Comments by erinmckean

  • The study of flags that appear in dreams. (source)

    February 21, 2024

  • Glad you're back!

    November 21, 2023

  • Hi Bilby! I'm so sorry you're trapped in the nether world. Can you try clearing your cookies? It will make room for more hommous.

    November 20, 2023

  • I've added it! (It will take a few days to show up because of our caching.) Thank you!

    July 31, 2023

  • Thanks vendingmachine! Our Kickstarter backers back in 2015 got the option of having their names appended to entries people found using the "Random Word" feature. The backer name will change with each reload, and only shows up when the word is found randomly (so not if the page is loaded via search or a direct click). Hope this helps!

    February 22, 2023

  • I was advised by a correspondent that Saint Clair Shores, MI would be an addition to this list

    December 12, 2022

  • I feel like antiwords are a specific category of semordnilaps but so far I've only found one (tbh I haven't looked very hard ...)

    October 4, 2022

  • Hi rjvas you can see API calls and responses at https://developer.wordnik.com/docs.

    September 13, 2022

  • I've added it manually for you, but weirdly nothing is showing up in the logs to suggest why it wouldn't be addable in the first place ...

    May 15, 2022

  • that's very weird, bilby! I'll take a look (using my spy satellite)

    May 15, 2022

  • 😂

    May 7, 2022

  • Thanks for your comment! Wordnik is case-sensitive, so there is a page for Opie.

    Unfortunately we have no control over what Google searches link to us. Wordnik's nonprofit mission is to share all the words of English, so we don't remove words, even those that have unsavory meanings. In addition, Wordnik is not intended for users under 13.

    April 27, 2022

  • Hi bilby! I'll check into the cookie-length; it is set by our login provider but I might be able to tweak it!

    Also your word lists are extremely valuable, don't let anyone tell you different. :)

    March 3, 2022

  • Hi yarb! I marked your last comment as 'ham' so hopefully the spam filter will no longer block you!

    January 14, 2022

  • "Piet, though probably in his forties, had the physique of a fifteen-year-old circus acrobat and was a fervid practitioner of the sport of rucking, which apparently was nothing more than running around with a heavy weight strapped to one’s back." from Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson

    January 1, 2022

  • "Wright composed ephemerides—tables giving the future positions of the sun, moon, planets, and principal fixed stars for use in navigation." from The Metaphysical Club

    October 16, 2021

  • "This is the theory of recapitulation, or what is sometimes called the biogenetic law: ontogeny (the development of the individual organism) recapitulates phylogeny (the evolutionary history of the entire group)." from The Metaphysical Club

    October 16, 2021

  • "So that I describe myself as a bettabilitarian. I believe that we can bet on the behavior of the universe in its contract with us. We bet we can know what it will be. That leaves a loophole for free will—in the miraculous sense—the creation of a new atom of force, although I don’t in the least believe in it." from The Metaphysical Club

    October 16, 2021

  • "Nominalism is the doctrine that reality is just one unique thing after another, and that general truths about those things are simply conventions of language, simply names." from The Metaphysical Club

    October 16, 2021

  • "When William James went to Germany, in 1867, he did so to study what was then the hottest area in science: physiological psychology, sometimes called psychophysics." From The Metaphysical Club

    October 16, 2021

  • "He became, in effect, the Emerson of professionalism—or as he sometimes called it, “jobbism.”"The Metaphysical Club

    October 14, 2021

  • Hi vendingmachine! I hear from John from time to time, I will pass on your good wishes when I hear from him again! There are a few lists that feature Wordienames, including best-wordie-user-names and wordie-members, if that helps?

    October 10, 2021

  • Yeah. :( Edited.

    August 27, 2021

  • Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss. Thinking of you and your family.

    August 25, 2021

  • good suggestion, bilby!

    July 17, 2021

  • Hi bilby! The strine list has returned (there was an empty comment gumming up the works, fixed now).

    July 11, 2021

  • Hi bilby! Am looking into the missing list now (it's safely in the database, not sure why it isn't showing up ...)

    July 9, 2021

  • If you use %23 for the hash symbol it should work! (I hope.)

    June 30, 2021

  • Thanks bilby! Unfortunately when we had to update the examples API a while back we weren't able to do as good a job filtering the repeat offenders in the db. We're working on it (and other examples updates) and hope to have something in place by the end of the year.

    June 11, 2021

  • Hi Vendingmachine, I'm so sorry for the hassle. I'm not sure what's going on with the list but I'm looking into it.

    (The ILZf4M-6DSX is something we add to the URL to make sure every URL is unique.)

    April 16, 2021

  • huh! I'll take a look! Thanks for the heads-up!

    February 27, 2021

  • Hi ry! we're working on tags, I hope they'll be back up before too much longer!

    January 15, 2021

  • "Our father invented orbisculate in college to describe when a citrus fruit squirts in your eye, then proceeded to use it so often when we were growing up that we were shocked to discover it wasn’t in the dictionary (also, kind of annoyed, since we found out when we lost a $5 bet to one of our friends)." orbisculate.com

    December 2, 2020

  • Hi Melissa! Wordnik is case-sensitive, so you can find the word 'tam' here: tam.

    We did, in fact, include several out-of-copyright, old-fashioned dictionaries, including the Century Dictionary and the Webster's 1913 (GCIDE), as well as the modern American Heritage Dictionary. :)

    Thank you for using Wordnik!

    February 21, 2020

  • Hi plainbroke! Please check your spam folder or click on the "Settings" link on the user page -- you should find your key in one of those two places (if not both). If you're still having trouble, email us at apiteam@wordnik.com :)

    January 19, 2020

  • oh yes! this was a very fertile source of WOTD words, thank you ry!

    November 11, 2019

  • Hi! It looks like this definition is included at predate: "To prey upon something."

    October 4, 2019

  • hi vendingmachine! That list exists, I'm looking into why it's 404ing. Probably because the link is so long, I might have to tweak some settings. Thanks for letting me know!

    August 15, 2019

  • I am very sorry to share the news that qms passed away on the evening of July 4th, 2019. More information is available in his obituary, here.

    Quentin will be deeply missed here at Wordnik, and to honor his memory we are adopting the word limerick in his name, permanently.

    We are also planning a blog post to highlight some of Quentin's best-loved word-of-the-day limericks; if you'd like to suggest any to include, you can add those words to this list: best-of-qms-f3E-ECnAs3S (or just email them to us at feedback@wordnik.com).

    July 26, 2019

  • Oh, thanks for the heads-up, I will check this out! (Unlikely to get fixed before the weekend, I'm afraid.)

    June 4, 2019

  • "The Greek Church, especially of the sixth and seventh centuries, used a wooden instrument called simantrum (semantron), and one of iron, called hagiosideron." Christian Art in the Place and in the Form of Lutheran Worship

    May 28, 2019

  • attn bilby

    May 14, 2019

  • Hello Wordieniks ... We're making some much-needed improvements to the site and in the way of all improvements, things will get worse before they get better. :( Please holler to feedback@wordnik.com if you have trouble logging in, are missing data (it's just being moved, nothing has been lost) or have any other questions.

    Comments, stats, and tags/favorites may be unavailable at random points through next weekend while we make updates.

    I thank you for your patience and support!

    May 12, 2019

  • thanks for pointing that out, bilby! Will be looking into it. We put some long-string blockers in to thwart spammers but perhaps we were over-enthusiastic about it ...

    March 12, 2019

  • "Therefore, I propose the newly described condition be called the SNATIATION reflex--a combination of sneezing and satiation and easily remembered by the acronymous handle of Sneezing Non-controllably At a Time of Indulgence of the Appetite - a Trait Inherited and Ordained to be Named." —Judith G Hall, J Med Genet 1990;27:275-278

    February 9, 2019

  • Thanks citizenbfk! The images do look odd ... we do pull from the Flickr API, based on text or tags associated with the image. Lots of things are 'reported on' so that's why we see the images we do. I guess people don't photograph their reports (or share their report photographs under an open license) as much as there are photographs featured *in* reports.

    January 22, 2019

  • hi madmouth list creation from a word page is borked at the moment (working on fixing it) but if you click on your name at the top right, the New List link should work (this link)

    Sorry for the hassle!

    August 8, 2018

  • hi vendingmachine! I think this list has been created with the help of our API (developer.wordnik.com)

    July 26, 2018

  • An aversion to work: "He suggests that we make use rather of indifferent Greek terms like "philopony" (love of effort) and its opposite "aphilopony" (distaste for effort.)" The Nation's Health, Volume 9

    June 4, 2018

  • "“Any guy, in my experience, who has to constantly tell you how tough he is ... is not a tough guy,” Avenatti said of Michael Cohen, the attorney who was the subject of FBI raids on Monday.

    “He’s closer to a purse puppy than a tough guy,” Avenatti said." Huffington Post

    April 30, 2018

  • "In theory, an overdose could result in something called a “dysbiosis,” where the gut is overgrown with an imbalance of organisms." Grub Street

    April 6, 2018

  • "A coolager, according to the brand, is a "role model for women younger or older who want to envision their lives as uplifting, enlightened experiences instead of a series of planned events."" Racked

    March 26, 2018

  • "Traveling the globe became a way for Smith to regulate his cost of living according to how much his various online hustles brought in, a strategy that Ferriss called “geoarbitrage.” " NY Times

    March 26, 2018

  • Random word only selects words that have definitions, so umpolished would not be returned by clicking on the random word link. :)

    February 27, 2018

  • not a phrase, but ... one-upmanship?

    February 26, 2018

  • heavy berets tank yaks

    (also: y'all are wonderful)

    February 14, 2018

  • hi Logophile77 -- if you are logged in, you should not be seeing ads. We only show ads to non-logged-in users.

    December 29, 2017

  • "RURP - for Realized Ultimate Reality Piton - a tiny piton the size of a postage stamp used in thin, shallow seams. It was designed by Tom Frost and Yvon Chouinard in 1959, and manufactured by Chouinard Equipment in the 1960s." Wikipedia

    October 17, 2017

  • "The Capitalocene, as McBrien reminds us, is also a Necrocene – a system that not only accumulates capital, but drives extinction (2016; also Dawson 2016)." Jason W. Moore

    October 13, 2017

  • a recent WOTD might belong on this list: euripus

    October 11, 2017

  • Onlyness captures the idea that the way we create value in this modern economy is tied to our novel, original ideas. How ‘onlyness’ makes us powerful

    August 23, 2017

  • the act of tying your shoes @BookishLex

    August 23, 2017

  • "It was coined by US internet entrepreneur Gina Pell, 49, who explains, ‘Perennials are ever-blooming, relevant people of all ages who know what’s happening in the world, stay current with technology and have friends of all ages." Telegraph

    August 13, 2017

  • what about dabster? It means both 'a skilled person' and 'a bungler'. :)

    August 5, 2017

  • a sandwich made with a mold that cuts the crusts off bread while sealing the edges, creating a pocket enclosing the filling Ichiban Kan

    August 2, 2017

  • "Ultimology is the study of that which is dead or dying in a series or process." LongNow.org

    August 1, 2017

  • "Vegan psychologist Melanie Joy would describe me as a “carnist”. It’s a neologism that means I’m conditioned to accept meat-eating is natural and that animals are categorised into edible, inedible, pets and predators, rather than equals." The Guardian

    June 26, 2017

  • "Known for pushing forward the concept of reknitting with her own process of ‘stitch-hacking’ (where the stitches of a knitted fabric are reconfigured to retrospectively insert a new structural design), Amy developed this practice during her PHD at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design before finishing in 2013." Selvedge blog

    June 15, 2017

  • A "sploot" is a very magical thing that often occurs when corgis lay on their tummies with their hind legs sticking out like a frog. The Dodo

    June 14, 2017

  • "I call this the cyberpaleo human condition. It integrates the postscarcity economic logic of computation with the psychological structure of human play-that-works." Ribbonfarm

    June 11, 2017

  • With some people certain words are accompanied by a sense of color, varying with different words (verbochromia). Imagery in Psychology

    May 28, 2017

  • "Again, there are secondary auditory sensations called 'phonisms,' secondary taste sensations called 'gustatisms,' secondary smell sensations called 'olfactisms,' and so on." Imagery in Psychology

    May 28, 2017

  • The rise of the drone has even birthed a new genre of portraiture: the “dronie,” which Ecer describes as “the aerial equivalent of the selfie.” The New Republic

    May 5, 2017

  • New Scientist used this term to refer to "metaphors without foundation" (e.g. "hoist with his own petard"). 17 May 2014

    April 22, 2017

  • "But there is also the issue of confusability, or homograms — different identifiers that look similar or identical — which can cause frustration and bugs at best, security concerns at worst." Unicode Identifiers in Your Language

    April 21, 2017

  • "A homogram is a poem in which every two adjacent words share a letter in common." Table of Forms

    April 21, 2017

  • "The polypathy of a lemma is a measure of the spread of its senses on the polarity scale." TWITA project notes

    April 8, 2017

  • "English has no word for "the constant, repetitive reiteration of strong priors". Yet it is a well-known phenomenon in the world of punditry, debate, and public affairs. On Twitter, we call it "derp"." NoahPinion Blog

    March 26, 2017

  • Jamming the stub of the Greek word for “knowledge” into the Greek word for “rule,” Estlund coined the word “epistocracy,” meaning “government by the knowledgeable.” The Case Against Democracy

    November 12, 2016

  • "Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series." Penric's Mission

    November 11, 2016

  • California succession (from California + exit, on the model of Brexit).

    November 9, 2016

  • "The word ‘cholarchy’ is not to be found in any English dictionary — it’s exceedingly rare. I first learned it from my friend Sean B. Palmer in his weblog essay Lo! New Words, where he defines it as the ‘antonym of hierarchy’, and credits Sean McGrath with popularizing it in his 2002 article The Opposite of Hierarchy (he also tried to spread it in a short blog post later that year)." The Word 'Cholarchy'

    November 9, 2016

  • "from Egyptian (couldn’t care less about, laid back, uncaring. e.g., He’s pretty alakefic about that)" Filling My Blanks

    November 8, 2016

  • Adding 2; one more than increment.

    November 2, 2016

  • "A more specific term, pupillometrics, refers to the evaluation of one's pupil size as an indicator of interest or emotion." Interesting Thing of the Day

    October 23, 2016

  • "Pseudo-ostension is the act of deliberately acting out an existing urban legend (e.g., children secreting pins in their Halloween treats to throw a scare into the community or pranksters in Pulaski, Virginia, placing syringes in payphone coin return slots in 1999)." Snopes

    October 23, 2016

  • powdered alcohol

    October 23, 2016

  • The Uinta ground squirrel (Urocitellus armatus), commonly called a Potgut in northern Utah, is a species of rodent native to the western United States. WIkipedia

    October 23, 2016

  • "A shot or small portion of unsweetened coffee, now usually made either using a espresso machine or a moka pot, but traditionally made using a cloth drip, usually served in cups made for the purpose (called "tazitas de pocillo")." Delicatessen Cookbook

    October 23, 2016

  • A plyscraper is a skyscraper made of wood. They may alternatively be known as mass timber buildings. Wikipedia

    October 23, 2016

  • "Next, Tegmark discusses perceptronium, defined as the most general substance that feels subjectively self-aware." Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter, Like a Solid, A Liquid Or A Gas

    October 23, 2016

  • "Thus peelaflee, he said, was a creature out of its element; a dandy attempting to play with men at the channelstane, for the dandy looks as if the wind had him peeled, and that he looked as if going to fly. A being much liker a warm room, sitting by the hip of a lisping lady, and a simmering trackpot. Peelaflees are all those who look better on a street than they do in the country." The Scots Magazine

    October 23, 2016

  • "The boats had a nine foot beam and were flat bottomed and were called Patikis, which was the Maori name for flat fish or flounders." The Clean Slate

    October 23, 2016

  • This might mean "umbrella skeleton"?

    October 23, 2016

  • "A DNA structure is defined as paranemic if the participating strands can be separated without mutual rotation of the opposite strands." Paranemic structures of DNA and their role in DNA unwinding.

    October 23, 2016

  • "When Mary Lyon refused to have the institution named after her, one of Mount Holyoke’s founding trustees, Edward Hitchcock, suggested naming the seminary “Pangynaskean,” compounding three Greek words meaning “whole woman making.” Mt Holyoke

    October 23, 2016

  • Frobenius's biographer, Janheinz Janz (Leo Frobenius: The Demonic Child) unpacked paideuma in this way: Frobenius thought there is an essence behind every culture, and that essence has a soul, and the soul of a given culture in history is its paideuma. Overweening Generalist

    October 22, 2016

  • "to shop, in the western world, by means of walking, cycling or public transit." NZ Herald

    October 22, 2016

  • reboot + sequel

    October 22, 2016

  • "But millions of Britons have given up on actual socialising in favour of ‘sofalising’ – staying at home and talking to loved ones via electronic devices rather than in person, a poll has found."

    Daily Mail

    October 22, 2016

  • "Next to ice, with the guidance of a restaurant supply company website, I note six common shapes of machine-produced cubes: square, half cube, crescent, flake, gourmet ("top hat"), and (my favorite) the soft, chewable cylinders known variously as pearl, gem, chewblet, and tubular nugget." Eater

    September 9, 2016

  • A mermaid unicorn.

    September 7, 2016

  • so sorry about that, vendingmachine! If you run into bad gateways again, please do email us at support@wordnik.com, especially if you can let us know what words/pages you were trying to get to. That will help us find the root causes of the problem and, with any luck, fix them! Thank you!

    August 30, 2016

  • "Heutagogy—the concept first termed by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon in 2000 in ‘From andragogy to heutagogy’ —is the notion of self-determined learning." Heutagogical and transformational: Journeys of discovery, discomfort and breakthrough

    August 29, 2016

  • "Once SuperSat gets off the ground, the plan is to have it lock into a lunar orbit and map the surface with an HDTV camera and panospheric video." WIRED

    August 21, 2016

  • "After that the engine passed into a building called the lubitorium, where oil and soft greases were piped under pressure direct from supply tanks to the various points needing lubrication." Railways of the USA

    June 15, 2016

  • You might mean lascivious?

    May 5, 2016

  • Hi -- sorry about the warning, a few of the sites we link to DID have malware, but because of our redirects, ALL of the Wordnik example links are now throwing a warning. :-( We're removing the links to the affected sites but it's a very slow, manual process. :-(

    Wordnik itself is not affected by malware.

    In the meantime, if you want to see the original site for a link, the safest/easiest way is to copy/paste the whole example and google it.

    April 17, 2016

  • Thanks for the reports on what I am going to call the Icelandic Problem (because that sounds cool). I'm not sure what's up but I will look into it.

    One rubber-chicken-wavy solution that often seems to work in cases such as this is favoriting a problem word before trying to comment or list it.

    April 15, 2016

  • "Onlyness is that thing that only that one individual can bring to a situation. It includes the journey and passions of each human. Onlyness is fundamentally about honoring each person: first as we view ourselves and second as we are valued. Each of us is standing in a spot that no one else occupies. That unique point of view is born of our accumulated experience, perspective, and vision." from Onlyness (the topic and the talk at TEDxHouston)

    April 13, 2016

  • I think it may have to do with cookie expiration ... I'll look into it!

    March 13, 2016

  • The Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Word of the Week. "Sample usage: "Everyone's saying we should go try that new live-squid restaurant, but I am definotely eating anything with moving tentacles."" Word of the week: definotly

    March 10, 2016

  • = 'NB', or non-binary, in terms of gender expression

    March 5, 2016

  • there's a leading space (the percent-sign-20) in the url. We're working on a fix for this issue!

    February 24, 2016

  • Tiny, yolkless eggs are sometimes known as witch eggs or fairy eggs. MyPetChicken.com

    February 22, 2016

  • Tiny, yolkless eggs are sometimes known as witch eggs or fairy eggs. MyPetChicken.com

    February 22, 2016

  • ‘Cock Egg’ is a synonymous term for any type of abnormal egg. Granny-Miller.com

    February 22, 2016

  • A cross between a hammered dulcimer and an electric guitar, the construction of the chordstick allows for a more percussive playing technique, building atmospheric ambiance. Classical MPR

    February 22, 2016

  • “Text neck,” a term coined by a Florida chiropractor, Dean L. Fishman, is a repetitive stress injury resulting from hours spent with the head positioned forward and down while using electronic devices. NY Times

    February 22, 2016

  • My friend and former colleague Dave McCrory coined the idea of data gravity —the inclination for pools of data to attract more and more data. DZone

    February 22, 2016

  • Derbyshire confirms; each and every part of the song “was constructed on quarter-inch mono tape,” she says, “inch by inch by inch,” using such recording techniques as “filtered white noise” and something called a “wobbulator.” Open Culture

    February 22, 2016

  • Many other words belong to MLE—multi-ethnic or multicultural London English—sometimes derided as jafaican, the speech variety strongly influenced by Caribbean usages and non-European accents and parodied by Ali G and TV comedy Phoneshop. Quartz

    February 22, 2016

  • We have some beer from the beererator (there’s also a winerator and a boocherator for kombucha). California Sunday

    February 22, 2016

  • The girls use their perky dance moves to threaten “enemies of freedom” and explain “Ameritude,” which, according to the song, is “American pride, it’s attitude, it’s who we are.” Quartz

    February 22, 2016

  • And as Americans buy more and more holiday gifts online, they’re also returning more, creating new opportunities for businesses prepared to handle what others don’t want. Call it “re-commerce.” WIRED

    February 22, 2016

  • On the CPU side, typically there is a “hot path” (a code that is visited often) that is not optimized. StrongLoop

    February 22, 2016

  • “Scratching” in the language of computer science means to reuse code that can be beneficial and effectively used for other purposes and easily combined, shared and adapted to new scenarios, which is a key feature in Scratch – “remix”, in which users can download and build up on public projects uploaded and developed by other users. Wikipedia

    February 22, 2016

  • In Epic Mafia, there is a word for the act of scanning someone’s messages for clues as to whether they are mafia: scumreading. The Guardian

    February 22, 2016

  • In a city filled with slot machines spilling jackpots, it was a “jackpotted” ATM that got the most attention Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference, when researcher Barnaby Jack demonstrated two suave hacks against automated teller machines that made them spew out dozens of crisp bills. WIRED

    February 22, 2016

  • Each of these traits has a “biogenic” nature (it’s a matter of genetics); a “sociogenic” nature (it’s a part of what our culture teaches us); and an “idiogenic” nature (it’s just one of those things that makes us us). TED blog

    February 22, 2016

  • This story begins when Associated Press foreign correspondent John Roderick became the unlikely owner of an enormous, rundown farmhouse, or “minka.” AIA-MN

    February 22, 2016

  • The proliferation of new breeds is in part a product of “linebreeding,” a type of inbreeding in which a close relative occurs more than once in a puppy’s pedigree. Vice

    February 22, 2016

  • He pioneered “originalism,” a theory holding that the Constitution should be interpreted in line with the beliefs of the white men, many of them slave owners, who ratified it in the late eighteenth century. The New Yorker, 29 Feb 2016

    February 22, 2016

  • "Pultrusion is a continuous process for manufacture of composite materials with constant cross-section. The term is a portmanteau word, combining "pull" and "extrusion"." Wikipedia

    February 9, 2016

  • December 28 is officially Christmas comedown day. Today’s the day that you’re most likely to be involved in some kind of family conflict or blazing row. ... It’s because many people will be travelling back from visiting relatives for the festive season and perhaps also preparing to return to work the following day. It has been dubbed Moody Monday by Kwik Fit who commissioned the poll of 2,000 Britons. Metro UK

    December 29, 2015

  • According to Genderqueerid.com, skoliosexual refers to “sexual attraction to non-binary identified individuals" or those who do not identify as cisgender. Huffington Post

    December 28, 2015

  • Common diseases more likely to come from MAGOTS, or ‘multiple assorted genes of tiny significance.’ Medium @belldejour

    December 28, 2015

  • Or take this skill, called a barani—a front flip with a half twist—on beam. New Republic

    December 28, 2015

  • Nearby was a squat device that looked like a photocopier — a farinograph, which assesses the strength of dough as it is mixed — and a cylindrical machine that tests raw grain for adequate levels of starch. New York Times

    December 28, 2015

  • The style of dress has earned a few nicknames, including soft dressing, sports luxe, and when it goes really upscale, athluxury—think Vladimir Putin in $1,600 sweatpants. Quartz

    December 28, 2015

  • Considering the contents of "Unplugged," his take on Wired's usurping of Mondo 2000's "cyber-hipeoisie" mouthpiece privileges, the publication couldn't have been timed more perfectly. Suck

    December 28, 2015

  • Just as the heavy industry can greenwash to produce the appearance of environmental responsibility and the consumer industry can pinkwash to connect themselves to cause marketing, so the technology industry can “engineerwash”—leveraging the legacy of engineering in order to make their products and services appear to engender trust, competence, and service in the public interest. The Atlantic

    December 28, 2015

  • In practice, baugruppen are basically like condos, but with much more robust shared spaces and collective ownership rather than developer ownership. Vox

    December 28, 2015

  • I better liked Mitch Kapor’s talk, which advised against becoming an ageist, racist, or sexist “mirrortocracy” and calling it a meritocracy. Michael O. Church

    December 28, 2015

  • “Bleisure” trips, or ones that combine business and leisure, are rising fast as a common form of travel worldwide, according to a new report from Bridgestreet Global Hospitality published by Skift. Fusion

    December 28, 2015

  • A kalyptic culture is typified by peacefulness, tolerance and individualism. Tamil Nation

    December 28, 2015

  • Collaborative robots — or cobots — need to be configured so they're aware of their fleshy colleagues and slow or stop after an unexpected collision to avoid stabbing skin or slicing limbs. Bloomberg

    December 28, 2015

  • But it is equally important to train and encourage men to take jobs that require skills in health, education, administration and literacy, so-called HEAL jobs. New York Times

    December 28, 2015

  • But after a slew of 4-5 day work-plus-weekend trips that one colleague has dubbed “the work-end,” I’ve noticed my suitcase holds the same items, again and again: a striped breton shirt, a black crepe slip dress, a grey wool plaid scarf for the plane. Quartz

    December 28, 2015

  • To waste time throughout extra time with the aim of forcing - and then winning - a penalty shootout, eg: "Both teams are clearly penastinating now!" BBC

    December 28, 2015

  • There was even an effort called FOAF (which stands for “friend of a friend” and is pronounced “fofe”) that described the social network between individuals. The New Republic

    December 28, 2015

  • But when the critical establishment rejects Tartt and other women who manage to create literary juggernauts, Weiner suggests that sexism is also partly to blame. “Call it Goldfinching,” she writes. The Atlantic

    December 28, 2015

  • The pieces were made by painstakingly manipulating a typewriter — rotating paper, adjusting spacing and overstriking letters — to make what the Sackners call “typed artpoe.” New York Times

    December 28, 2015

  • Yes, America still has a formidable high-tech and military industry, but, as James Kunstler and others have pointed out, for the last thirty years American society has become an economy centered on building more suburbs and filling them up with foreign cars, plasma TV’s and and the like. I call this living accommodation autoburbia. Island Breath

    December 28, 2015

  • Halbig’s sandyhookjustice.com had by then drawn a benificent counterbalance, blogs like sandyhookfacts.com, devoted to debunking every crackpot claim put forward by the hoaxers, whom they referred to as “conspiratards.” The Trace

    December 28, 2015

  • This in turn makes them more likely to look for coping mechanisms, including 'stalking' their ex on social networks - officially known as interpersonal electronic surveillance (IES). Daily Mail

    December 28, 2015

  • There's an Hermès black lambskin blanket-scarf — blarf? — that has certainly never seen a moment of inclement weather. Racked

    December 28, 2015

  • "Zythophile is a beer blog written by an unidentified British beer enthusiast. The name of the blog is a neologism meaning, according to the author, a lover of beer." Home Brew Talk

    (likely from zythum, a kind of beer)

    December 26, 2015

  • "A quaducant—following the Russian matryoshka nesting doll model of meat—would be quail's breast meat stuffed in duck's breast meat stuffed in a deboned pheasant." Serious Eats

    December 24, 2015

  • "a gangster who steals food" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a mix between pink, orange, and blue" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "when you make a hashtag that is too long" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "frustrated and angry at the same time" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "when you're little & your mum tells you that a really yuck vegetable is actually a really yummy lollie ( but it's not!)" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "no eyebrows" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "too much eyebrow" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "you're happy because it's Friday" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a really wild party or festival" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "bored because of parents" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a mixture of pineapple and bacon" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "two combovers joining in the middle" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "terrible and amazing" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "from the Nike slogan: Just Do It" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "happiness in a crazy way" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "when you're laughing non-stop and you start finding it really hard to breathe" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "someone who sings loudly and out of tune. Usually an out-tuner thinks that they are an amazing singer and think a lot of their singing skills." (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "someone or something that is going absolutely crazy!" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "very skilled" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a fear of hurting someone" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "it means you're sad because it's your bedtime" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "it means you are happy because you are eating" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • a baby duck (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "more baby ducks" see bucky (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "freezing children" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "to whisper about a secret" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "to write wonky" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "come here because I'm happy" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "bulging eyes" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "book addict" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "clean and pretty" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "frightened and scared" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "your room is tidy" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "your room is messy" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "mean and nasty" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "you look just like Barbie" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "bored and lazy" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "I don't understand" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a collector of book series" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a book that's turned into a movie" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a parent teacher" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "an abbreviation of do it" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "go away because I'm angry" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "cemented bricks" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "food emojis" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "gas that turns into liquid" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a biscuit with fruit" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "someone who goes for a walk and strolls and whistles at the same time" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "When the rubbish people recycle plastic and use it for different things" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "confused" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "a large crowd" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "weak muscles" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • a "freaky creature" (from Aspendale Primary School, Melbourne)

    December 9, 2015

  • "I call it a kaleidophone,” he said.“The idea is that it will convert any rhythmical sound, such as music, into pleasing and symmetrical, but always changing, visual patterns." Prelude to Space, by Arthur C. Clarke

    November 22, 2015

  • "Grimdark is a subgenre or a way to describe the tone, style, or setting of speculative fiction (especially fantasy) that is, depending on the definition used, markedly dystopian or amoral, or particularly graphic in its depiction of violence. In most grimdark literature the supernatural is a passive force, controlled by humans—unlike supernatural horror where the preternatural forces are most often an active entity with agency." Is it Grimdark or is it Horror?

    November 5, 2015

  • Hmm. I was just able to add my favorite, Governor Moonbeam

    November 3, 2015

  • "Hey, there's another American on Ring City who's not a spy, a diplomat, or that deadly combination, the spiplomat." from Constellation Games

    October 31, 2015

  • I used to have a poster that read "Be a lert. The world needs more lerts!"

    October 29, 2015

  • that's a great idea, bilby! I'll see what I can do!

    October 27, 2015

  • "In college I took a literature course which examined Marilynne Robinson’s innovative use of spaces–especially the domestic space–in her novel Housekeeping. My teacher also mentioned that the book actually includes a neologism- the word “lucifactions,” used to describe light on water, in the scene where the girls are out on the lake." HTMLGiant

    October 27, 2015

  • It is an alternate spelling of the word wincey which is a kind of cloth. :-)

    October 22, 2015

  • "Sent to large numbers of correspondents using the reply-all button, memails contain no substance. Their sole function is to draw attention to the sender, using the fewest words possible. Recently received examples include "that's just great", "good news", "fantastic", or just plain "yup"." The Guardian

    October 15, 2015

  • Hi Valerie! Information about the Wordnik API is at developer.wordnik.com. Documentation is here: http://developer.wordnik.com/docs.html

    October 9, 2015

  • "Mr. Ascheim defines “becomers” not as a generation but as a life stage — “from your first kiss to your first kid,” or people roughly 14 to 34." NYTimes

    October 9, 2015

  • "Kronos’s promotional videos emphasize the risk of time theft by employees—“In a few minutes late?

    Taking a few extra minutes on a break? It adds up”—and some of the firm’s most invasive systems, which require employees to clock in with a finger scan, are meant to prevent “buddy punching,” when an employee clocks in a co-worker who hasn’t yet arrived." Harper's Magazine

    October 7, 2015

  • brelfie a selfie taken while breastfeeding: "The latest fad clogging up social media, heaping shame on those who dare commit the sin of bottle-feeding, is the brelfie: the tedious habit of posting a breastfeeding selfie, creating yet more #bressure on those who don’t, or can’t." Telegraph

    September 28, 2015

  • The acting in this film is superb and the language is even better. As Rose and Jimmy wander around town making up scenarios, she uses such descriptions as "figures on a nunswept pier," for the people in her line of vision. Wilmington Town Crier

    September 25, 2015

  • "So are you going to write it all down? What'll you call it?"

    "Figures on a Nunswept Pier." The Mirage

    September 25, 2015

  • "doorfoolia is when you start to push open an opaque door at the exact instant someone on the other side of the door pulls the door open so that you stumble forward pushing air." (from Don Moyer of Calamityware)

    September 25, 2015

  • "Jana Dambrogio, the Thomas F. Peterson conservator at M.I.T. Libraries, is analyzing how letter writers have tried through the ages to keep their correspondence sealed and unread until it reached the intended recipients. She has coined the word “letterlocking” to describe methods of folding and gluing pages to deter snooping." A Trove of ‘Letterlocking,’ or Vintage Strategies to Deter Snoops

    September 21, 2015

  • "A typogram is a word that, through the manipulation of the letterform itself, illustrates the meaning of the word." IAMALI Design

    September 20, 2015

  • "Cognitonaut is not something I own. It is something that anyone can be; an explorer of ideas." Bravo Child

    September 19, 2015

  • "His bizarre allegorical stories fashion fantastical yet oddly believable worlds which deftly fuse 'magic' and 'realism' in a way critics have termed: 'stoicheiotical fidelity'." Blacklist Publishing

    September 18, 2015

  • "This summer, a new, trendier one, emerged: NATU, for Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla and Uber." Monday Note

    September 7, 2015

  • "Here in Europe, the enemy is designated by acronyms. A year ago it was GAFA, for Google Amazon, Facebook, Apple." Monday Note

    September 7, 2015

  • "assigned female at birth"

    September 4, 2015

  • "Arguably I would say that your work is a form of hypercartoonism. It’s really sharp the same way hyperrealism is." Lisa Frank on Lisa Frank

    September 2, 2015

  • family + company: "In Issue No12, we take an insider's look at Zendesk’s impressive growth with co-founder Alexander Aghassipour; ustwo co-creator Matt ‘Mills’ Miller shows us how to create a ‘fampany’ of 250 employees while putting fun first; travelling photographer and designer Dan Rubin examines his new career path – powered by Instagram; science geek Ariel Waldman calls on the web community to participate in space exploration; Basecamp co-founder Jason Fried defies the startup hype and makes a case for longevity in business; and the father of web standards, Jeffrey Zeldman, reflects on the web that was and the web that will be."

    September 2, 2015

  • "A recent extension of the concept of genocide associates the prospect of nuclear destruction with the threat of 'omnicide' or 'anthropocide'—the killing of all groups and individuals." The Politics of Gender

    August 31, 2015

  • "And he told me about ngondi, the kinds of weather: mawalala is rain far off in the distance that doesn't ever come." The Poisonwood Bible

    August 28, 2015

  • "Big International NGO"

    August 28, 2015

  • I read "Reasonably well-known in Australia" and thought that it was applying to bilby and not DILLIGAF ...

    August 24, 2015

  • "names for categories of people (race, sexual orientation, nationality, etc.)" American Dialect Society

    August 24, 2015

  • "And spoffle seems a perfectly suitable word for a soft baffle to muffle the pop and spit of aspirations, given its sound and the words it sounds like." Sesquiotica

    August 24, 2015

  • "relaxed but still unsettling tracks from horror (or horror-themed) games." N4G

    August 24, 2015

  • OED has this as "A hurried accumulation of several points."

    August 22, 2015

  • I am learning so much from this list!

    August 21, 2015

  • First, there’s the fetching hybrid (or halforism?) called the gregueria. The gregueria was invented and named by the 20th Century Spanish writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna. He defined it as “humor plus metaphor,” a poetic joke:
    The couple of eggs we’re eating look like identical twins, and they’re not even third cousins.
    —GOMEZ DE LA SERNA
    from Short Flights

    August 19, 2015

  • To go quickly about any thing, to walk along smartly. Supplement to The Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language

    August 19, 2015

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