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psychic ~ psycho
[the letter ‘p’ is silent in both these words; and the letters ‘chic’ in ‘psychic’ rhyme with the word “kick”, and the letters ‘ch’ in ‘psycho’ rhyme with the letter ‘k’ in “king”]
“Psychic”, as an adjective, means ‘relating to the power of a person’s mind to do strange and/or surprising, and sometimes harmful and dangerous, things that normal people cannot do, and that cannot be explained by any reason or scientific fact; affecting the mind, not the body’; and as a noun, it is ‘a person with the ability to know what others are thinking and what will happen to somebody in the future (it is equivalent to ‘clairvoyant’)’,
Geralyn St. Joseph, psychic, Hawaii
e.g.
Most ‘gurus’, the so called spiritual leaders, claim they have psychic powers to heal physical and mental diseases, but funnily enough, they themselves fall ill quite often and take medical treatment at corporate hospitals secretly!
You don’t have to be psychic to know what my girlfriend thinks of me; she thinks I’m a moron!
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“Psycho” (noun; plural — ‘psychos) is an informal word for ‘psychopath‘ which means ‘someone with mental illness in which they imagine or see imaginary things, usually bad or emotionally disturbing, and so, may become suddenly violent (dangerous), without any provocation form others, causing a lot of harm to themselves and others’; ‘very crazy person’,
{In the present usage, the word ‘sociopath’ is more commonly used in place of ‘psychopath’ or ‘psycho’.}
a psycho in a mood to kill somebody
e.g.
The famous Hollywood film “Psycho”, directed by Alfred Joseph Hitchcock in 1960, made this word ever popular.
That woman is a psycho; she must be put in a loony bin. [i.e. she is mentally ill, and so must be treated in psychiatric (mental) hospital; ‘loony bin = a mental or psychiatric hospital]
Common Errors:
She is a psycho; she can tell you where you can find your lost purse. [wrong]
She is psychic; she can tell you where you can find your lost purse. [right]
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