Tricky Words in this week‘s OVI:
Net-zero carbon. This “net” is the English form of the more international netto. The English word for brutto is “gross” (say /grous/), which can also be used in the sense of hrubé, as in gross pay, hrubá mzda. It can also be used to mean “disgusting” (nechutné), usually expressed as “Ugh, that’s gross!” Moreover, it can sometimes mean the number 144, i.e. twelve dozen, as in “a gross of eggs”. Back to “net”, when the label on some food says “250 grams net”, it means you should get 250 grams of the food once all the packaging is removed. “Net-zero carbon” means that the amount of carbon dioxide produced by a factory or an airplane is fullly offset (neutralized) by some other activity of the company, for example planting trees, investing in renewable energy sources (wind farms), or shooting rockets full of CO2 into space.
