"in the semiformal atmosphere irritations can be aired", what is this sentence talking about?"can be aired" means can be expressed?

wow! Bravo! thanks. another question:"she tried to force her thoughts back into some semblance of order",what does "some semblance of order" mean? Does it mean "somewhat of order"? How can I paraphrase this sentence? BTW, are there miserable experiences during English people's early reading or writing? How do you guys remember words like "anthracnose, hippopotami,sarcophagus..."? whats more, how do you overcome deciphering a word with many different meanings in an unfamiliar context? In chinese, most words are formed by putting relevant characters together. Even if they are technical terms or complicated of their meanings. For example, "diabetes" in chinese is literallly "tang niao bing (sugar urine disease)", and "bing" can be used to refer all the deseases, say, "gan bing" means "hepatosis", cao pi bing" means "pellagra", "feng shi bing" refers to "rheumatism"...

@dennislv There are many words which cause English people headaches (not least with the spelling of them)! Words like 'hippopotamus' are often learned quite easily, though, because they are funny-sounding words (and relate to a funny-looking animal). People who have learned a little Latin and Greek at school are at a slight advantage because many English words - especially technical ones - have been borrowed from these languages and are, in a sense, very like the way that you form words in Chinese. 'Hippopotamus', for example comes from the Greek 'hippos' ('horse') and 'potamus' (river). I know that a hippopotamus doesn't look very like a horse but the Greeks (most of whom had never seen the animal) thought that its head, at least, was something like a horse's head! I had to look up 'anthracnose', since I had never come across the word before, but I had a fairly good idea that it meant something like 'black' or 'coal-like' (from the Greek 'anthrax' = 'coal') disease (from the Greek suffix '-osis' which is often used to describe a disease or condition). In fact, it is a fungal disease of plants which often produces black spots on fruits and leaves.

very illuminative.