Business-Englisch: Odd – ein kleines Wort mit vielen Bedeutungen
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Seltsam, ungleich, ungefähr – so vielfältig lässt sich das kleine Wort „odd” einsetzen.
In the article about scheduling meetings on page 1, the word “odd” was used to mean “seltsam.” It has other meanings, so let’s take a closer look with Secretary today at this little word.
You say something is odd when it is not what you expected it to be – as in the example with scheduling a meeting for 9:57. You would expect a meeting to start on the full hour, not three minutes beforehand.
That’s an odd time to start a meeting, isn’t it?
It’s odd that your boss didn’t say anything about the problems at the plant.
When we are talking about numbers, it means uneven – there is one left over when you divide the number by two. So three and five are odd numbers, whereas two and four are even.
If there is an odd number of participants, we won’t be able to work in pairs.
You also use the word odd to describe something that is rather different or that is separated from a pair and therefore on its own or illmatched.
She’s the odd one out, as everyone else can swim.
I’ll never understand where all those odd socks come from when I sort my laundry.
He wore odd shoes. One was brown and one was black.
In British English, the word odd is also used in another, informal way to talk about someone’s age, about a lengthy period of time or about a large number without being too precise. Americans do not use these phrases, but they do understand them.
She looks much younger than her fifty-odd years.
I’ve been working here for twenty-odd years.
There were thirty-odd people at the conference.
A note of caution
If you use this form in writing, remember the hyphen before “odd.” There is a big difference between
thirty-odd participants (circa dreißig Teilnehmer), and
Der große Knigge So bestehen Sie ganz sicher den „Tischmanieren-Test“:
Bewerbern um eine Top-Position passiert es immer öfter:
Sie werden als abschließender Bewerbungstest in ein schickes Restaurant eingeladen – und dort serviert man Ihnen Hummer, Austern oder – Artischocken!
Diese Herausforderung können Sie ab heute ganz getrost annehmen. Denn Sie kennen sich aus. Weil Sie Ihren Stil-Berater zu Rate gezogen haben, sind sie auf alle Tischsitten-Probleme bestens vorbereitet.
Unterstreichen Sie durch guten Stil und vollkommene Umgangsformen wirkungsvoll Ihre Qualitäten:
Der große Knigge
