Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.

[Q]: What's the difference between 'successive' and 'consecutive'?.
[A]: First note that successive appears as a synonym of consecutive in dictionaries. (see Merriam Webster's entry here). Now compare these examples that I chose at random and extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): Consecutive 'his unprecedented string of consecutive appearances' 'has own the best actor Emmy two consecutive times' 'named person of the year for the second consecutive time' 'account balance remains overdrawn for seven consecutive days' 'the Irish made six consecutive NCAA Tournaments' Successive 'on successive laps, Chris passed three cars' 'analysts say that successive governments failed to' 'dramatic walk-off style in successive victories against the Seattle Mariners' 'simultaneous and successive cognitive processes' 'who have challenged successive military governments' Here is what I observe in the examples (I hope I was lucky in my random choice of them): In the examples that use consecutive, the fact that the events happened in a row without interruption seems to be something that the author wanted to emphasize. However, in the examples that use successive, the fact that the events occur after each other with no interruption seems to play a secondary role. Notice that you can remove successive from some of these sentences and the meaning is not affected too much. If you remove consecutive, the impact is in general higher.


[Q]: What's the difference between transparent and translucent? I am trying to describe this record pressing.
[A]: These are both Latin words, and the etymologies help here. trans simply means through luceo simply means to shine So translucent means 'shining through' -- i.e, light passes through, though nothing is said about an image. pareo means to look, seem or appear; to think (of); to sound (like) So transparent clearly refers to identifiable images, most likely visual (hence implying light), but also any sensory percept involving a mental image, as in a transparent lie. Since transparent usually entails light passing through a substance, translucent has become specialized in its sense to entail light passing, but no image.


[Q]: Is there any difference between the two? In a technical document I have used a phrase 'this is a temporal solution' and my coworker told that he'd use 'temporary' in the context. Is one of the two more correct than the second?.
[A]:
Temporal means 'pertaining to time'. Personally I have not enountered this word in normal speech at all, even in somewhat formal writing. I have only encountered it as a technical term. For example, in grammar, the part of the sentence that specifies the time at which something happened (e.g. 'today' or 'throughout the year') is a temporal adverbial. The word also comes up a lot in science-fiction wherever some made-up technical term pertaining to time (usually time travel) is required, e.g. temporal mechanics. In real science, the term is sometimes used as a complement to spatial (pertaining to space). Temporary is a much more common word. It means 'lasting for a limited time' and is the opposite of permanent. Politicians sometimes qualify their policies as a 'temporary measure' to give the impression that there are plans for them to be repealed in due course (which, of course, never happens, but that's a different matter). Edit: In the specific example in your question, I think you most likely mean 'a solution that isn't permanent', so temporary is definitely what you need. Temporal is wrong unless you are contrasting your solution against one that is spatial or in some other way not relating to time.