Not to be confused with an ex-parrot
Unless it’s no longer pining for the fjords.
(italics added)
Or it’s someone who leaves to play QB for Tampa Bay.
Flair: a natural talent or style
Flare: a sudden burst of light or flame.
Just seen a confusion on another thread:
Steak: a substantial cut of meat, usually beef
Stake: (1) piece of wood, more substantial than a rod or pole, usually fixed as an upright in the ground to secure, e.g , fencing; (2) something of value wagered or invested
One can also “stake a claim”, meaning file for ownership of e.g. mineral rights in an area just being explored.
striding: taking long steps
stridulating: making sound by rubbing together parts of one’s body
I believe that was originally literal, as in placing marker stakes denoting the boundaries of the area one was claiming.
Some can do both at the same time. I remember Mandy Patinkin’s character on Chicago Hope used to pace his office while thinking. But his pants went swish-swish as he walked, so he took them off. One watcher, I won’t name names, could relate. A friend of mine, yeah, that’s it. You wouldn’t know him, he’s from Canada.
Beyond the pail: on the far side of a bucket. A strange way to speak, but hey, you do you.
Beyond the pale: On the bad side of an important boundary between propriety and impropriety. “Pale” used to refer to a wooden stake in the ground that marked a boundary between claimed territory and the uncivilized lands beyond.
On a related note, this usage of “pale” is where the word “impale” comes from.
And this gave rise to two historically important Pales: The Pale of Settlement in the western parts of the Russian empire where Jews were permitted (with lots of caveats) to live; and The English Pale, originally an area in eastern Ireland, where English colonists were extraterritorial subjects of the English monarch rather than being subject to Irish lords or laws.
Hence also paling for a fencepost. During one election over here, a candidate named Paling got over-excited at a meeting and called his opponent a “dirty dog” - quick as a flash, a heckler shouted “And we all know what dirty dogs do to palings!”
proximate: near, adjacent
proximal: closer to the point of observation
“Proximal” is also one of the anatomical terms of location, referring to something that is closer to the main part of an animal’s body, e.g. your shoulder is at the proximal end of your upper arm.
To combine those ideas, “proximal” is “closer to the point of reference”. For anatomy, that’s the center of the body. For some observations it’s the center of the thing observed, and for others its the POV of the observer.
I don’t agree with @DPRK’s definition (and thus not with the attempt to reconcile it). I’m pretty sure that there is no technical usage where proximal means closest to the point of observation.
I think @DPRK must either accept that proximal is just a synonym for proximate and can mean “nearby” in any loose sense (it has long been used this way), or if he prefers to reserve proximal for a precise technical sense then the technical definition should be the correct one.
I do agree with @LSLGuy that point of “reference” or point of “origin” is a reasonable generalization for the technical usages, just not that this ever really means point of observation.
Maybe I typed too quickly. “Closer to the point of reference”, as in the anatomical sense (opposite: distal, not distant), is what I had in mind. I should probably not have written “observation” and apologize for the extra confusion. In linguistics one also talks about “proximal demonstratives” where the reference/observer is the speaker (this vs that).
Cracking open the OED, if I am reading it right, the technical senses are the ones not marked “obsolete” or “rare”, but, ignoring such decrees (as one should 
) the first definition is “lying very near or close to something; proximate, immediate.”
We still have not got into proximate(ly) versus approximate(ly) !
Yes, when I saw this I wondered if this derived recently from widespread acceptance of casual misuse of the technical term - but the citations of usage dating back several hundred years suggest that proximal was originally a synonym for proximate, and the technical usage came later.
reputed: assumed, supposed
reputable: having a good reputation
A reputed university is an institution that is assumed or believed by some to be a university but which may or may not actually be one. A reputable university is a university that has a good reputation.
I don’t think this is correct. Reputed is also specifically about reputation, not value-neutral assumptions or suppositions. So I would not use it as your example does, about whether something IS a university, only about whether it’s a good or bad university. I think these are more typical examples of usage:
It is reputed to be a good university.
He is reputed to be the finest swordsman in Florin.
She is reputed to be unreliable.
In all cases, the implication is that you are reporting widely held value judgments (reputation), but not speaking from first hand knowledge.
There is also the expression “highly reputed”, which is exactly synonymous with reputable.