourteenth century English speakers were already speaking of tools that had two joined partslike shearsas pairs. The earliest meaning of the word pair was â€Å"two things of the same type which ordinarily or necessarily are found together.† By the 17th century, pair had acquired the following meanings: a group of things which form a set a married couple a single thing in two pieces or two symmetrical parts two animals of the same species used or bought together two people united by affection or some similarity of position two symmetrical or identical parts of a body (ex. a pair of eyes) The of that follows pair in modern English was often omitted in Middle English and in early Modern English. For example, one spoke of â€Å"a pair socks† and â€Å"a pair gloves.† This change is especially interesting in light of the current trend to drop of after couple, another word that means â€Å"two things.† (See the comments on my post The Quasi-adjective Couple) Another change in the use of pair has to do with the plural. In the not-so-distant past, the singular was used after a numeral: â€Å"three pair shoes,† but now, as in the headline that launched this discussion, we use the plural: â€Å"looking to buy 180,000 pairs of grey, lightweight underwear† Here are a few more words that convey the idea of two: brace double duet duo duplet dyad twain twice twin two twosome Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:30 Synonyms for â€Å"Meeting†80 Idioms with the Word TimeNarrative, Plot, and Story

Case Study The global pharmaceutical industry Coursework

Case Study The global pharmaceutical industry - Coursework Example Consequently, the pharmaceutical market acquired some remarkable character. Management was in the hands of medical practitioners while patients and payers had little awareness or authority. Thus, medical practitioners were inconsiderate to the costs however receptive to the sales endeavors of individual agents. This made possible several 'me too' drugs to realize significant profits on investment. It resulted in imitating well-known medicines that cut R&D risk considerably, while the market- place was exposed to products offering slight advantages for example a more suitable dosage type or fewer side effects, although with much the same beneficial effect. There were two major developments in the 1970s in the pharmaceutical industry. Firstly, the Thalidomide tragedy in sickness caused birth defects, initiated much tighter regulatory rules on clinical trials. Secondly, laws were endorsed to establish a permanent period on patent protection - usually 20 years from first report as a research invention. This produced the emergence of 'generic' drugs. Generics however have precisely the same dynamic constituents as the original brand, and vie on price. The influence of generic application is exemplified by Bristol Myers Squibb's brand Glucophage, a cure for diabetes, which produced US sales of $2.1bn in 2001. After the termination of the patent in January 2002, brand sales fell to $69m for the first quarter. Generics legislation had a significant influence on the industry, providing motivation for improvement and for a competitive market. The time during which R&D costs could be recouped was drastically curtailed, putting upward pressure o n prices. The introduction of generics, however, was very beneficial for society: valuable medicines became extremely cheap. Indeed, health economists have estimated that the social returns from pharmaceutical R&D exceed that appropriated by firms by at least 50 to 100 per cent. By the end of the 1970s generic entrants and more stringent controls on clinical trials had led to substantial increases in R&D spending. Pharmaceutical Industry Environmental Forces: An Introduction The pharmaceutical industry is remarkable in that a number of countries of the world are dependent on a 'monopsony' - there is in fact only one dominant buyer i.e. the government. In the 1980s, governments all