having or revealing keen insight and good judgment; "a discerning critic"; "a discerning reader" able to make or detect effects of great subtlety; sensitive; "discerning taste"; "a discerning eye for color" unobtrusively perceptive and sympathetic; "a discerning editor"; "a discreet silence
unobtrusively perceptive and sympathetic; "a discerning editor"; "a discreet silence
approval If you describe someone as discerning, you mean that they are able to judge which things of a particular kind are good and which are bad. tailor-made holidays to suit the more discerning traveller. showing the ability to make good judgments, especially about art, music, style etc = discriminating
Indefinite article; used when the noun may refer to one of several possibilities. An egg could be any of several eggs, while the egg refers to a specific egg (already mentioned or known)
One of two aliens that appeared in SailormoonR She disguised herself as Ginga Natsumi and attended Juban Junior High School She had a crush on Chiba Mamoru
After Newton The period of time that has elapsed since the cancellation of the Newton Generally agreed to be any point after February 27th, 1998 AN is also an abbreviation for the Action Names software package See also BN and DN Source: NTLK
A young Alan undergoing training with Tywe All young Alan are given a name without the adult appellation "we" This is gained when the young Alan is fully trained and is accepted as an adult
Contains all temperature telemetry points and is most useful when studying the thermal trends of the SIs and vehicle The aft-shroud light shield temperatures are reported in AN format and are currently the best indicators in determining the periodic change in the OTA focus (breathing) AN format does contain the S/C velocity and position vectors
an WEAK STRONG An is used instead of `a', the indefinite article, in front of words that begin with vowel sounds. see also a. Netherlands Antilles (in Internet addresses). airman, Navy. Word History: The forms of the indefinite article are good examples of what can happen to a word when it becomes habitually pronounced without stress. An is in fact a weakened form of one; both an and one come from Old English ān "one." In early Middle English, besides representing the cardinal numeral "one," ān developed the special function of indefinite article, and in this role the word was ordinarily pronounced with very little or no stress. Sound changes that affected unstressed syllables elsewhere in the language affected it also. First, the vowel was shortened and eventually reduced to a schwa (ə). Second, the n was lost before consonants. This loss of n affected some other words as well; it explains why English has both my and mine, thy and thine. Originally these were doublets just like a and an, with mine and thine occurring only before vowels, as in Ben Jonson's famous line "Drink to me only with thine eyes." By the time of Modern English, though, my and thy had replaced mine and thine when used before nouns (that is, when not used predicatively, as in This book is mine), just as some varieties of Modern English use a even before vowels (a apple). And if; if. W1S1 used when the following word begins with a vowel sound a
In such expressions as "twice an hour," "once an age," a shilling an ounce (see 2d A, 2), it has a distributive force, and is equivalent to each, every