Etymology The word "chasm" is derived from the Greek word χάσμα (pronounced "hasma")(point of note: all words transferred into English from the Greek language changed the Greek " χ " to a " ch ", as in psychology , chronic , archaeology , etc.) and means abyss, an opening found on the earth's surface which is usually wide and deep. 

Today's word, alongside its less commonly used variant "chthonian", is a word which comes from Greek.  It means "of or related to the underworld; subterranean" and is tied to the ancient Greek female deity Χθων (Chthon) that personified the depths of the earth.  Chthon was often identified as the earth's principal goddess Γαία (Gaia) and like her was commemorated as the mother of the Titans,

The latest word is one found in the bottom half of the list of popular words used in English. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary places its first appearance in 1513, Dictionary.com in the 1590's, Oxford dictionary in the late 16th century, while Collins' (Collins Cobuild) online dictionary shows the popularity of this rarely used word peaking in 1860 at a frequency of 0.3.

Seeing as the World C up is a major obsession for people of all nations and all ages, it's a good t ime as ever to refresh or learn a few football (or soccer, if some of you prefer ) phrases used i diomatically in everyday speech in Engl ish .

Please read the first two paragraphs from Grammar: The Subjunctive by way of introduction to this series of blog posts regarding grammar. I nversion is yet another grammatical construction that shows a more advanced knowledge of the English language. It usually appears in grammar textbooks the year before and during which a candidate is set to sit a B2-level examination (IELTS 5.5-6.5, FCE, ECCE, MSU-CELC, ESB, LRN) but mo re often than not is not very well grasped by students, making it a rarely tested item at th is level.  If candidates are likely to encounter a single question whi ch tests inversion on a B2 test , meaning that they are not expected to have mastered it, they are most certainly expected to have learnt it well enough at C2 level to not only recognize it in a sentence, but use it as well in both the oral component of the test and as part of any writing task they are required to produce.

You'l l find all types of explanations of the subjunctive in books and on websites that have probably more erudite scholars working on grammatical issues than I , however, I tend to sim plify grammar to its lowe st common denominator so that stude nts don't decide to power off the minute they hear me say the word "grammar " during a lesson.  So if i t's scholarly, linguistic, super duper comprehensive explanations you're after, please refer to other sites that champion top-notch academics who will tackle gramma tical structures the way they're meant to be tackled. A s for me, I 'm here to teach the basics so that if you're trying to learn grammar to pass an English examination or basically to understand what a grammatical phenom enon is, how it's used and when it's used, you can do so without too many gaps in understanding. The subjunctive is a grammatical structure (to be m ore precise it is a mood, not a tense) which denotes mor...