New potential category: measurements. cm km ft hr GB MB etc. I don't know if I'd call hr or ft an acronym, but it's being similarly shortened into a 2-letter entity.
ruzuzu I don't care how it's pronounced, I care that normally, it's larger phrases that are turned into acronyms, even if it's just 2 letters (HR for human resources, or PB for peanut butter, OJ, TP, etc) but these just kinda break up one word in a place where it's not immediately obvious that you could do that. TD for touch/down is kind of similar, but I can see that logic of breaking on the compound, where as I'd think tuberculosis could be abbreviated in a whole lot of other ways instead of TB. TC for tuber/culosis, tubey, 'culosis, t-losis. (It's a serious medical thing, so probably not too many nicknames, but still, other shortenings feel a lot more likely).
And it also baffles me that this strange abbreviation method has turned into PJ twice. That's what kicked this off.
These don't even necessarily break on a morpheme boundary, you know? On a consonant cluster. Maybe ID is different. I need more examples. Morphology is wild.
Well noted, ry. It was a 2021 Word of the Year nominee. It came from cannabis culture - originally referring to "mid-grade weed", then expanding in use through hip hop and Black Twitter to talk about middling music, media, and celebrities. smoking mid, middest of the mid, it's mid af. It's featured in the upcoming Among the New Words part of the American Dialect Society's journal along with other nominees like hard pants and horny jail.
RNG = random number generator. In video games, you sometimes have to depend on the "luck" of what item will appear in what chest, or when an NPC will appear in a certain location, and so speedrunners pray to RNGesus, that luck will be on their side. Pronounced R-N-Jesus.
vendingmachine how do you pronounce it? This is a new term to me, but based on quintet and bicentennial, that robot man's pronunciation sounds good to me.
Welcome pugnatio! The New Yorker style is proudly eccentric, with their use of the diaeresishttps://www.grammarly.com/blog/diaeresis/ and their refusal to move forward at the speed of tech for things like Web site and e-mail. The New York Times is also slow to adopt revisions to their style guide. Maybe it's an East Coast thing.
Just heard this in a business meeting in reference to a group that is supposed to be advised, but this person couldn't think of a reason for them to have a demand signal for this document/issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_signal It's about the chain of notifications, and if someone doesn't care, why are they in the chain?
IN rock climbingbouldering competitions, you get half points on a problem for getting halfway through the wall to the zone hold during your 4 minutes of attempts, and full points if you can maneuver around to the top hold as well.
In rock climbing, when you match a hold, you have both hands on the same hold at the same time. Sometimes in competitions, there's only room for 3 fingers in a hold, but competitors still find a way to transition from one hand's 3 fingers to the others' to make progress on a boulder problem. In competitions, you top a wall (complete it) by matching both hands to the hold labeled Top.
An affectionate term that Tumblr users for Tumblr, and sometimes Twitter users use for Twitter, in reference to changes to the interface, layouts, new rules, bans, and choices that seem to ignore and go directly against what users want from that site. https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/medeamybeloved/682632763736752128
A very terrible 2007 movie written by and starring Jerry Seinfeld. Many memes about it, one of them involves making new cuts of the film - commonly in the form "Bee Movie but..." as in "Bee Movie but everyone time they say the word bee, it speeds up." The movie is mocked for many reasons, one because the human woman leaves her human partner because she falls in love with a bee (beestiality), who successfully sues the world for selling honey without the bees receiving a profit from it. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/bee-movie
A verb backformed from the 2022 movie Morbius, which was given the Bee Movie treatment by online users (a meme-rich bad thing), and misinterpreted by the studio as a reason to return the poorly received movie to theaters a second time, where it flopped again. The verb is not used in the movie, it's just based on the title and that the movie is bad and that Jared Leto (who plays Morbius) takes his roles too seriously.
On Tumblr, a reference to plinko horse from the game Plinko. There's a gif of a CG horse flopping down again and again through plinko pegs. Users felt bad for the horse and now use it as a facetious example of animal abuse. Also used in a bouba vs kiki linguistics meme with blorbo and plinko replacing the original examples since both were popular at the same time. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horse-plinko
A fictional beloved character, making fun of fandoms latching onto random side characters without knowing much about them, or just trying to talk to someone about a rabbithole aspect of a niche interest: blorbo from my shows. Sometimes a Star Wars character, though another fake beloved character glup shitto specifically makes fun of weird Star Wars names. Created and popularized on Tumblr in 2022. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/blorbo-from-my-shows
Internet meme verb based on the flop 2022 movie "Morbius" about a Marvel Comics vampire. From the new backformation verb morb. Sometimes with apostrophe as morbin'. Often appears in the phrase "it's morbin time!"
it's an ice cream made with eggs and heavy cream? Often with chopped cherries, almonds, or crumbled macaroons (biscuits) mixed in. More info at tortoni. #RandomWord
In board gaming a shelf jerk is a board game box that is not a standard size and shape (12x12 or euro rectangle shape), making them difficult to fit into bookshelves. (Example: a shoebox, coffin box, or a novelty cylinder shape.)
As ELLE’s associate beauty editor Margaux Anbouba says about these pants, “they are your classic dad-style thick, fleecy sweat-pants material, shaped into a flattering, just butt-hitting enough fit that you won’t be embarrassed leaving the house in them.”
Just saw this in a Starbucks promotional email - it's a category that includes silverware plus napkins, straws. Basically, they are no longer going to automatically provide serveware to customers - to reduce waste, you now need to ask for them. Looks like it would be a service industry term, but because of laws it'll maybe become more widespread.
In rock climbing, this describes a hold on a wall that is particularly good to grab onto - like a jug handle. (As opposed to shallow holds, slopers, and other, less friendly kinds where you have to crimp your fingers to make them fit.)
Wikipedia: "Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based simulation software developed by Siemens Digital Industries Software. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows the modeling and analysis of a range of engineering problems involving fluid flow, heat transfer, stress, particulate flow, electromagnetics and related phenomena."
AKA pouch of Douglas or rectouterine pouch. A body part I only know about because it inspired the title of Hannah Gadsby's stand up special Douglas. #RandomWord
Not sure when this originated, but it's grown in popularity this year as a way to start a phrase telling someone "my dude, i must kindly inform you that you have majorly fucked up."
Earliest citation I found so far was from the 1992 book "A Leader's Journey to Quality" by Dana M Cound. There's a section called "Skip Level Meetings" and this quote after it:
"The executive should consider making a plant tour following his skip level meetings - after not before."
"On the web, soft hyphens ( or ) can be added manually to tell browsers where a word can be broken across lines. A soft hyphen will be displayed only when needed and, if desired, can be added multiple times to long words to give the browser options as to where a break might occur. The mark up might look like the following: hyphenation,"
"The problem for dyslexic people occurs because large gaps between words are more likely to line up above one another than are the smaller gaps typical of more evenly spaced text. When they do, readers may perceive highly distracting white patterns flowing through the page that can become more prominent than the text itself. The effect is known as “rivers of white” and it can make reading difficult, if not impossible."
The book "English Ancestral Names" by JR Dolan (1972) is a great resource for these. 360 pages of surnames grouped by occupation, with historical context for what that work meant between 1100 and 1350.
On the Neopets site, your Neopet could have a petpet, which come in different fantastical breeds from the larger Neopets. One was called a Noil, which was a cute, plushie-looking lion. (Noil is lion backwards.)
Like a paper town that only exists on maps but not in the world, this is a (for example, nuclear) power plant/design that only exists in concept without concrete plans to make it a reality. Also paper reactor.
The Girl with the Dogs TikTok/YouTube channel describes pre-groomed dog feet as Grinch feet, resembling the cartoon Grinch from Dr. Seuss. She often says "...I shave out their paw pads... and then I trim their grinch feet" during her narrated walkthroughs of her process with unique dog clients.
Probably not an originator of the term but definitely a popularizer. Lowercase "grinch feet" appears more commonly in social media posts.
The Girl with the Dogs TikTok/YouTube channel describes pre-groomed dog feet as Grinch feet, resembling the cartoon Grinch from Dr. Seuss. She often says "...I shave out their paw pads... and then I trim their grinch feet" during her narrated walkthroughs of her process with unique dog clients.
Probably not an originator of the term but definitely a popularizer.
I learned from a Gastropod podcast about an early version of chewing gum that people used to chew resin from the mastic tree. https://gastropod.com/gums-the-word-a-sticky-story/ (picture at link). So. The resin came from the tree name came from the French/Latin Greek verb?
In Season 1 of the TV Show Community, Pierce Hawthorne coins the phrase "streets ahead" to mean cool/ahead of its time, though it's just defined as "if you have to ask, you're streets behind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCktKQKXNWg
When motorcyclists pass each other going in different directions, they tell each other if there's a cop speed trap ahead by patting the top of their helmets. https://www.motorcyclelegalfoundation.com/motorcycle-hand-signals-chart/ If they have no news, they just give a finger gun salute down low to say "hey, you on motorcycle too. nice."
My other favorite brief connection gesture is city bus drivers doin a little two-fingers-to-the-head salute when they pass by each other on their routes.
Wordle has made frequentatives productive again this year. Absurdle, Airportle, BRDL, Crosswordle, Dordle, Heardle, Lewdle, Lordle of the Rings, Nerdle, Passwordle, Primel, Queerdle, Squabble, Squirdle, Sweardle, Weredle, Wordawazzle, etc.
I only know about the demon raccoon... not sure what would happen if you were possessed by a demon chicken. https://youtu.be/iLxtPxIXH_4 (Demon Raccoon by The Zach and The Jess)
ruzuzu thanks! I just started a new job at a nuclear power startup, so I'm writing down all the (non-proprietary, non-NDA) Manhattan Project codenames and diagram parts as I come across them and add them to my local Word dictionary :)
vendingmachine looks like default is "by anyone" when you use the New List dropdown, but not sure if you build it starting from a word's page. You can change permissions under the list's Edit menu.
Paris, Texas. Cairo, Illinois. Portland, Oregon is named after Portland, Maine. (Lore says it was almost called Boston but the other guy (Pettygrove, not Lovejoy) won the coin flip.)
Comedian Michael Che, responding on Feb 13, 2022 to Kanye's instagram offer to pay him to quit SNL, jokingly says he'll only quit if Kanye fulfills all his ridiculous requests, including tripling his salary and "you gotta make beats for my band 'The Slap Butts'" That's a new cutthroat compound, baby. https://instagram.com/p/CZ7hNINpbUd/
Is it an acronym or more specifically a clipped compound? I don't know Russian, but it seems like it's coming from To-ka-ma-k, not T.O.K.A.M.A.K. or T.K.M.K but maybe that's how you pronounce those letters?
"The Garn is a unit used by NASA to measure nausea and travel sickness caused by space adaptation syndrome. It is named after astronaut Jake Garn, who was frequently sick during tests and on orbit. A score of one Garn means the sufferer is completely incapacitated."
FLiBe is a molten salt made from a mixture of lithium fluoride (LiF) and beryllium fluoride (BeF2). It is both a nuclear reactor coolant and solvent for fertile or fissile material. It served both purposes in the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Twingo, a Renault city car (1992-present). The name was created from "twist," "swing," and "tango." Not to be confused with TwinGo, a baby carrier for twins.
"The vaccine will be marketed in the EU under the brand name Comirnaty, which represents a combination of the terms COVID-19, mRNA, community and immunity, to highlight the first authorization of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, as well as the joint global efforts that made this achievement possible with unprecedented rigor and efficiency, and with safety at the forefront, during this global pandemic."
"Air bridges are a concept proposed by a few countries in Europe to allow air travel between each other without a two-week quarantine at each destination. They would ‘bridge’ the gap between higher-risk counties, and allow tourism to flourish.
The plan will mean that tourists, for example, will be able to fly away for a weekend without having to stay locked in a hotel for two weeks at their destination. The same would be true on the return trip too."
If you have h-dropping (aitch- dropping) like in a Cockney type dialect, can add highway (why), hallway (wall), hooray (rue), holiday (dolly), headway (wed), and hearsay (sear).
Well now I'm confused. On Etymonline, it said the Ygg part was Odin, and drasil was horse. Here it says it's terrible + hanging tree. Oof. What's going on here?
Just know that I love priming, and YARD SARD is such a sweet simple example of it when people try to write YARD SALE in big block letters. Two four letter words back to back with an A in the 2nd place somehow leads to a lot of fun variants: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1274514-alignment-charts
I think rage is a noun here, though I originally thought it could go on my verb-verb list. (https://www.wordnik.com/lists/verb-verbs. The only other similar emotion-verb compound I can think of right now is gladhanding.
Scottish writer Chris McQueer used it in a piece called Class:
"My upbringing has made it easier for me to have a bit of a brass neck and shout about my work when some other writers might feel it’s a bit crass or a bit of a riddy."
LuLaRoe is a clothing company named after 3 granddaughters: Lucy, Lola, and Monroe. The company is pyramid scheme-adjacent: https://youtu.be/L6eujSJ0-RU
In reference to the meme Moon Moon, the stupidest possible wolf. It came from a name generator in which you use your first and last initial to create your "werewolf name" and people with the initials "PW" would get Moon Moon as the full name. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/moon-moon
Starting around 1hour 19 minutes in this video, he doesn't know what barouche means when it comes up in the title card, so he uses it in every possibly context.
This is a translation of raccoon in several languages.
I like it because someone suggested to me that it might be a cutthroat compound.
Tragically, it's not the case. It's a bear-type animal known for washing its food (see sad video of raccoon waashing cotton candy and having it disappear :( ).
I wish. I WISH. it were an animal who washed bears, but it's not. Only then would it be a cutthroat construction.
The literature examples on this page seem to be about the equivalent of a trailhead and the tweets are about blowjobs in a car (moving or not moving). I don't see examples of either on road head with a space.
"The name "Makaton" is derived from the first letters of the names of three speech and language therapists who helped devise the programme in the 1970s: the researcher Margaret Walker, and Katharine Johnston and Tony Cornforth, colleagues from the Royal Association for Deaf people.4" - Makaton Wikipedia page.
I don't know why the quotation mark is used before nurse name and I don't know what nurse name means and googling it just gets me a list of famous nurses.
"Q. In the early 1930s, my grandmother won a citywide crossword puzzle contest in New York City, earning the $1,000 prize at a time when money was tight. The winning word was qobar, a word that no longer appears in even unabridged dictionaries. Once a word is a word, isn’t it always a word?
A. Yes. But so far, there has never been a dictionary that listed all the words. There are too many words! One of the standards that lexicographers use when deciding which words to delete to make way for new ones is whether a word is actually used very often in a meaningful way. At least one online dictionary, Wordnik, has a goal of listing all the words available. Qobar isn’t listed there yet—maybe you should send it!"
"The gurning batrachian monster that crawled out of the mordant id of mass society to squat in the Oval Office was a symptom of our collective neurosis before he was a cause."
Nov 2017 "The gurning batrachian monster that crawled out of the mordant id of mass society to squat in the Oval Office was a symptom of our collective neurosis before he was a cause."
Of course it's a word! It has sound and meaning. And it serves several functions in English:
In the phrase "yous guys," it seems to decline so it matches its noun, I think that's sweet.
Also appears at the end of syntactically frozen phrases like "all the i love yous."
Also has a distinct ability to declare that someone is not unique and there are many of that person as in "there's a million of yous, there's only one of me." (Kanye West - Stronger)
For internet dogs, I think it's about when dogs stick their tongues out just a little bit, like they forgot to pull it back in before closing their mouth.
I think Kory said it because she (and I) recently attended ACES in Florida and Anne Curzan in her keynote speech, used the term grammando. Curzan has used it for years.
It's a proposed alternative to grammar nazi. I'd like to disassociate asshole pedants from state-funded murderers, ao I use it a bit and hope it catches on.
I would guess it's an allusion to Dicken's A Christmas Carol when Scrooge tries to explain Marley away:
"“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”"
Shitgibbon was used in a presidential insult tweet: "Hey @realDonaldTrump I oppose civil asset forfeiture too! Why don't you try to destroy my career you fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon!"
shitgibbon is an example of a shitgibbon compound.
An acronym short for "grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unprecedented."
Not military slang as I first suspected.
Based off of this quote by then Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, Charles Haughe, in 1945: "It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance."
There is a tree near my suburban childhood home that is in the middle of the road surrounded by a 2 foot circular brick wall. Growing up, there was a much larger tree in that place, but several years ago it fell over. My mother cried, she thought they had cut it down on purpose. The city replaced it with a young tree with a sturdy trunk but not many branches.
I decided that it looked sad, especially when its leaves fell off in winter. So I concocted festive crime, in which my mother and I brought oversized ornaments, bows, and boas of tinsel and hung them in the tree around midnight a few days before Christmas.
We take it down around New Years (but not New Years Eve, too many people out). We figure if we get caught we could be charged with jaywalking into the middle of the street where the tree is, or maybe littering for securing objects on the tree.
We've done it for a few years now. Not sure it will happen this year. It's a fun term to whisper.
I'm putting this here as a historical record and also a hope-filled persuasive argument. I will remove if it violates community standards:
"I know it has its own complicated consequences, but I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU to persuade 20+ members of the electoral college to switch their votes away from Drumpf.
This is an interesting list because most word aversion involves bodily function aversion. This list seems like an aversion to doing a lot of work in your mouth (except maybe intimate). It's refreshing.
short for nerfing, which often describes game characters or powers that were OP (overpowered) in previous versions/editions/games that have now been underpowered or nerfed.
:A glottonaut is someone exploring languages without necessarily acquiring them (thereby becoming a polyglot). Most people doing linguistic typology can be considered glottonauts."
"This ghost word appears in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary. It is defined as "To drive with a sudden impetuosity. A word out of use."
The last part of the definition is certainly right. It was never in use. This is a misreading of soupe (due to the long s character used in those days), a dialect form of swoop." http://everything2.com/title/foupe
"A zythologist is a true beer connoisseur who can share many interesting facts about an immensely complex and sophisticated beverage, its ingredients and the roles they play in the brewing process."
"noun (ZIKS noid) Any word that a crossword puzzler makes up to complete the last blank, accompanied by the rationalization that there probably is an ancient god named Ubbbu, or German river named Wfor, and besides, who’s going to check?"
"Harris was also known as “the chuffah king.” Chuffah is the random nonsense characters in a scene talk about before getting to the meat of it that leads to story. Here’s one of the best chuffah moments from Parks from the “Hunting Season” episode:
Tom: Your favorite kind of cake can’t be birthday cake, that’s like saying your favorite kind of cereal is breakfast cereal.
Donna: I love breakfast cereal.
Harris excelled at coming up with hilarious, random nonsense like this. It was a tool that no one else seemed to have."
It's not difficult to call people what they want to be called. Sometimes it's a slight personal preference (Steven, not Steve), sometimes it's an affirmation of what someone has worked hard to define themselves as (Tess not Ted). You don't even have to use the marker of latinx. It's not for you. It's for people in the group to define themselves.
I get that it's hypothetically absurd to pick a crazy name without thinking, but thought has gone into this. It helps some people who are in a vulnerable community have a sense of belonging and feel safe. It helps to make a space for a group that is not well known or understood.
Punching up/down are comedy terms.
Punching down is attacking/making fun of people who have less power and are vulnerable, kicking someone when they're down. Punching up is mocking the powerful, exposing them and holding them accountable for their actions through things like satire.
you're making me frown, bilby. it's an interesting question in general of how to feel comfortable identifying as gender-expansive (nonbinary) in a gendered language. This particular term helps some people feel better. "-x all words in the dictionary" is reductio ad absurdum and you know it.
It helps them, it doesn't apply to you, why are you putting so much anger on this page? This might be another proposed term like ze or hir that doesn't take off, so you could make fun of it as a neologism, but I don't get why you're making a stand here. Punch up.
Ahhh, so it means that, to the writer, this is part of the indicator that capitalism is almost over and the new type of economic system will rise soon? Which one?
cicatriz is the word for scar in Spanish, so it must come from Latin. I learned it in a vocab unit on how to describe people's faces. It seemed impractical at the time but it stuck with me.
Using magnetic tape, hire 4 singers, record them several times singing different parts, make it sound like a 12-part choir. Big advertising strategy from WWII - late 1950s.
In boardgaming, AP can mean "analysis paralysis" which means that turns take a long time because there are SO many things to take into consideration that the game will drag every. single. turn. And burn your brain.
SVV can stand for the Latin phrase, "Si vales, valeo" which means "If you are well, I am well." It was the Latin equivalent of starting a letter with "Hi, how are you? I'm fine."
I get it, vendingmachine. The band Jump (formerly Jump, Little Children) wrote a song called Requiem that specifically acknowledges the fact that audiences don't like it when you play new songs from your new album. I think it's a similar sentiment: https://youtu.be/_r7g4kGbkvI
When people say "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" they are adding 2 extraneous letters to the pangram. One of those the's should be an a. 33 letters vs 35.
Vodka-flavored is a fun modern oxymoron. I know vodka can be infused, but then it tastes like that thing. The standard is "odorless, tasteless, colorless." OO someone could make a vodka crest in Latin. sine odor, sine sapor, sine color.
I think that it's healthy to be aware that sometimes a beret is not enough. It interests me because anyone's personal sample size is pretty small, and I wonder if there are certain sounds that repeat - like how barbarian is an attempt to mimic the language of the others. And the folk etymology for guiri is because tourists say "Where is?" all the time when they visit Spain.
Has someone made a list of foreigner terms like gringo, guiri, gaijin, gadjo, shixa, paya, etc? It could be racist, but it would also be interesting to see them all together, since it's aimed at local geographical neighbors or white people.
In a high school World Religions class, a group presented on Taoism (Daoism), but consistently misspelled the main idea of the tao as the toa. It tickled me and Maryann, so my high school notebooks were soon filled with "Follow the Toa" in the margins. It's very possible I'll accidentally call it the toa in polite company one day soon.
PAN means: "primary account number, i.e., the "card number" on either a debit or a credit card. PAN truncation simply replaces the card number printed on a customer receipt with a printout of only the last four digits, the remainder being replaced usually by asterisks."
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. Essentially any merchant that has a Merchant ID (MID)
It also happens on April 26th, but you can hear a faint rumbling in the distance, getting ever closer on the night before, also known as Dogpile an Australian Eve.
This was a new and unique expression in the NewsRadio episode Physical Graffiti. which first aired on March 24, 1996. Was it coined for the episode or was it an exclamation before the episode aired?
Is it like fetch in Mean Girls, manufactured slang that fails to catch on? Or is it like frak, frell, shazbot, and smeg, made-up swearwords writers use to get around censors?
I get the feeling that, even though it's not a gendered word, maven is used more often to describe women, maybe because it rhymes with maiden? Pet theory, anyway.
In dog breeding, Irish spotting refers to dogs with specific amounts of white that spread throughout their coat. "On a dog with irish spotting, white is found on the legs, the tip of the tail, the chest, neck and muzzle."
And a possible etymology: "The term "irish spotting" actually comes from a term used in the early 20th century to describe a white pattern found in rats in Ireland." -http://www.doggenetics.co.uk/white.htm
I just wanted to know if I should call the white tuft of hair on my otherwise black Mini-Schnauzer a blaze, or if blaze is only used to describe markings on the face of animals (especially horses).
I don't know how to define starchild, but I know it's often used to reference David Bowie, related to his single Starman, and his persona Ziggy Stardust.
A job position at security consultant companies, short for "penetration tester." People hired to hack to show the flaws in a security system. It's white hat/gray hat for a good reason?
Wordnik is case-sensitive, so if you go to the lowercase adroit and incisive pages you'll find some more juicy information than the uppercase version's page. The agastopia page doesn't have a dictionary definition, but many users have added it to their lists and a few have discussed it in the discussion section.
Sorry to "Frankenstein is the doctor's name" you, but the emoji was chosen by Oxford Dictionaries, not the Oxford English Dictionary. OED doesn't choose a word of the year, they're more about the words of every year from the beginning of English time.
Merriam-Webster chose -ism for 2015, and Dictionary.com has chosen identity. The American Dialect Society and the Macquarie Dictionary will also choose their #WOTYs in early January. I think Cambridge Dictionaries Online also chooses "the people's word of the year."
So basically: Oxford Dictionaries WANTS an undictionaried word on the cusp of becoming mainstream, coming into the corpus, "between the niche and the new." Dictionary.com makes an editorial decision to define the year in a word, somewhat data-driven but also well-considered, while Merriam-Webster uses the traffic monitoring on their website to focus on spikes throughout the year.
(I'm working on a WOTY post now for encyclopediabriannica.com so this is very much on my mind.)
I remember playing a word search computer game with my friend when I was young, and we got all of them except this one. "Well there's purple, but it's with an e!" "No, it's gotta be something else!" Pretty sure a mom finished it for us. So now I read it as PERPLE-X.
I've now written up a little post about these multi-part blends. What they describe, what parts of the words are used, what order they come in. Enjoy: http://www.encyclopediabriannica.com/?p=245
On the "For Your Eyes Only" episode of the James Bonding podcast (Oct 2015), Thomas Lennon, Matt Gourley and Matt Mira realize that the Bond movie that they each saw when they were 11-13 is the one they love the most. That movie imprints, and is also a rite of passage from youth to be able to see a Bond movie in the theater, with or without a chaperone. For Thomas Lennon, it was "For Your Eyes Only". For Matt Gourley, it was "A View To A Kill". http://nerdist.com/james-bonding-031-for-your-eyes-only/
I filled out an Ask Me Another contestant quiz the other day, and the last questions asks you to write a lipogram omitting o's. I've known the concept for a long time, but I think having written one now, the word for the concept will stay in my head, especially since I ended it with "That's my lip_gram."
Is it not related to liposuction? Lipo means fat, like lipids. Looks like the Greek ancestor was leipogrammátos meaning 'leaving out a letter.' What a difference an e makes.
Comedy improv troupe: http://www.dasariski.com/ The name combines the surnames of the three members: Robert DASsie, Rich TalARIco, and Craig CackowoSKI.
I'm just here to find how three-part portmanteaus appear naturally in the wild. I'm the Jane Goodall of shipping! Observing and cataloguing. I'm not here to judge, though it gets tough when it involves real-life people or incest.
OTP stands for 'one true pairing', referring to a fan's favorite romantic or platonic couple in all of fiction and real life. OT3 means it's a threesome. OTP and OT3 are likely to be romantic, whereas broTP and brot3 are more clearly platonic. noTP is the opposite of OTP, an unacceptable pairing.
A comedy duo made up of Brian and Nick, specifically Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher.
I thought it was Brian, Danny and Nick, but I guess Danny Pudi just makes a cameo in the one video I know them for, which is great and the least appropriate to watch with family members called A Monologue for Three: https://youtu.be/mephJf3-zYE
If you use Chrome, you can add a Wordnik plugin to search even faster.
Check the 'Community' page to find recent discussions to jump into, or start a very specific list, or just click 'Random word' until your dashboard says you've looked up 26,000 words. That is what I do, apparently...
I read this word in two articles today, so it must be a conspiracy to force me to learn the meaning of the word, and not just let my brain wander and think about apparatchik and beatniks.
:/ Christopher rather. The Christ-bearer. St. Christopher is famous for carrying a young child across a river on his shoulders, and then, plot twist!, that child is Jesus. Also Christopher probably didn't exist. #Catholicism. I do love saints though.
Re: my list of three-part portmanteaus (https://www.wordnik.com/lists/three-toed-portmanteaus), ampersand is made of three or four parts, depending on how you count them. I'm putting it on the list, with an awareness that it's a weak member of the list.
U.S. regional (chiefly derogatory). A fat person (esp. a man); (also) a fat stomach, a pot belly. Also in pl. form with sing. concord. Also pussy-gutted, pussy is a variant of pursy, meaning fat-stomached.
That's the trouble with living in a time when portmanteaus are explodingly productive - everything sounds like a blend and every blend can be interpreted in many ways.
An e-piknik, presumably, where we each sit under our own vine and fig tree? (More lyrics from Hamilton).
I can't stop listening to the Hamilton soundtrack. Aaron Burr falls in love with a British officer's wife named Theodosia. Eventually, they marry and have a daughter named Theodosia. I love the way he sings this name in "Wait for it".
When little Theodosia grew up and married, she and her husband were reportedly the first couple to honeymoon at Niagara Falls. She died at sea when she was 29. Wikinik.
Just learned this verb-form from the title of a GM Hopkins poem: "The Loss of the Eurydice: Foundered March 24. 1878" I'm trying to find the poem's publication/written date. The ship sunk in 1878, he died in 1889 so It must be sometime between those.
I found the poem because he made up and used daredeath in it. Welcome home, little compound orphan.
Very true, rolig, it is an autantonym. Fear used to serve the opposite purpose, describing the frightener and not the frightenee in a sentence like "she fears me." I became aware of this from two pairs of cutthroat variants:
scarecrow and fear-crow (a non-living protector of cornfields) scarebabe and fear-babe (a bogeyman creature who scares children)
Salamancan columns twist around but stand upright. They are not used for actual structural support, they are adornments. I learned about them in Spain, where they appear in elaborate church altarpieces.
Yep, from the OED, turn-cock is "A water-works official entrusted with the turning on of the water from the mains to supply-pipes, etc." There are so many industrial -cock words in the OED, it's very distracting.
We gotta have a Wordnik Googchat party or something, bilby.
I think if we can all be clever in realtime, we can make the kind of discoveries or potentially destroy the world more efficiently than CERN and the LHC.
As a NorCal girl I like saying hellapad (helipad) and I was briefly in a fake band called Helicopteradactyl. That 'pter-' part is the same Greek flying root.
Hi glennbiegon! You can write your proposal definition for Hoaxwagen in the Discuss section of the Hoaxwagen page. Is this re: the Volkswagen Clean Diesel TDI scandal?
Keep in mind that Wordnik pages are case-sensitive to differentiate between words like March and march. Happy hunting!
The audio equivalent of a poker face, poker mouth is used to sarcastically describe someone in a betting situation who reveals their weaknesses instead of staying coy about their abilities. Used by Doug Benson in many episodes of the Doug Loves Movies podcast during the betting phase of the Leonard Maltin game.
A spontaneously created portmanteau, coined tonight by my friend Steven W, while I was explaining the difference between Wordnik and traditional dictionaries (tradictionaries).
The term cisatlantic has been used since the 1800s to describe the similarities and differences between people and cities on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. But! It's not as fun to say as cispacific.
Doug Benson encourages future audiences to give standing ovations to his guests as they come on stage, even though it's a audio medium and none of the listeners will know.
One morning, my brother brought home a box of Krispy Kreme donuts, and left them on the kitchen table.
My mother and I sat at the table and looked out the window, talking about birds and how smart crows and ravens are, and how when I see a group of them around sunset, I think of the word crepuscular because they are active at dusk.
My mother is a visual learner so I wrote the word down for her to see. We finished talking, and left the room.
My brother came back and saw the note on the table. He thought it was a comment card for the donuts. He assumed it was a compliment, as in "Thank you for the donuts. They were very... crepuscular."
"Mr. Dalzell became a slang expert by accident. In his twenties, he studied law at the United Farm Workers union through an old-school apprenticeship under union lawyer Jerry Cohen. Mr. Dalzell was captivated by his boss's quirky charisma and decided to write a roman à clef based on their work together."
Hi ralex7474! A good word for an unfortunate concept.
You can put your proposed meaning straight into the Discuss area of the courtalize page on Wordnik. If the word catches on and gains additional examples, you can proudly point to your first timestamped record of it.
The WABAC machine from Rocky & Bullwinkle looks like an acronym, but I can't find anything that shows it really ever stood for anything. The wiki says it's on analogy with UNIVAC, sort of a portmanteau, or just a stylizing of way back with a machine-looking spelling.
I recommend: -hitting 'Random Word' often -checking the Community page for fresh comments and lists -adding your two cents any time you have two cents to add -using brackets in comments to hyperlink to the words you're discussing
Urban Dictionary and my uncle use this word to describe someone with dementia.
Relatedly, he's described someone who does not appear to have dementia as non-dementianal. I thought it was a humorous construction, like calling TargetTargét, but it appears that my uncle is serious.
Other -ntia words in English rodentia & orthodontia. In those cases, the -ia is removed, and they use that final t to become rodent and orthodontal. Dementia would turn into demented, which carries a lot of negative connotations. Maybe dementianal is a good solution?
Hellow Harrietu! Excellent missing word. You can write your information in the Discuss area of the okayable page itself, so that future travellers can learn from you.
Also keep in mind that Wordnik is case-sensitive (Polish vs polish). Enjoy!
Hi Helphand! You can add your McUrbia and agriculture citations directly into the Discuss section of their respective pages to educate future word hunters. Keep in mind that Wordnik is case-sensitive.
"The name of the city derives from tetl meaning rock, nochtli, the prickly-pear cactus and tlan, the locative suffix. Of similar origin is the term Tenocha which the Méxica sometimes called themselves and the name of their quasi-legendary priest-leader Tenoch."
If you toggle the corpus from English to American English or British English, you'll see that fulfil seems to be chiefly British, and fulfill is American, and that the American spelling is seen more commonly overall. But if I was writing a paper for a class in England and I saw the red spellcheck squiggly line come up, I'd ask a local.
Sometimes, when we see the longer version of the word, we assume it came from a shorter word and use that shorter form instead. That's back-formation. Escalator, evaluation, and baby-sitter all existed in English before escalate, evaluate, and babysit were formed from those longer words.
Jocular back-formation is common. The excellent book "The Ways of Language: A Reader" (Pflug, 1967) includes an article with this very example. Something like: "In the future, will writers auth books? Will boats anch in the harbor?"
The answer: if you like saying it and you find it useful, and others like saying it and find it useful, it will stick around.
Megalith is a 10-year project recently announced by Jeff Lindsay that I feel will be incredibly influential in shaping the world 10 years from now. I'm calling it now. Mark the date.
"So, what exactly is a webhook? A webhook (also called a web callback or HTTP push API) is a way for an app to provide other applications with real-time information."
One time in high school, my friend Resham fell asleep while taking notes in class. Her pen continued to move for a while. After class, we attempted to decipher her unconscious notes.
We figured out that "?!+k" meant shot and killed. I enjoy using the term ?!+k in my own shorthand. It's aesthetically pleasing, but it's hard to spread awareness of it because it involves introducing people to the concept of unconscious note-taking.
In the video game Super Mario Sunshine, FLUDD is a sentient water cannon that Mario uses to wash away evil goo that covers the island of Delfino. F.L.U.D.D. stands for "Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device."
My brother uses this term to mean 'get a song stuck in someone else's head." If you sizzle someone, you've given them your earworm. It's mostly done intentionally, humming a tune near someone, but it might also just be stuck in your head, and giving it to someone else exorcises it from you. Or it gets the two of you stuck in a self-reinforcing loop.
You can sizzle yourself if you pick up an object and a song gets stuck in your head. Working in an energy-efficient appliances incentive program, I saw General Electric and Frigidaire a lot. Every new application for the first month, I'd get sizzled by Insane in the Membrane by Cypress Hill "General Electric, ey the lights are blinking" or Two Sleepy People "picking on a wishbone from the Frigidaire."
This topic interests me, but I don't have a good answer to your specific question. Maybe mobile typing difficulty is being counteracted by auto-fill results, so you type in sticktoitiveness and it recommends stick-to-it-iveness. What I offer is a historical perspective on writing.
Before doing an MA that involved learning about English compounding 1000-present, I thought there was a natural progression of compound orthography (compound word -> compound-word -> compoundword). But! That's not true. Orthography does not tell if if something is a compound. English writing styles have changed for many reasons.
This is a casual recounting, but true in general:
First there was scriptio continua, no spaces between any words, which helped to save on paper (vellum) which was costly, but hard to read, and on top of that they used minims.
Then when Irish monks were taking dictation, they didn't know what the words meant, so they made spaces between the words, based on the way the head monk spoke them.
When French was quite in fashion, hyphenating became popular in phrases and compounds.
German has had some spelling reforms to include MORE hyphenation, to help tourists who are intimidated by space-less compound strings in public signage.
Some very well-established compounds have always had a space (ice cream) or hyphen (co-op) to help with legibility.
Many phrases have several co-existing variants that vary depending on the style guide.
Hyphens definitely matter in 3-part compounds, where the middle word could be linked to either the 1st or 3rd word, e.g., "AP interviews lion hunting dentist." https://twitter.com/katz/status/643445960169943041
Looks like this is becoming the most common way to capitalize the international portion of Walt Disney World in Florida, home to that big sphere known as Spaceship Earth.
It's an acronym. EPCOT stands for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow."
I used this term on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) to indicate the time I really really no joke had to stop talking to my friend and go to bed. (In reference to Cinderella's midnight deadline).
"FYI, pumpkin is 11:30 tonight. I have a test first thing tomorrow."
Looking up the Google Book Ngrams for this, I found one instance in 1887. However, that example isn't really about "power ballads", it's describing the "power (that) ballads" had over the people:
" Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun mentions in one of his words, the instance of a person who “believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation “ *-a passage that has been frequently quoted to exemplify the great power ballads exercised over the public mind, more especially, it may be added, on such burning questions as religion and politics.” "
-The Broadside Ballads of Devonshire and Cornwall: With Notes as to Their Collection, &c By Thomas Nadauld Brushfield
Otherwise, this first appears in 1985 in books about song writing, then Billboard magazine.
"It would be a long time before the word “blerd,” a portmanteau of the words black and nerd, would enter into my vocabulary, and when I did start to see it sprinkled among Myspace profiles and Livejournal groups, the word and its emerging popularity didn’t bring me any relief."
Wordnik search is case-sensitive. You'll find the most crappy information on the lowercase crap page, not so much on cRAP or crAp. This matters for capitonyms, words that change if capitalized (like Polish/polish, Herb/herb, March/march, Catholic/catholic, etc).
If you want, you can write in the "Discuss" area of capital-C Crap and populate that page with its own crap.
"Qué mono" is the way to say "How cute!" in Spanish. I like it because if mono is treated like a noun instead of an adjective, it could mean "WHAT MONKEY?"
...and Soup nazi! Yes, and the NFL has the Oakland Raiders, Minnesota Vikings and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Pirates of the Caribbean maybe belongs to the list, with their warm and fuzzy modern animatronic public image.
In 2008, Dutch futból player Robbin van Persie scored a goal with his right leg (his nondominant foot), which he called his chocolate leg. I remember it meaning something like: it looks about the same as a normal leg, but it has less content, it's a little hollow inside.
“I know I can shoot with my right leg. Of course my left one’s better but it’s down to your belief in the power of your wrong leg. In Holland we call it your chocolate leg.”
The official definitions above do not include the sense of "an inappropriate response to a situation which does not take into account how that response will look in that particular context or in the bigger picture."
"The most challenging part “was the emotional intensity of recovering the fossils themselves,” says Elliott. “There was so much material and it was friable and delicate. And every day, we realized that we were pulling out another 40 or 60 fragments of this thing that was going to be incredible.”
This phrase is used to express shock at something happening (crime, nudity, drunken behavior) in the middle of the day, instead of at night, when the sky is dark and people are more comfortable with unpunished crimes happening. As if the sun should function as a security camera and prevent all crime.
I would love to see if there are early examples (early 1800s) that only use the phrase to pin down the time of day.
Hi Lilt. Capitalization matters on Wordnik. You'll notice all the Examples and Tweets on this page have Sinecure with a capital S. The word sinecure has a full page of information when written in lowercase.
I forgot the word for these! I was reminded today in an episode of The Allusionist, a very fine etymological podcast by Helen Zaltzman. http://www.theallusionist.org/
One missing from this list is jungftak: a Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing, on the right side, and the female only one wing, on the left side.
Talmbout is a shortened version of talkin' 'bout, a shorter version of 'talking about.' Phonetically, the n in talkin becomes an m in anticipation of the b. Your mouth is open for the a, then you close it, and suddenly you're making a b. Very convenient.
The Rubber Room. - A 2010 documentary about rooms full of teachers who are waiting to have an official hearing for misconduct in the classroom. They can no longer teach, but they are tenured so they have to be paid, and they must spend all day in one room with other teachers in the same situation for weeks or up to 10 years.
The term rubber room also refers to padded-wall rooms in psychiatric hospitals.
As of this year, I say farch when I want to swear but the situation does not allow for it, or does not quite call for it. A personal minced oath. It was not an intentional use at first, but more of a long drawn out faaaaaa...rch when a situation is slowly revealed to be more terrible than previously anticipated.
True! None of the dictionaries Wordnik pulls from are technical dictionaries like Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary. My day job involves chemical reports, so I made a list of unique terms I've come across through that: https://wordnik.com/lists/editing-technical-chemical-reports
Few of them have dictionary entries, but they have clickable pages. You can add your own definition in the Comments section to help future Wordniks interested in naphtha.
Nooooo... It's my own self-made DaVinci Code National Treasure hunt, and it's slowly murdering me. I haven't left myself enough clues. I do too many weird things with language to narrow down that it might be.
It could be song lyrics, it could be Spoonerized, it could be an innovation on a compound, it could be non-English, there are just too many possibilities. I like how big this list has gotten, though. Wordniks are swell folks.
In trading card games (namely Yu-Gi-Oh!), a card you place face down on the board so the other player cannot see what it is, but it can be brought into play when certain conditions are met. For example, your opponent thinks they are attacking you undefended, but they fall into your trap and you crush them.
Used in the phrases "you just activated my trap card!" and now "you have triggered/set off my trap card!"
For a moment, I thought post-temporal meant that omoplata was a time-travelling fishbone. Then I remembered there are temporal lobes of the brain. It's a boring non-time-jumping fishbone.
I heard this repeatedly in a meeting this morning, used like stick your neck out in the context of volunteering to do QA between three websites. Before someone said that, I said "I know I'll probably kick myself for mentioning this, but..." so maybe kick primed a leg-based sacrificial idiom? Is it a translation or corporate jargon or a mixed metaphore?
I guess I was thinking of acronyms that go under the radar (ha!) and that aren't immediately recognizable as acronyms from the sound of them. Most (if not all) seem like backronyms.
LCARS is a hybrid, part initialism. L-CARS. like T-Mobile, b-boy, or the Animaniacs referring to Dr. Scratchansniff as a p-sychiatrist.
A fictional stereotypical comedy club name. The point is to make fun of the over-the-top names a lot of comedy clubs have. Real ones: Rooster T. Feathers, Laugh Factory, Acme Comedy Club, Wisecrackers, Zanies, Helium, Hyena's, FunnyBone, Hilarities, Go Bananas, etc. Presumably during the 1980s comedy boom, a lot more comedy clubs popped up, and the multitude meant they were more likely to have ridiculous names.
Kevin Pollak uses the term a lot during his video podcast interviews on the Kevin Pollak Chat Show. He attributes it to another comedian, whose name escapes me.
Never apologize for creative swearing, ry. Jennifer Lawrence recently swore up a storm for charity on Conan, and my favorite of her impromptu expletives sounded like steak twat. https://youtu.be/PlTuiW7oTW0 I love the dismay of those around her. Fuck 'em.
I just wondered if something had popularized it lately, since it's showing up on Twitter and Urban Dictionary.
That's a lovely new word, Sandy. If you copy your comment and put in the Comments area of the empty page for seafloorese, you'll be helping future visitors to learn the meaning of that word in context. Same for ostracon.
Martin Chuzzlewit is the eponymous protagonist of a Dickens' novel. Is Chuzzlewit a cutthroat? Seems like it. What does chuzzle mean? It looks like a frequentative verb, like guzzle comes from gust (to taste, savor).
Chuzzle is now a match 3 online game, so it's harder to search for academic answers.
Chuzzle -> choose? Martin Choosewit? Did Dickens make up chuzzle, or will I find it in the OED tonight?
I started Monday Comics in January 2010, along with a lot of other projects (like tagging convowel on Wordnik). It's the one new year's I've taken seriously as an impetus for a fresh start. I started the comic because I had a lot of mediocre jokes & ideas that I was waiting on to ripen, but they weren't ripening, they were just taking up brainspace. By posting rough drafts of their potential, I could let them go and make room for more (and possibly better) jokes & ideas. Thus: I keep doing it. It keeps everything moving. I have pages and pages of unpublished ideas and they are all terrible and I try to keep them quarantined from the public.
TankHughes comes from my last name, Hughes, and my love of the WWII tank aesthetic. The combination came from a typo during an AIM chat in high school. Additionally, I like that Tank Hughes sounds very tough and militaristic, but if you say it outloud, it's a cute baby voice thanking you. One time, comedian Doug Benson said it outloud and the whole audience got it: http://tankhughes.com/?p=619
A term (I've seen mostly in gaming) for a weapon or character that has a lot of offense, but very little defense. Hard to defend against, but easy to defeat.
No trouble, vendingmachine. I hadn't thought about lists clinically until you brought it up. It is an interesting situation, but I'm not sure what would wish for to change it.
This is under "New Lists" on the community page, so it is new, but it's true after they fall off of that list, lists are timeless and their changes are only traceable through "Recently Listed Words"
This is the fan theory that the writers of BBC Sherlock have always intended, from the beginning, that John Watson and Sherlock Holmes (shipping name Johnlock) end up in a romantic relationship on the show.
I misspelled tyuyamunite in an adult spelling bee a few years ago. It was pronounced as "T"-"U"-ya-moon-ite, something a gangster would say. I never had a chance. It's named after Tyuya-Muyun, the city in Kyrgyzstan where it was discovered. I'm always hoping it will come up in conversation.
Another definition is a pitch in baseball that is high and inside and makes the batter back up so they don't get hit in the face. It's chin music because it's so close, they can hear the air whoosh by. Sometimes it's intentional if the batter has been crowding the plate. Sometimes it's just a wild pitch.
That definition is represented under the entry for chin music, but some examples use the hyphen too.
Sweet. I've had a soft spot for Perth ever since the demonym episode of the now defunct Lingua Franca podcast. People from Perth can be called Perthlings.
From Urban Dictionary: "The exponentially irresistible urge to laugh and giggle in inappropriate situations, such as when asked to take a moment of silence in honor of someone or something, or a solemn ceremony like a wedding or funeral. The harder one resists the urge to laugh, the funnier the idea of what would have happened HAD you laughed becomes, resulting in an even stronger urge to laugh. Coined by the British sitcom Coupling."
Coupling ran on BBC2 from 2000-2004. The Episode in question is from Series 1, Episode 3: "Sex, Death and Nudity", which aired in May 2000.
In English, tmesis mostly happens when the inserted word is placed in the syllable right before the primary stress syllable: fan-TAS-tic, so fan-frickin-TAS-tic.
But sometimes right before the morpheme boundary is a more natural place to break up the word: un-/be-LIEV-a-ble, so: un-frickin-/be-LIEV-a-ble OR un-/be-frickin-LIEV-a-ble.
In English, compounds normally have a primary stress on the first word, so tmesis doesn't work out so well. *BASE-frickin-ball, *FIRE-damn-fighter, *PAN-da-damn-cub.
I was thinking about silence because of an episode of the Comedy Bang Bang podcast where their 'intern' Gino Lombardi is supposed to quietly provide water for the guests then leave, but ends up co-hosting the episode. When reminded he should be quiet, Gino invokes 'podcast silence' but then continues to talk: http://comedybangbang.wikia.com/wiki/Podcast_Silence
A hoodless hoodie is like dehydrated water. Why define it by the thing it doesn't have and therefore is not? Hoods make the hoodie. There are other zip-up pull-over sweater/jacket names available.
That voice that tells you to sit up straight and press your shirts and heat the plates in the oven before serving a fancy dinner. It sounds like your mom, but it only represents the critical parts of your mom that focus on how you should appear and behave in polite company, not the lovingkindness.
This sounds like a great insult. "Unhand me, thou simperingFragonard!" but then I look up his paintings that have soft light, like vaseline on the lens, and I feel a bit bad for wanting to drag his name in the mud just for fun.
This is the ship name for Enjolras and Grantaire, two of the barricade boys from the book/play/movie Les Miserables. The x in exR is a common element in shipping that connect the two names in a pair (e.g. KirkxSpock). e is for Enjolras and R is for Grantaire, a pun off of his name sounding like "big r" in French (grand r). I don't know how you would pronounce it, maybe just as an initialism. I don't personally ship it, but there are strong OTP believers wherever fandoms are found.
I went to a wedding in August 2010 where the mother of the bride had baked 7 different cakes. ...Well you have to try a little bit of all of them, you don't want to be rude. That's justificaketion.
Related: anticipicaketion or caketicipation, which is the antsy feeling you experience during the reception when you're waiting to try the 7 cakes, but it's not time to eat them yet.
Comments by tankhughes
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tankhughes commented on the list abbreviations-into-acronyms-QGBtAKUtfn64-q-17Y0TZ
Maybe Jr for junior. Can be pronounced J.R., not quite treated like an acronym.
July 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list abbreviations-into-acronyms-QGBtAKUtfn64-q-17Y0TZ
New potential category: measurements. cm km ft hr GB MB etc. I don't know if I'd call hr or ft an acronym, but it's being similarly shortened into a 2-letter entity.
July 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list abbreviations-into-acronyms-QGBtAKUtfn64-q-17Y0TZ
ruzuzu I don't care how it's pronounced, I care that normally, it's larger phrases that are turned into acronyms, even if it's just 2 letters (HR for human resources, or PB for peanut butter, OJ, TP, etc) but these just kinda break up one word in a place where it's not immediately obvious that you could do that. TD for touch/down is kind of similar, but I can see that logic of breaking on the compound, where as I'd think tuberculosis could be abbreviated in a whole lot of other ways instead of TB. TC for tuber/culosis, tubey, 'culosis, t-losis. (It's a serious medical thing, so probably not too many nicknames, but still, other shortenings feel a lot more likely).
And it also baffles me that this strange abbreviation method has turned into PJ twice. That's what kicked this off.
July 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list abbreviations-into-acronyms-QGBtAKUtfn64-q-17Y0TZ
State abbreviations do this out of necessity, with so many states starting with the same letters - AK AL AR AZ, MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT
July 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list abbreviations-into-acronyms-QGBtAKUtfn64-q-17Y0TZ
These don't even necessarily break on a morpheme boundary, you know? On a consonant cluster. Maybe ID is different. I need more examples. Morphology is wild.
ProJects PaJama TuBerculis IDentification
July 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word fish-show
"Going to the pond later?"
"Oh fish-show."
#RandomWord
July 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word a. testudineus
a dot fish
July 8, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word mid
Well noted, ry. It was a 2021 Word of the Year nominee. It came from cannabis culture - originally referring to "mid-grade weed", then expanding in use through hip hop and Black Twitter to talk about middling music, media, and celebrities. smoking mid, middest of the mid, it's mid af. It's featured in the upcoming Among the New Words part of the American Dialect Society's journal along with other nominees like hard pants and horny jail.
July 5, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word spider-helmet
Not that I know of, bilby, but there's a lovely song by the a capella group The Bobs about helmets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SopKJlMvNkk
June 28, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word RNGesus
RNG = random number generator. In video games, you sometimes have to depend on the "luck" of what item will appear in what chest, or when an NPC will appear in a certain location, and so speedrunners pray to RNGesus, that luck will be on their side. Pronounced R-N-Jesus.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rngesus
June 28, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word agender agenda
Are there dialects where would these be pronounced the same? (non-rhotic something?)
June 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word NIRMA
The Nuclear Information and Records Management Association
June 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word blorbo
blorbo from your ads: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/kingkirkwall/687106166764011520
June 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word quindecennial
vendingmachine how do you pronounce it? This is a new term to me, but based on quintet and bicentennial, that robot man's pronunciation sounds good to me.
June 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word eggcorn
Check out the eggcorn database for more. My favorite is firstable for first of all. https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/
June 22, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word pulls above his belt
An eggcorn I heard in a meeting today said during a compliment to a one-man team. Some kind of mashup with punches above his weight class or pulls his own weight. Not sure where belt is coming from.
June 22, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word eulogium
Sounds like a room where you give eulogies. #RandomWord
June 21, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word ergatandry
Whoa! I don't want to look more into this, but I'm intrigued. #RandomWord
June 21, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word OLS
OLS: Ordinary Least Squares regression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_least_squares
June 20, 2022
tankhughes commented on the user pugnatio
Welcome pugnatio! The New Yorker style is proudly eccentric, with their use of the diaeresis https://www.grammarly.com/blog/diaeresis/ and their refusal to move forward at the speed of tech for things like Web site and e-mail. The New York Times is also slow to adopt revisions to their style guide. Maybe it's an East Coast thing.
June 17, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word SNUPPS
Standard Nuclear Unit Power Plant System
June 15, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word battologize
Can you repeat that? #RandomWord
June 14, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word demand signal
Just heard this in a business meeting in reference to a group that is supposed to be advised, but this person couldn't think of a reason for them to have a demand signal for this document/issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_signal It's about the chain of notifications, and if someone doesn't care, why are they in the chain?
June 14, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word pereutectic
Same as peritectic? https://www.answers.com/Q/Difference_between_eutectic_and_pereutectic_points
June 14, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word zone
IN rock climbing bouldering competitions, you get half points on a problem for getting halfway through the wall to the zone hold during your 4 minutes of attempts, and full points if you can maneuver around to the top hold as well.
June 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word match
In rock climbing, when you match a hold, you have both hands on the same hold at the same time. Sometimes in competitions, there's only room for 3 fingers in a hold, but competitors still find a way to transition from one hand's 3 fingers to the others' to make progress on a boulder problem. In competitions, you top a wall (complete it) by matching both hands to the hold labeled Top.
June 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word NEI
Also Nuclear Energy Institute
June 10, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word vitre-o-electic
All I can think of is the Bass-o-Matic.
June 10, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word plateout
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/7201314-study-plateout-fission-product-behavior-during-large-scale-pipe-rupture-accident-high-temperature-gas-cooled-reactor
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word eeby deeby
one of many nonsensical terms (often standing in for hell that became popular on Tumblr in 2022, partially in response to a ban of common tags in December 2021. https://www.makeuseof.com/why-has-tumblr-banned-tags-ios-app/
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word top
In rock climbing, to successfully reach the top of a route on a wall.
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word hellsite
An affectionate term that Tumblr users for Tumblr, and sometimes Twitter users use for Twitter, in reference to changes to the interface, layouts, new rules, bans, and choices that seem to ignore and go directly against what users want from that site. https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/medeamybeloved/682632763736752128
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Bee Movie
A very terrible 2007 movie written by and starring Jerry Seinfeld. Many memes about it, one of them involves making new cuts of the film - commonly in the form "Bee Movie but..." as in "Bee Movie but everyone time they say the word bee, it speeds up." The movie is mocked for many reasons, one because the human woman leaves her human partner because she falls in love with a bee (beestiality), who successfully sues the world for selling honey without the bees receiving a profit from it. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/bee-movie
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word morb
A verb backformed from the 2022 movie Morbius, which was given the Bee Movie treatment by online users (a meme-rich bad thing), and misinterpreted by the studio as a reason to return the poorly received movie to theaters a second time, where it flopped again. The verb is not used in the movie, it's just based on the title and that the movie is bad and that Jared Leto (who plays Morbius) takes his roles too seriously.
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word plinko
On Tumblr, a reference to plinko horse from the game Plinko. There's a gif of a CG horse flopping down again and again through plinko pegs. Users felt bad for the horse and now use it as a facetious example of animal abuse. Also used in a bouba vs kiki linguistics meme with blorbo and plinko replacing the original examples since both were popular at the same time. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horse-plinko
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word blorbo
A fictional beloved character, making fun of fandoms latching onto random side characters without knowing much about them, or just trying to talk to someone about a rabbithole aspect of a niche interest: blorbo from my shows. Sometimes a Star Wars character, though another fake beloved character glup shitto specifically makes fun of weird Star Wars names. Created and popularized on Tumblr in 2022. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/blorbo-from-my-shows
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word morbin
Internet meme verb based on the flop 2022 movie "Morbius" about a Marvel Comics vampire. From the new backformation verb morb. Sometimes with apostrophe as morbin'. Often appears in the phrase "it's morbin time!"
June 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word coinventorship
ruzuzu i'm not sure, but I found carrot on a list of this flavor by sionnach: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/not-the-sum-of-their-parts
June 6, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Kaijune
An art prompt about drawing a different kaiju every day in June.
June 3, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word biscuit tortoni
it's an ice cream made with eggs and heavy cream? Often with chopped cherries, almonds, or crumbled macaroons (biscuits) mixed in. More info at tortoni. #RandomWord
June 2, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word shelf jerk
In board gaming a shelf jerk is a board game box that is not a standard size and shape (12x12 or euro rectangle shape), making them difficult to fit into bookshelves. (Example: a shoebox, coffin box, or a novelty cylinder shape.)
See also, this list: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/140577?page=3
June 1, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word butt-hitting
Doing some hard pants research and found this. https://www.elle.com/fashion/shopping/g25602198/cozy-sweatpants/?slide=10
As ELLE’s associate beauty editor Margaux Anbouba says about these pants, “they are your classic dad-style thick, fleecy sweat-pants material, shaped into a flattering, just butt-hitting enough fit that you won’t be embarrassed leaving the house in them.”
May 31, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word serveware
Just saw this in a Starbucks promotional email - it's a category that includes silverware plus napkins, straws. Basically, they are no longer going to automatically provide serveware to customers - to reduce waste, you now need to ask for them. Looks like it would be a service industry term, but because of laws it'll maybe become more widespread.
May 31, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word buptkis
I've always seen it as bupkis. Yiddish as heck.
May 31, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word flash
In rock climbing, if you flash a wall, it means you get up it all the way on your first try - especially used in bouldering competitions.
May 26, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word juggy
In rock climbing, this describes a hold on a wall that is particularly good to grab onto - like a jug handle. (As opposed to shallow holds, slopers, and other, less friendly kinds where you have to crimp your fingers to make them fit.)
May 26, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word curly hair
New euphemism. Class president Zander Moricz was banned from saying gay in his graduation speech, so he talked about his difficulties growing up in Florida with curly hair instead. https://twitter.com/JasonColavito/status/1528824713962786817
May 26, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word GSI
GSI can stand for "generic safety issue" https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/contract/cr6762/index.html
May 25, 2022
tankhughes commented on the user laticiagibson
The dentist near me page is a pretty blank, but it has some nice stock photography at the bottom. And that phrase does show up in tweets.
May 25, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Gaston
A power-based move in rock climbing, named after a climber named Gaston who was photographed doing the move. https://sendedition.com/what-is-a-gaston-in-climbing/ also gastoning
May 22, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word radicle
Radical! #RandomWord
May 20, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word supershedder
different from superspreader, but kind of a superspreader. #RandomWord
May 20, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word quadruple royal
My first thought was that this was a card game term like a royal flush, then a term about somehow hitting the line of succession jackpot, but it seems to describe a fancy hotel room like a presidential suite. #RandomWord
May 20, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word monkeypox
I don't want this to be a new word to watch for in 2022, but as of today it might be.
May 18, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word ethnic mass attack
New euphemism for white supremacist terrorist attacks.
May 16, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word pintle
Interesting that the Word of the Day version of this page doesn't include the etymology or all the meanings.
May 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word multip
multiball + Paris = multiparous #RandomWord
May 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word whichs
Has anyone named a fictional character Witch Ever? Kind of a satisfying name.
*Looks like its the name of a Toronto band. https://witchever.bandcamp.com/
May 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word thrombospondin
secrete-d not secret-ed, right?
May 11, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word jacquemart
Also called jaquemart or quarter-jack, but those pages don't have definitions either.
May 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word memberment
I don't get it either, vendingmachine. Maybe it doesn't 'member either.
May 5, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word STAR-CCM+
Wikipedia: "Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based simulation software developed by Siemens Digital Industries Software. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows the modeling and analysis of a range of engineering problems involving fluid flow, heat transfer, stress, particulate flow, electromagnetics and related phenomena."
May 5, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Oulipo
Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature", stylized OuLiPo)
May 4, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Discosauriscidae
discosauriscids and discosauriscid lead here but there's nothing here or at discosauriscidae. They are a family of stegocephalian/stegocephalous animals with spines from the Permian. Kinda pre-amphibians? #RandomWord
May 4, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word douglas's pouch
AKA pouch of Douglas or rectouterine pouch. A body part I only know about because it inspired the title of Hannah Gadsby's stand up special Douglas. #RandomWord
May 4, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word memberment
You always hear about dismemberment but not the status quo that precedes it. #RandomWord
May 4, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word my brother in Christ
Not sure when this originated, but it's grown in popularity this year as a way to start a phrase telling someone "my dude, i must kindly inform you that you have majorly fucked up."
May 3, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list nuclear-homework-xLoFAN-UQmQG
Picture with a buncha advanced reactor designs around the world: https://aris.iaea.org/
May 3, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word mustard-seed
One of my favorite Shakespearean fairies along with peasblossom and cobweb.
May 3, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word skip-level
Earliest citation I found so far was from the 1992 book "A Leader's Journey to Quality" by Dana M Cound. There's a section called "Skip Level Meetings" and this quote after it:
"The executive should consider making a plant tour following his skip level meetings - after not before."
May 2, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list words-ending-with--board
starboard
May 2, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word tin pan alley
It's not a metaphorical place only, but some cool work by song pluggers got done there. https://youtu.be/S659j_PdSt0
April 29, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word nabooian
From the Gungan Star Wars planet Naboo?
April 28, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word FLiNaK
Salt made from fluoride, lithium, sodium, and potassium.
Similar to FLiBe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiNaK
April 27, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word spiders georg
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/spiders-georg
April 27, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Spiders Georg
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/spiders-georg
April 27, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word no-trumper
A #RandomWord from bridge affected by that Trump guy.
April 25, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word hodler
Misspelling of holders in the quote below?
April 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word immaculate infection
When people get Covid but say they never went anywhere or were in contact with anyone.
https://twitter.com/D_Bone/status/1514618716285145098
Been around since 2020, but the phrase seems more common now that many high-risk situations are not considered risks and many precautions have been removed. https://twitter.com/russellgburger/status/1241837901614182400
April 15, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Sistine
Petition to name the next pope Sixtus, so there will finally be 6 Sixtuses.
April 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word soft hyphen
June 13, 2009 https://accessible-digital-documents.com/blog/justified-text/
"On the web, soft hyphens ( or ) can be added manually to tell browsers where a word can be broken across lines. A soft hyphen will be displayed only when needed and, if desired, can be added multiple times to long words to give the browser options as to where a break might occur. The mark up might look like the following: hyphenation,"
April 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word rivers of white
June 13, 2009 https://accessible-digital-documents.com/blog/justified-text/
"The problem for dyslexic people occurs because large gaps between words are more likely to line up above one another than are the smaller gaps typical of more evenly spaced text. When they do, readers may perceive highly distracting white patterns flowing through the page that can become more prominent than the text itself. The effect is known as “rivers of white” and it can make reading difficult, if not impossible."
April 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word feels old and structured, but isn’t
Here's the link to possibleunderscore's list: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/things-youve-heard-in-your-dreams
April 13, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word feels old and structured, but isn’t
society?
April 12, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list last-names-that-are-professions
The book "English Ancestral Names" by JR Dolan (1972) is a great resource for these. 360 pages of surnames grouped by occupation, with historical context for what that work meant between 1100 and 1350.
April 11, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word noil
On the Neopets site, your Neopet could have a petpet, which come in different fantastical breeds from the larger Neopets. One was called a Noil, which was a cute, plushie-looking lion. (Noil is lion backwards.)
April 11, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list nuclear-homework-xLoFAN-UQmQG
Historically related list: hu-science
April 8, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word HIPS platform
https://www.power-grid.com/td/nuscale-small-modular-reactor-gets-nrc-approval-of-hips-platform/ "highly integrated protection system"
April 8, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word paper plant
Like a paper town that only exists on maps but not in the world, this is a (for example, nuclear) power plant/design that only exists in concept without concrete plans to make it a reality. Also paper reactor.
April 8, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list ras-syndrome-1fFizBdFKE2
ID Dentification
April 6, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word source term
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/source-term.html
Source term can either mean a variable in the relevant equation, or the total result of that equation, which is also called dose consequence.
April 5, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word daughter product
The decay product from an isotope in radioactive decay.
Heard the phrase "daughters of decay products."
Does anyone have a list of potential band names? Please add that.
April 5, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word halurgist
what if you're hallergic to salt?
April 4, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word grinch feet
The Girl with the Dogs TikTok/YouTube channel describes pre-groomed dog feet as Grinch feet, resembling the cartoon Grinch from Dr. Seuss. She often says "...I shave out their paw pads... and then I trim their grinch feet" during her narrated walkthroughs of her process with unique dog clients.
Probably not an originator of the term but definitely a popularizer. Lowercase "grinch feet" appears more commonly in social media posts.
March 31, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Grinch feet
The Girl with the Dogs TikTok/YouTube channel describes pre-groomed dog feet as Grinch feet, resembling the cartoon Grinch from Dr. Seuss. She often says "...I shave out their paw pads... and then I trim their grinch feet" during her narrated walkthroughs of her process with unique dog clients.
Probably not an originator of the term but definitely a popularizer.
March 31, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list words-in-first-3-wordle-word-guess-list-fEttSrihG8
I like PIOUS and TEARY to get all 6 vowels and PRST.
March 30, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word wet signature
This is a retronym compared to "dry" electronic signatures in digital documents.
March 30, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word beknave
Oh, beknave! #RandomWord
March 29, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word dwell time
SEO people use this term. Also industrial plant people.
March 28, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word masticate
I learned from a Gastropod podcast about an early version of chewing gum that people used to chew resin from the mastic tree. https://gastropod.com/gums-the-word-a-sticky-story/ (picture at link). So. The resin came from the tree name came from the French/Latin Greek verb?
March 28, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word additive manufacturing
it means 3D printing.
March 28, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Infrangible
For more info, go to the lowercase infrangible page.
March 28, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word maidenless behavior
https://twitter.com/TillyMonkfish/status/1504513933394251778
March 28, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Lapsus$
A hacking group active in 2022 - causing Okta breach (and others?)
March 24, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word streets ahead
In Season 1 of the TV Show Community, Pierce Hawthorne coins the phrase "streets ahead" to mean cool/ahead of its time, though it's just defined as "if you have to ask, you're streets behind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCktKQKXNWg
People use "streets ahead" IRL in a joking way.
March 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list fun---gestures
When motorcyclists pass each other going in different directions, they tell each other if there's a cop speed trap ahead by patting the top of their helmets. https://www.motorcyclelegalfoundation.com/motorcycle-hand-signals-chart/ If they have no news, they just give a finger gun salute down low to say "hey, you on motorcycle too. nice."
My other favorite brief connection gesture is city bus drivers doin a little two-fingers-to-the-head salute when they pass by each other on their routes.
March 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word -dle
Yes yes! My daily move is now: Heardle, Wordle, Dordle, Quordle, Octordle, hope my brain is awake, do work.
March 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word -dle
Wordle has made frequentatives productive again this year. Absurdle, Airportle, BRDL, Crosswordle, Dordle, Heardle, Lewdle, Lordle of the Rings, Nerdle, Passwordle, Primel, Queerdle, Squabble, Squirdle, Sweardle, Weredle, Wordawazzle, etc.
See also https://wordnik.com/lists/english-frequentative-verbs'>https://wordnik.com/lists/english-frequentative-verbs
March 22, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word panthea
Perhaps a lovely girl's name? #RandomWord
March 22, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word 7458
I was also wondering that, yarb. I was going to make a comment about rolling a nat 21 based on what you said, but there was nowhere to do so.
March 21, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Enigmarch
Puzzle constructors make a buncha puzzles in March through prompts.
March 18, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word bearoff
Search results are all about backgammon though. I don't know what that means.
March 17, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word bearoff
The GPO Style Guide says "An en space is used for all bearoffs or insets." Seems like a printer's term for an aspect of tables. It's under the Tabular Work section, and the subsection after this is called boxheads. https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/gpo-style-manual?path=/GPO/U.S.%20Government%20Publishing%20Office%20Style%20Manual
March 17, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word quishing
QR phishing. Other variants: SMiShing, vishing, angler phishing, spear phishing, whaling
March 17, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list periodic-element-words-RjpBvXwtvnHn
FLiBe and FLiNaK are both written using the elements that make them up, but not in that order. It's not the exact formula like H2O.
March 16, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word demon egg
I only know about the demon raccoon... not sure what would happen if you were possessed by a demon chicken. https://youtu.be/iLxtPxIXH_4 (Demon Raccoon by The Zach and The Jess)
March 16, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word fueling chute
maybe I should fuel a little down, but I still feel rad.
March 15, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word cheese-taster
This is my best recent Random word button find. You know, same thing as a cheese-pale. You get it.
March 15, 2022
tankhughes commented on the user pedroy
Welcome, pedroy! if you go to the staycation page, you'll find that definition there. Hope you see your contributions to word pages for many years :)
March 14, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word fueling chute
Might delete later... was fueling chute.
https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/advanced/ongoing-licensing-activities/pre-application-activities/kairos.html
March 9, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word CORDEL
Cooperation in Reactor Design Evaluation and Licensing = Co-R-D-E-L
March 7, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word DEGB
double-ended guillotine break https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6280449
March 2, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Vaseline glass
Uranium glass that glowed green (See Visuals below). So called because the Vaseline formula at the time (1930s) was a similar pale yellow-green color.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass
February 26, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list nuclear-homework-xLoFAN-UQmQG
ruzuzu thanks! I just started a new job at a nuclear power startup, so I'm writing down all the (non-proprietary, non-NDA) Manhattan Project codenames and diagram parts as I come across them and add them to my local Word dictionary :)
February 25, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list cities-named-for-animals-flowers-and-objects-fiW21tp9bQ
vendingmachine looks like default is "by anyone" when you use the New List dropdown, but not sure if you build it starting from a word's page. You can change permissions under the list's Edit menu.
February 25, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list three-toed-portmanteaus
maybe tokamak but maybe that's a Russian acronym. Don't know enough Russian morphology to tell.
February 25, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word RuPocaLipstick
The 4 Drag Queens of the RuPocaLipstick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaGPyKFgZ9I
RuPaul + apocalypse + lipstick
February 25, 2022
tankhughes commented on the list cities-named-after-another-state-cyXkmYNFLMR6
Paris, Texas. Cairo, Illinois. Portland, Oregon is named after Portland, Maine. (Lore says it was almost called Boston but the other guy (Pettygrove, not Lovejoy) won the coin flip.)
February 24, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Gible
Gible is a Ground/Dragon Pokemon from Generation 4. https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Gible_(Pok%C3%A9mon)
February 24, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word a-prefixing
Me an' pa going a-prefixin'.
February 24, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word The Slap Butts
Comedian Michael Che, responding on Feb 13, 2022 to Kanye's instagram offer to pay him to quit SNL, jokingly says he'll only quit if Kanye fulfills all his ridiculous requests, including tripling his salary and "you gotta make beats for my band 'The Slap Butts'" That's a new cutthroat compound, baby. https://instagram.com/p/CZ7hNINpbUd/
February 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word basemat
NOT a basement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_island_basemat
February 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word tokamak
Is it an acronym or more specifically a clipped compound? I don't know Russian, but it seems like it's coming from To-ka-ma-k, not T.O.K.A.M.A.K. or T.K.M.K but maybe that's how you pronounce those letters?
February 23, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Garn
https://www.neatorama.com/2019/10/11/Humorous-Units-of-Measurement/
"The Garn is a unit used by NASA to measure nausea and travel sickness caused by space adaptation syndrome. It is named after astronaut Jake Garn, who was frequently sick during tests and on orbit. A score of one Garn means the sufferer is completely incapacitated."
February 15, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Velcro
It's a clipped compound!!
January 21, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word FLiBe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe
FLiBe is a molten salt made from a mixture of lithium fluoride (LiF) and beryllium fluoride (BeF2). It is both a nuclear reactor coolant and solvent for fertile or fissile material. It served both purposes in the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
January 17, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Ever Given
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/suez-canal-jam
October 4, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word gaslight gatekeep girlboss
A 2021 original.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss
October 4, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word horny jail
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/go-to-horny-jail
October 1, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word miette
you kick miette?!
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/miette
October 1, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word hard pants
a retronym for jeans/slacks after people started wearing leggings/lounge pants/pajama pants during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
September 28, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word Twingo
Twingo, a Renault city car (1992-present). The name was created from "twist," "swing," and "tango." Not to be confused with TwinGo, a baby carrier for twins.
August 28, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word turduckenym
Term proposed by Fritinancy (Nancy Friedman) in August 2021 for three-part blends, itself a four-part blend:
https://twitter.com/Fritinancy/status/1431298097246707720
turkey-duck-chicken-nym
August 28, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word Comirnaty
https://gulfnews.com/world/why-is-pfizer-biontechs-covid-19-vaccine-called-comirnaty-in-europe-1.1609318713481
"The vaccine will be marketed in the EU under the brand name Comirnaty, which represents a combination of the terms COVID-19, mRNA, community and immunity, to highlight the first authorization of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, as well as the joint global efforts that made this achievement possible with unprecedented rigor and efficiency, and with safety at the forefront, during this global pandemic."
August 28, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word orison
ooooo, related to oration, but not kyrie eleison (which means "Lord, have mercy").
June 4, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word air bridge
a UK pandemic word
"Air bridges are a concept proposed by a few countries in Europe to allow air travel between each other without a two-week quarantine at each destination. They would ‘bridge’ the gap between higher-risk counties, and allow tourism to flourish.
The plan will mean that tourists, for example, will be able to fly away for a weekend without having to stay locked in a hotel for two weeks at their destination. The same would be true on the return trip too."
https://simpleflying.com/what-are-air-bridges/
June 4, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word hyflex
This is a clipped compound that came out of the pandemic meaning "hybrid-flexible", related to remote/adapted educational strategies.
June 4, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word levidrome
This is a proposed madeupical term for a word that, when spelled backwards, creates a different word like stop and pots or stressed and desserts.
Levi- is eponymous for the kid creator of the term, and -drome is from palindrome.
https://www.levidromelist.com/
June 3, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word tediferous
From @HaggardHawks on Twitter today: A TEDIFEROUS statue is one carrying a torch.
May 22, 2021
tankhughes commented on the list abbreviations-that-start-in-the-middle
"it" used to be spelled "hit" (OE) but lost the h because it's so often in an unstressed place.
April 28, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word trixic
New term to me. Can describe nonbinary attraction/relationships.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TransyTalk/comments/kiwqnu/terms_trixic_and_toric/
-trix from the Latin fem. suffix, -tor from the Latin masc. suffix.
April 27, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word toric
New term to me. Can describe nonbinary attraction/relationships.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TransyTalk/comments/kiwqnu/terms_trixic_and_toric/
-trix from the Latin fem. suffix, -tor from the Latin masc. suffix.
April 27, 2021
tankhughes commented on the list words-that-are-pig-latin-and-also-english-s9CHF2M_W3a
If you have h-dropping (aitch- dropping) like in a Cockney type dialect, can add highway (why), hallway (wall), hooray (rue), holiday (dolly), headway (wed), and hearsay (sear).
April 15, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word like oil and water
Idiom meaning that two things will not mix together (without agitation) https://cee.mit.edu/eric-adams-wins-the-ig-nobel-prize-in-chemistry/
January 21, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word cheese and crackers
This is a minced oath. For... Jesus Christ I think?
January 21, 2021
tankhughes commented on the list ch-sounds-like-k-words-QedxLaOCfsn
@tankhughes it's kuh-thonic, so I think it counts.
January 21, 2021
tankhughes commented on the list two-ingredient-phrases-LMVLHuH_tt
Seersucker means milk and sugar, referring to the opposing visuals and textures of the two stripes in seersucker fabric.
January 21, 2021
tankhughes commented on the word trinonym
Hmm, I'm trying to figure out the difference between this and a tautological compound: https://twitter.com/HaggardHawks/status/1338982875090329602
December 16, 2020
tankhughes commented on the word Yggdrasil
Well now I'm confused. On Etymonline, it said the Ygg part was Odin, and drasil was horse. Here it says it's terrible + hanging tree. Oof. What's going on here?
December 3, 2020
tankhughes commented on the list ch-sounds-like-k-words-QedxLaOCfsn
chthonic seems to just totally omit the ch part?
June 18, 2020
tankhughes commented on the list rh-words-WzH1iYTsgFV
rh(oea) means to flow in Greek. Also Greek: myrrh, rhotic, catarrh
A lot of rh- words are German.
And then a boatload of English compounds cuz gosh I love compounds.
June 18, 2020
tankhughes commented on the list periodic-element-words-RjpBvXwtvnHn
The letters that stand on their own are: B C F H I K O N P S U V W Y
the words i made with those are:
BONK
CHICK
CLOCK
FISH
FUCK
HIPPO
ICON
KNOCK
PICK
PINK
PONY
PSYCHIC
SPOCK
SPUNK
US
VOUCH
VOW
WISH
YOU
Greek letters: CHI KSI NU PHI PI PSI
May 31, 2020
tankhughes commented on the list whats-my-favorite-word
Mrs. Tiggywinkle
April 13, 2020
tankhughes commented on the word YARD SARD
Just know that I love priming, and YARD SARD is such a sweet simple example of it when people try to write YARD SALE in big block letters. Two four letter words back to back with an A in the 2nd place somehow leads to a lot of fun variants: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1274514-alignment-charts
October 25, 2019
tankhughes commented on the word 'pose
"Where the hell my phone? Where the hell my phone? Where the hell my Where the hell my phone? How I'm 'pose to get home?" - Phone by Lizzo
August 22, 2019
tankhughes commented on the word PEBCAK
I've only seen this as PEBKAC but this makes sense as a variation.
July 31, 2019
tankhughes commented on the word Word
Pretty fantastic that Word with a capital W means the Bible, the Word of God, or Microsoft Word XD
July 17, 2019
tankhughes commented on the list your-mailchimp-randomly-selected-word-from-the-dictionary
I need to add words from episode 91 - 101 but I'm having permissions issue with pages I made as tankhughes vs TankHughes right now.
Words to add: quillet, liripipe (liripoop), floruit, thridace, cancrine, ostrakon (ostracon), almacantar (almucantar), embouchure, scytale, halteres, purfle, utricle
June 29, 2019
tankhughes commented on the word rage-quit
I think rage is a noun here, though I originally thought it could go on my verb-verb list. (https://www.wordnik.com/lists/verb-verbs. The only other similar emotion-verb compound I can think of right now is gladhanding.
June 26, 2019
tankhughes commented on the word brass neck
https://medium.com/@ChrisMcQueer/class-fd36e8dc35ad
Scottish writer Chris McQueer used it in a piece called Class:
"My upbringing has made it easier for me to have a bit of a brass neck and shout about my work when some other writers might feel it’s a bit crass or a bit of a riddy."
June 4, 2019
tankhughes commented on the word LuLaRoe
LuLaRoe is a clothing company named after 3 granddaughters: Lucy, Lola, and Monroe. The company is pyramid scheme-adjacent: https://youtu.be/L6eujSJ0-RU
May 31, 2019
tankhughes commented on the list whats-my-favorite-word
Remind me to add category fight when I can.
May 29, 2019
TankHughes commented on the word help
Help! is a 1965 movie starring the Beatles.
May 12, 2019
TankHughes commented on the word First
First!
This is a capitonym for internet comment pride. I couldn't be first on first or this, but heck yeah I"m first on First.
Who's on First? ME.
April 15, 2019
TankHughes commented on the word first
Awwww, I just saw the first comment for this and I thought I could be "First! on first, but no.
April 15, 2019
TankHughes commented on the word pomary
According to @HaggardHawks on April 11, 2019, a pomary is an orchard or an apple grove.
April 12, 2019
TankHughes commented on the list three-toed-portmanteaus
Canola is "Canada oil, low acid" ?!
November 8, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word milkshake duck
I really like duckshake milk as as the reverse. It's a stupid fun concept.
November 8, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word moonmoon
In reference to the meme Moon Moon, the stupidest possible wolf. It came from a name generator in which you use your first and last initial to create your "werewolf name" and people with the initials "PW" would get Moon Moon as the full name. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/moon-moon
November 1, 2018
TankHughes commented on the list stars--1
Related: space idioms: https://twitter.com/E_Briannica/status/1057003921904812032
October 29, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word y'all'd've'f'I'd've
Surprisingly easy to say. Something like... yolladiffeyediv.yolladoveifeyedove.
October 24, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word barouche
I learned this term from this video of comedian Paul F Tompkins as Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber doing audio commentary for the 1925 silent film version of the Phantom of the Opera. http://paulftompkins.com/post/178657191289/paul-f-tompkinss-andrew-lloyd-webbers-the
Starting around 1hour 19 minutes in this video, he doesn't know what barouche means when it comes up in the title card, so he uses it in every possibly context.
October 3, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word anarthria
I love you, qms.
September 26, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word palabrarium
I don't know this term. Palabra means word in Spanish. A place for words?
August 28, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word sphericon
https://youtu.be/wb29-ULRBaE
"A device for generating a meandering motion."
July 16, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word washbear
This is a translation of raccoon in several languages.
I like it because someone suggested to me that it might be a cutthroat compound.
Tragically, it's not the case. It's a bear-type animal known for washing its food (see sad video of raccoon waashing cotton candy and having it disappear :( ).
I wish. I WISH. it were an animal who washed bears, but it's not. Only then would it be a cutthroat construction.
July 12, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word cum gutters
This really makes my iliac furrow.
July 6, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word roadhead
The literature examples on this page seem to be about the equivalent of a trailhead and the tweets are about blowjobs in a car (moving or not moving). I don't see examples of either on road head with a space.
July 6, 2018
TankHughes commented on the list abbreviations-that-start-in-the-middle
also the feck in feckless is a Scots shortening of effect.
https://mashedradish.com/2018/06/01/what-is-the-feck-in-feckless/
June 1, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word jackalope
My tired good friend just posited that jackalope = jackfruit + cantaloupe.
May 11, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word cuttoe
Are you a [honetically misparsed French word that became a cutthroat in English? I hope so, cutttoe. (See Example)
April 16, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word Makaton
"The name "Makaton" is derived from the first letters of the names of three speech and language therapists who helped devise the programme in the 1970s: the researcher Margaret Walker, and Katharine Johnston and Tony Cornforth, colleagues from the Royal Association for Deaf people.4" - Makaton Wikipedia page.
March 8, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word one-eyed snake
Euphemism for penis.
February 26, 2018
TankHughes commented on the list triple-anagrams
stop, opts, pots, post.
This goes through my head at most stop signs.
February 6, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word mythtaken
This originally came from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode A New Man (2000). Fourth season, twelfth episode.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0533384/quotes
Professor Maggie Walsh: So, the Slayer!
Buffy: Yeah. That's me.
Professor Maggie Walsh: We thought you were a myth.
Buffy: Well, you were myth-taken
January 29, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word nurse name
On pg 28 of this surname book, the footnote says "Popkiss may be derived from some " nurse name in the same way."
English Surnames: An Essay on Family Nomenclature, Historical ..., Volume 2
By Mark Antony Lowe
https://books.google.com/books?id=Bj8nAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA29&dq=conquergood+surname&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcyNbf_-_YAhUQ5WMKHR46DesQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q=conquergood%20surname&f=false
I don't know why the quotation mark is used before nurse name and I don't know what nurse name means and googling it just gets me a list of famous nurses.
January 24, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word outsized
Twitter released a statement about not blocking or deleting world leader accounts. January 5, 2018:
"Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society."
https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/949389322255519744
January 5, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word qobar
You're the best, qms.
January 2, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word qobar
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html January 2018
"Q. In the early 1930s, my grandmother won a citywide crossword puzzle contest in New York City, earning the $1,000 prize at a time when money was tight. The winning word was qobar, a word that no longer appears in even unabridged dictionaries. Once a word is a word, isn’t it always a word?
A. Yes. But so far, there has never been a dictionary that listed all the words. There are too many words! One of the standards that lexicographers use when deciding which words to delete to make way for new ones is whether a word is actually used very often in a meaningful way. At least one online dictionary, Wordnik, has a goal of listing all the words available. Qobar isn’t listed there yet—maybe you should send it!"
January 2, 2018
TankHughes commented on the word batrachian
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-globalized-jitters-penny Nov 2017
"The gurning batrachian monster that crawled out of the mordant id of mass society to squat in the Oval Office was a symptom of our collective neurosis before he was a cause."
November 28, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word gurning
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-globalized-jitters-penny
Nov 2017
"The gurning batrachian monster that crawled out of the mordant id of mass society to squat in the Oval Office was a symptom of our collective neurosis before he was a cause."
November 28, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word hipster racism
Used by @zinziclemmons in a Nov 19 2017 tweet to describe Lena Dunham and people in her social circles who use sarcasm to cover up racism.
Tweet: https://twitter.com/zinziclemmons/status/932200880975286273
November 21, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word pomicide
"Ashes 2015: 'It's Pomicide' - world reacts to Australia's collapse"
Australia cricket team was trounced by British but I don't get the pomicide reference.
October 25, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word hugeous
NOT my last name but pretty close.
Brain hugeous.
September 19, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word taints
This is covered more on the singular taint page, but taints could mean 3 things:
Verb: to taint, to poison, to sully
Noun: body part: skin between genitals and anus (perimneum). (Possibly from contraction meaning).
Contraction: it ain't. "'taint what you do, it's the way that you do it."
September 12, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word chalupa
Hi alexz. It's a Mexican dish that most Americans know through the Taco Bell bastard version (that's kind of like a taco but made with fried dough).
September 11, 2017
TankHughes commented on the user MrBluestone
Hi!
September 11, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word heel
I recently realized that the heel that they mention in "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" is the same as the wrestling heel.
August 31, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word yous
Of course it's a word! It has sound and meaning. And it serves several functions in English:
In the phrase "yous guys," it seems to decline so it matches its noun, I think that's sweet.
Also appears at the end of syntactically frozen phrases like "all the i love yous."
Also has a distinct ability to declare that someone is not unique and there are many of that person as in "there's a million of yous, there's only one of me." (Kanye West - Stronger)
August 22, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word guapo
He is right. alexz. It's Spanish for handsome. The villain in Three Amigos is "El Guapo."
August 21, 2017
TankHughes commented on the user Giovy
enough already! :)
August 7, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word helpfuler
"This page is helpfuler than I thought it would be." - friend I told about Wordnik.
August 3, 2017
TankHughes commented on the user QPheevr
Welcome over here, QPheevr!
July 20, 2017
TankHughes commented on the list engendered-words
See also: Dragon Bro comics by Floccinaucinihilifilipication on tumblr: http://floccinaucinihilipilificationa.tumblr.com/tagged/dragon-bros
June 30, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word green cake
Bricks made from ashes in Gaza: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/rising-from-ruins-gazas-engineers-use-ashes-to-make-bricks/
June 17, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word blep
See also: mlem
June 5, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word blep
The esteemed WeRateDogs twitter account uses blep like that: https://twitter.com/dog_rates/status/809448704142938112
Someone said blep is for cats only but WeRateDogs is having none of it: https://twitter.com/dog_rates/status/809491597121507328
June 5, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word blep
For internet dogs, I think it's about when dogs stick their tongues out just a little bit, like they forgot to pull it back in before closing their mouth.
June 5, 2017
TankHughes commented on the list tautologies
aiding and abetting assault and battery primping and preening ?
May 18, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word blackguard
A term that Joyce uses in Ulysses to describe villainous men but also in erotic letters to his wife: https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/fuckbird-cockstand-and-frigging-some-annotations-of-james-joyces-erotic-letters-to-his-wife-nora-barnacle/
May 8, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word Slacklash
backlash against the group messaging app Slack. http://www.slacklash.com/
May 2, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word cuddle death
When a queen bee is old or diseased, the worker bees huddle around here and overheat her to death. This is known as cuddle death.
http://www.ilknowledge.com/2013/10/worker-bees-will-cuddle-old-queen-bee.html
I think it's true? But either way, a good phrase.
April 22, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word grammando
I think Kory said it because she (and I) recently attended ACES in Florida and Anne Curzan in her keynote speech, used the term grammando. Curzan has used it for years.
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/10/13/going-grammando/
It's a proposed alternative to grammar nazi. I'd like to disassociate asshole pedants from state-funded murderers, ao I use it a bit and hope it catches on.
April 21, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word gum golem
A nickname for 2017 US Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
April 14, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word Youngledore
The news that Young Pope actor Jude Law will be playing a younger version of Dumbledore in the upcoming Fantastic Beasts movie: https://twitter.com/i/moments/852216936133836800
April 12, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word nut graph
See: nut paragraph
March 21, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word nut paragraph
As explained in Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark, a nut paragraph answers the "so what?" question for the reader.
Also nut graph
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_graph
March 21, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word rise and shine it's time to make the doughnuts
*eats a chocolate old-fashioned* good idea, bilby.
March 17, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word Black Flag
An American punk rock band.
March 10, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word amastous
nippleless
March 7, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word sequela
Raynaud's phenomenon is often a sequela.
March 3, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word sologamy
http://mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2532
March 3, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word cheese dream
I would guess it's an allusion to Dicken's A Christmas Carol when Scrooge tries to explain Marley away:
"“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”"
February 22, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word InCoWriMo
Short for International Correspondence Writing Month: http://incowrimo.org/
Every February
February 21, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word shitgibbon compound
Shitgibbon was used in a presidential insult tweet: "Hey @realDonaldTrump I oppose civil asset forfeiture too! Why don't you try to destroy my career you fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon!"
shitgibbon is an example of a shitgibbon compound.
http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/157210818652/the-orgin-and-constraints-of-shitgibbon
February 18, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word GUBU
An acronym short for "grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unprecedented."
Not military slang as I first suspected.
Based off of this quote by then Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, Charles Haughe, in 1945: "It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUBU
February 10, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word mofenguin
Fake food item proposed by David Ortiz (Kenan Thompson) that's like a turducken but with mofongo, chicken, and a penguin.
From Kristen Stewart SNL episode Feb 4, 2017 during the Weekend Update segment.
February 9, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word plastron
You get em, qms. Sub-limerick the bastard.
February 8, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word coutour
I think you're thinking of couture, pumpumrock. Good definition.
February 8, 2017
TankHughes commented on the list noun-verbs
It seems like a lot of these are backformations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations
February 3, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word Lawcast
See the comments about Lawcast on WordSmith2099's page: https://wordnik.com/users/WordSmith2099
January 30, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word Trivago
No one has publicly verified the intended meaning of this company name.
Two websites talking about branding think it is "Trip(s), Vacation, Go"
http://www.rewindandcapture.com/why-is-trivago-called-trivago/
https://www.namerobot.com/All-about-naming/tips-for-naming/start-up-names-pro-contra-fantasy-names.html
January 24, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word LGBTQIA
A for asexual/aromantic.
People who identify as asexual sometimes abbreviate that to ace.
People who identify as aromantic sometimes abbreviate that to aro.
January 23, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word tinhatting
In this example, someone in a fandom (BBC Sherlock) who believes something strongly, even though they know they'll be treated like a wigged-out conspiracy theorist. http://221behavior.tumblr.com/post/155972809187/i-believe-in-bbc-sherlock
January 17, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word golden shower
Comes from a Greek myth where Zeus appeared to a woman as golden rain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%C3%AB :/
January 11, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word LRT
LRT on Twitter is short for "last retweet." Meaning that they simply
retweeted something without comment, but then wanted to comment on it
after
Tweet 1: A picture
Tweet 2: LRT it me
January 6, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word fuckyouitiveness
As said about Alexander Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda on his episode of Drunk History (2016). https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel/status/803892779889922048
January 6, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word fuck-you-itiveness
As said about Alexander Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda on his episode of Drunk History (2016). https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel/status/803892779889922048
January 6, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word monkey puzzle tree
Sometimes also called puzzle monkey tree, which might be a cutthroat compound - a tree that would puzzle a monkey.
January 3, 2017
TankHughes commented on the word pisang
took me a second, ruzuzu, but it was worth it.
December 29, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word euphemia
A baby was born on December 24, 2016 and now has Euphemia as her middle name.
December 27, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fingermouthing
https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/fingermouthing-is-the-new-hot-pose-for-selfies?utm_term=.miKYr7qYV8#.gcywQlmwnA
December 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word festive crime
This is a whispered term.
There is a tree near my suburban childhood home that is in the middle of the road surrounded by a 2 foot circular brick wall. Growing up, there was a much larger tree in that place, but several years ago it fell over. My mother cried, she thought they had cut it down on purpose. The city replaced it with a young tree with a sturdy trunk but not many branches.
I decided that it looked sad, especially when its leaves fell off in winter. So I concocted festive crime, in which my mother and I brought oversized ornaments, bows, and boas of tinsel and hung them in the tree around midnight a few days before Christmas.
We've done it for a few years now. Not sure it will happen this year. It's a fun term to whisper.
December 13, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word kulning
Just saw this video of kulning by Swedish person Jonna Jinton.
https://youtu.be/6fglBL7eQIA
December 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word buttwoman
buttwoman also means fishwife: http://tankhughes.com/?p=983
December 7, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word cherpumple
cherry+pumpkin+apple pie.
December 6, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Morzouksnick
Name of a comedy show with Seth Morris, Jason Mantzoukas and Nick Kroll. It's a clipped compound. MOR-ZOUKS-NICK.
December 6, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word banhammer
I've been told that this is very 1999 slang, and that my colleague prefers the slightly more recent 2000s version, b&, pronounced bampersand.
November 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word contranym
For more examples, look at this list: https://wordnik.com/lists/contranyms--1
November 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Raxacoricofallapatorius
It's the fictional planet where those gassy, baby-faced aliens come from in Doctor Who. (Season 1 of New Who).
November 14, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word cow-lady
What's going on with you, lady-birds. Why you called lady-cow sometimes?
November 14, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word faithless elector
I'm putting this here as a historical record and also a hope-filled persuasive argument. I will remove if it violates community standards:
"I know it has its own complicated consequences, but I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU to persuade 20+ members of the electoral college to switch their votes away from Drumpf.
https://www.change.org/p/electoral-college-electors-electoral-college-make-hillary-clinton-president-on-december-19
Sign the petition, but more importantly, CALL THEM. Write them. Offer to pay for their fines.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GlTW_UKpRg3l3qrkObP62PZgWB87QTuIH7TCMbRtFak/edit
If Drumpf and everyone he's assembling get into office, 2020 will be too late.
http://time.com/4560682/faithless-electors/"
November 13, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word faithless elector
You're my only hope.
November 13, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list disgusting-words-2
This is an interesting list because most word aversion involves bodily function aversion. This list seems like an aversion to doing a lot of work in your mouth (except maybe intimate). It's refreshing.
November 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hygge
Lost to Brexit for Collins Word of the Year 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/03/brexit-named-word-of-the-year-ahead-of-trumpism-and-hygge?CMP=share_btn_tw
November 3, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hollop
Paging qms or other poet for hollop-based limerick. Request from Twitter: https://twitter.com/GillHoffs/status/792865904598118401
October 31, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word tea-like
Are there any greek/latin adjectives describing something that is tea-like? Like nimbiform, vulpine, cretaceous?
October 30, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word dek
so dek and lede are both editorial nicknames that are spelled differently to denote their technical journalistic meaning. OK.
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word countroversy
Most examples are misspelling of controversy.
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word coreligionist
More legible as co-religionist.
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word contraremonstrance
Also contra-remonstrance.
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word consequentalist
Misspelling of consequentialist.
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word conquetoon
Another name for a grimme, which is a West African antelope.
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word congent
Misspelling of cogent mostly, in the examples.
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word conflageration
Misspelling of conflagration.
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word condesceusion
Misspelling of condescension?
October 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word commonism
Also misspelling of communism.
October 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word collabrate
Misspelling of colloborate.
October 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word coenamor
Misspelling of coenamour.
October 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word cocheneal
Misspelling of cochineal.
October 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word outdoo
Typo of outdoor or outdoors?
October 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ordasity
Misspelling of audacity.
October 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word oppty
Abbreviation of opportunity in tweets and newspaper ads.
October 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ophidaphobic
Misspelling of ophidiophobic?
October 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ontophony
Misspelling of ontophany.
October 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ontodote
Misspelling of odontode?
October 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ongong
Misspelling of ongoing.
October 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word oenopole
MORE LIKE WINE CELLAR, AMIRIGHT?
October 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nuncmillennialism
nunc millennialism
October 21, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word numismastist
See numismatist.
October 21, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nullipary
nulliparity?
October 21, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nudgocracy
http://brendanoneill.co.uk/archives April 2012 article says it.
October 21, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nubivagent
Misspelling of nubivagant.
October 21, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nostritch
Then wouldn't it be nostrich? Neither has citations outside of the previous comment.
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word noscible
Some example are hypyhen line breaks on cognoscible.
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nooked
either nuked or part of a larger phrase like three-nooked or four-nooked.
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word noctivagent
Misspelling of noctivagant?
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nitpik
Misspelling of nitpick.
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word niggest
Is this a superlative of the slur, or a misspelling of biggest?
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nerfin
short for nerfing, which often describes game characters or powers that were OP (overpowered) in previous versions/editions/games that have now been underpowered or nerfed.
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word neogism
Misspelling of neologism?
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word narrishkeit
Yiddish term.
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word garrilous
Misspelling of garrulous.
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word nabubugnot
Tagalog word.
October 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mucilagenous
mucilaginous?
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mophobia
Line break on homophobia.
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mootch
mooch
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word monopolytourism
monopoly tourism
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word moeity
Misspelling of moiety.
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mitsake
Misspelling of mistake. Seems intentional often for. Irony? For humor.
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word misshappen
Misspelling of misshapen.
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ministic
Line breaks with deterministic or maybe monastic misspelling.
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word milktoast
Mostly misspelling of milquetoast but might refer to milk toast.
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word firstable
An eggcorn for first of all. What an adorably adoptable eggcorn.
October 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word meliturgy
Wouldn't it be double L like mellifluous?
October 18, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mehrong
Korean word.
October 18, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word house-proud
Has anyone made a list of post-positive adjectives? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpositive_adjective Someone ought to.
October 17, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mababaw
Tagalog word.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word lupanare
Pompeii brothel?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word luminence
luminance
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word lojtra
Slovenian word?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word linimaly
liminal? liminally?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word limarin
Limarin is a drug.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word levearage
Misspelling of leverage.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word leucocytozoans
leucocytozoons?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word letcherers
Mostly meant as lecherers or lecturers but it also seems like an old spelling of lecherer as in lechery.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word lession
Misspelling of lesson or lesion.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word leitwortstil
German "leading-word style" "was coined by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig and applied to the field of Biblical textual studies."
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word legup
Variant of leg up or leg-up.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ledasha
Racist urban legend that a black woman named her child "Le-a" pronounced "Ledasha."
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word lechita
Spanish word, dimunutive of leche meaning milk.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word latigables
Spanish word.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word kulseyo
Hard-to-translate Korean word.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word kubrikian
Misspelling of Kubrickian or kubrickian.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word klabauter
See klabautermann?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word kergymatic
Misspelling of kerygmatic.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word kergyma
Misspelling of Greek kerygma.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word kaibash
Misspelling of kibosh.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word juvescence
Also juvenescence.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ipsism
Related to Latin ipse, which is a reflective pronoun or something like that.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word iontopheresis
Misspelling of iontophoresis.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word involiable
Misspelling of inviolable.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word interfation
interfaction misspelling?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word inicimal
Misspellin of inimical, enemy-like.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word infradig
Short for infra dig or infra dignitatem, a Latin phrase meaning "beneath one's dignity."
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word indumental
Misspelling of indumetal?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word incohate
Misspelling of inchoate?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word incantory
Misspelling of incantatory.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word inastatic
Misspelling of anastatic?
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word implusive
Misspelling of impulsive.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word imperturability
Misspelling of imperturbability I think.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word impedement
Misspelling of impediment.
October 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ideodialect
I hear this more often as idiolect.
October 15, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word stunt on
stunting (without on) appears in Katy Perry song "This is How We Do" https://youtu.be/7RMQksXpQSk
"Straight stuntin' ya we do it like that"
October 13, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hypokeimenal
Related to hypokeimenon?
October 13, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hypnogogia
Misspelling of hypnagogia?
October 13, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hydrophic
hydropic or hydrophobic ?
October 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hullabalo
Misspelling of hullabaloo.
October 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hootnanny
Variant of hootenanny ?
October 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hoolegenism
Misspelling of hooliganism.
October 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word glottonaut
Proposed word from linguisten.de Tumblr account:
:A glottonaut is someone exploring languages without necessarily acquiring them (thereby becoming a polyglot). Most people doing linguistic typology can be considered glottonauts."
October 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word headness
Seems to be mostly a ellisive misspelling of the suffix headedness.
October 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word kittentits
From "A Softer World" comic: http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=152
October 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hatshag
sometimes short for racist sexual term Mexican hat shag. mostly a misspelling of hashtag.
October 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word halevai
Yiddish word meaning if only; "Would that it be so".
October 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word gürültülü
Turkish.
October 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word grelots
grelot means tiny bell in French but also refers to a type of onion.
October 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word gooksu
Korean food name. Also written as guksu.
October 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word glof
Most examples are misspellings of golf.
October 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word gimrack
misspelling of gimcrack?
October 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fungibleu
Where mushrooms go to college?
October 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fungibleu
Misspelling of fungible?
October 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fubmiffion
long s spelling of submission
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word frustrule
Misspelling of frustule
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word frission
Misspelling of frisson?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word frenchifryied
frenchifried
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Trump Sunlight Campaign
https://www.gofundme.com/sunlightfund
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word foupe
A mountweazel?
"This ghost word appears in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary. It is defined as "To drive with a sudden impetuosity. A word out of use."
The last part of the definition is certainly right. It was never in use. This is a misreading of soupe (due to the long s character used in those days), a dialect form of swoop." http://everything2.com/title/foupe
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fog-bow
Also written as fogbow or fog bow.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fluxuate
Misspelling of fluctuate?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word floresce
Misspelled backformation from flourescent. See fluoresce.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fiuviatile
Misspelling of fluviatile.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fireflower
In the video game Super Mario Bros., this is spelled fire flower.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word filky
long s confusion? Do the examples mean silky?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fire-meat
Literal translation of Korean food bulgogi.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word filfot
Variant spelling of fylfot meaning swastika?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ficticious
Misspelling of fictitious.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fibrouse
Misspelling of fibrous.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fastiduous
Misspelling of fastidious.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fastedious
Misspelling of fastidious.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word farkakte
Variant spelling of verkakte.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fa-reezing
emphasized variant of freezing.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word expulcate
Maybe misspelling of exculpate?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word explick
unable to explain -> inexplicable -> explick
Backformation of the verb from the adjective.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word exopthalmic
Misspelling of exophthalmic.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word exhuberance
Misspelling of exuberance.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word exequator
Misspelling of exequatur?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word euxenic
Misspelling of euxinic.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word escoymous
Anglo-French relative of squeamish.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word equinimity
Misspelling of equanimity?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ephermeral
Misspelling of ephemeral.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ephermal
Misspelling of ephemeral.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word epercu
Misspelling of apercu / aperçu?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word emnity
Misspelling of enmity?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word endalaus
Icelandic word meaning timeless or endless?
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word comfortable-bread
Also written as comfortable bread.
October 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word cucked
short for cuckholded? Been seeing it a lot on Twitter this political year.
October 8, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word emoluement
misspelling of emolument.
October 7, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word eataphorical
misspelling of metaphorically?
October 6, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word drunt
Some tweets are misspellings of drunk.
October 5, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word disdamn
From Golden Girls. also written as disdam.
Dorothy: Ma, "disdam" is not a word.
Sophia: It certainly is!
Dorothy: Okay, prove it, use it in a sentence.
Sophia: You're no good at disdam game.
October 4, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word densly
misspelling of densely.
October 1, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word degage
dégagé
September 30, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word chachski
misspelling of tchotchke i think.
September 26, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word carcature
Misspelling of caricature.
September 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word zythologist
"A zythologist is a true beer connoisseur who can share many interesting facts about an immensely complex and sophisticated beverage, its ingredients and the roles they play in the brewing process."
-Annhauser_Busch site. Se also: zythology
September 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word zyxnoid
"noun (ZIKS noid) Any word that a crossword puzzler makes up to complete the last blank, accompanied by the rationalization that there probably is an ancient god named Ubbbu, or German river named Wfor, and besides, who’s going to check?"
http://sniglets.sanjeev.net/zyxnoid/ sniglets
September 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word tony
I didn't know tony was a capitonym. Then I did. That time is now.
September 8, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word chuffah
"Harris was also known as “the chuffah king.” Chuffah is the random nonsense characters in a scene talk about before getting to the meat of it that leads to story. Here’s one of the best chuffah moments from Parks from the “Hunting Season” episode:
Tom: Your favorite kind of cake can’t be birthday cake, that’s like saying your favorite kind of cereal is breakfast cereal.
Donna: I love breakfast cereal.
Harris excelled at coming up with hilarious, random nonsense like this. It was a tool that no one else seemed to have."
http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/111613105129
September 7, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word daemon
According to 1999 Wired Style, they made daemon into the backronym "Disk And Execution MONitor."
August 31, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word latinx
It's not difficult to call people what they want to be called. Sometimes it's a slight personal preference (Steven, not Steve), sometimes it's an affirmation of what someone has worked hard to define themselves as (Tess not Ted). You don't even have to use the marker of latinx. It's not for you. It's for people in the group to define themselves.
I get that it's hypothetically absurd to pick a crazy name without thinking, but thought has gone into this. It helps some people who are in a vulnerable community have a sense of belonging and feel safe. It helps to make a space for a group that is not well known or understood.
Punching up/down are comedy terms.
Punching down is attacking/making fun of people who have less power and are vulnerable, kicking someone when they're down. Punching up is mocking the powerful, exposing them and holding them accountable for their actions through things like satire.
August 31, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word latinx
you're making me frown, bilby. it's an interesting question in general of how to feel comfortable identifying as gender-expansive (nonbinary) in a gendered language. This particular term helps some people feel better. "-x all words in the dictionary" is reductio ad absurdum and you know it.
It helps them, it doesn't apply to you, why are you putting so much anger on this page? This might be another proposed term like ze or hir that doesn't take off, so you could make fun of it as a neologism, but I don't get why you're making a stand here. Punch up.
August 30, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word latinx
Why some people choose to call themselves latinx: http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/our-issues/why-we-say-latinx-trans-gender-non-conforming-people-explain
August 30, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word millennial whoop
http://qz.com/767812/millennial-whoop/
August 27, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list jumbo-shrimp
feeling numb
August 17, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word corportation
Misspelling of corporation.
August 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word rusk
Just learned this term from Namibian Olympic Cyclist Dan Craven (@DanfromNam) who apparently livetweeted the race he was racing??
https://twitter.com/DanFromNam/status/761983418309672962
His profile as of Aug 6, 2016: "Dad dancer, Cyclist, Olympian TWICE, I'm like a rusk on a cloudy morning. Cycling Academy Team - @bikegeeeeks"
August 6, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word scabbard
Do we need a list of sheaths? I can only think of scabbard and holster.
August 5, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word derp spiral
https://twitter.com/prof_anne/status/760977955384201216
Bad polls lead to Trump saying 20 unbelievable things in 48 hours cause rumors of GOP inner circle intervention.
August 3, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word whitewashing
Related song/video: https://youtu.be/mmvqb9Uzu8k
(sounds creepy but it's not a creepy video)
August 3, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word pickthank
<3 think tank is my criminal mastermind name.
August 2, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mandylion
I can't believe this isn't a dialect variant on dandelion.
July 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word melianiate
"Melaniate": To unwittingly speak in a public forum words that have been plagiarized by others. Named after Meliania Trump and her plagiarized speech at the RNC.
Coined by Roy Peter Clark 7/19/2016.
http://www.poynter.org/2016/welcome-to-post-plagiarism-america/422260/
July 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list strange--3
test 1 2 3
July 15, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word late capitalism
Ahhh, so it means that, to the writer, this is part of the indicator that capitalism is almost over and the new type of economic system will rise soon? Which one?
July 14, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word late capitalism
What does this even mean? I first saw it in a Pokemon Go critique: http://www.vox.com/2016/7/12/12152728/pokemon-go-economic-problems
July 14, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word spoons
In regard to energy levels for people with chronic diseases and mental health issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
Just learned it from this Tumblr post about Pokemon Go advice for disabled and mentally ill people: http://toriel-femur.tumblr.com/post/147273699800/tips-for-disabled-and-mentally-ill-pokemon-go
July 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word grognard
Just learned this term as applied to the board game reviewer in this video: https://youtu.be/VHS2ZzXiw_Q
July 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list 💯
Function words mostly, which makes sense.
The verbs:
be, can, come, do, get, give, have, know, look, make, say, see, take, think, want, work.
July 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word 2:30
Time for your dental appointment.
July 7, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word brainstormer
brainstormer vs barnstormer, who wins?
July 6, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list words-found-in-passing
*passes by several minutes later*
June 28, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word regrexit
Did anyone coin this before June 24, 2016, the morning of the result?
June 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word be-back
From the 1959 Oldsmobile industrial musical "Good News About Olds", the song "Don't Let a Be-Back Get Away." http://www.industrialmusicals.com/songs/
Heard about industrial musicals on the "Under the Influence" podcast.
June 22, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word tronc
It's now a clipped compound for Chicago "TRibune ONline Content"
June 2, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word adamless
As written by #HaggardHawks in Word Drops (2016),
June 1, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Quvenzhané
Quvenzhané Wallis:
“Quven,” the first part of her name, combines her parents’ first names, while her mother has stated that zhané means “fairy” in Swahili.
Other people are saying that's not true about Swahili. I'm confused.
May 25, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word cicatrix
cicatriz is the word for scar in Spanish, so it must come from Latin. I learned it in a vocab unit on how to describe people's faces. It seemed impractical at the time but it stuck with me.
May 19, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word He-men
A group of He-man toys. This pluralization bothers some.
"We could play with He-men."
"We have a bunch of unopened He-men in the attic."
May 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Madison Avenue choir
https://soundcloud.com/betweenthelinernotes/jingles
Using magnetic tape, hire 4 singers, record them several times singing different parts, make it sound like a 12-part choir. Big advertising strategy from WWII - late 1950s.
May 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word meme
An internet-wide inside joke.
May 3, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word JMJ
Can stand for the Catholic minced oath "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"
-https://twitter.com/StanCarey/status/727584184890470400
May 3, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word cephalophore
I <3 the -phore/-fer morpheme. It sticks out to me
I made a comic about it: http://tankhughes.com/?p=239
I made a list about it: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/bher--to-bear-or-carry
So... I'll accept the award, but I don't know what to wear to the ceremony.
May 1, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word miscegenation
WOW wasn't aware of this term until today, used by angry people who hate an Old Navy ad: https://twitter.com/CivilJustUs/status/726825556680007680
May 1, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word AP
In boardgaming, AP can mean "analysis paralysis" which means that turns take a long time because there are SO many things to take into consideration that the game will drag every. single. turn. And burn your brain.
May 1, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word cephalophore
They Might Be Giants has a song about falling in love with a cephalophore. https://youtu.be/anWrcmKsYI8
April 28, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word dogpile
*hug bilby quite tightly*
EVERYBODY JUMP ON OR THIS WORD WON'T MAKE ANY SENSE!
It's Hug an Australian Day!!
April 26, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list animal-animalia
ram-cat is another name for a male cat. (OED 1672)
April 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list are-you-sad--misparse-me
See also: http://katherinebarber.blogspot.com/2016/04/when-you-are-mizzled-by-english-spelling.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wordlady+%28Wordlady%29
April 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word The Cow Palace
I so love that it's called the Cow Palace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Palace
April 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word irredentist
NOT a dentist?
April 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word popcorning
A video of guinea pigs popcorning, via my guinea pig owner coworker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjC94EhAs00
April 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word beoopdedoop
bilby: It's her CB handle.
March 28, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fishiness
In this interview with RuPaul, it's a adjective to describe drag queens that look like "real" cis women. http://www.vulture.com/2016/03/rupaul-drag-race-interview.html
March 25, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word dilection
i'm intrigued by the intersection of definitions 1 and 2.
March 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word DoReMi
@Fritinancy: "TIL: San Francisco's newest art district is nicknamed DoReMi after the 3 neighborhoods it comprises: DOgpatch, PotREro Hill, MIssion."
March 21, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word psittachosis
parrot fever
March 21, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word braaap
sounds like an underweater fart or the beginning of Hercules Mulligan's intro rap from Hamilton.
March 17, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mushroom management
"Keep them in the dark and feed them shit."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_management
March 14, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word sprote
Never heard of this until NotXButX tweeted it today.
March 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list jumbo-shrimp
broadly specified
March 10, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list contranyms--1
outstanding?
wonderful for having extra positive qualities, or missing something crucial.
March 9, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word super bloom
Used to describe the sudden bloom of wildflowers in Death Valley National Park due to recent rainfall.
March 6, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word fainhead
What?
March 4, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word rfc 1918
It sounds like a fútbol team, but RFC 1918 stands for "request for comment 1918" and is involved in assigning/allocating private IP addresses.
March 3, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word SVV
SVV can stand for the Latin phrase, "Si vales, valeo" which means "If you are well, I am well." It was the Latin equivalent of starting a letter with "Hi, how are you? I'm fine."
March 2, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word RSA
RSA can also represent a cryptosystem named for three dudes: the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman cryptosystem, a cryptosystem for public-key encryption.
The RSA conference is currently happening in San Francisco: https://www.rsaconference.com/
March 1, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Wordnik
I get it, vendingmachine. The band Jump (formerly Jump, Little Children) wrote a song called Requiem that specifically acknowledges the fact that audiences don't like it when you play new songs from your new album. I think it's a similar sentiment: https://youtu.be/_r7g4kGbkvI
February 29, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list sword-shaped--1
sabertooth?
February 29, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word seratonin
See serotonin.
February 29, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Wordnik
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WORDNIK!
February 29, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word pangram
Okay.
Veldt = field
Jynx = a bird
Grimp = to climb
Waqf = an endowment of land
Zho = dzo = a hybrid yak/cow male
Buck = adult male animal
A field bird climbs a land yak man. Okay.
February 26, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word grimp
According to M-W, grimp is also a verb meaning to climb, or "to draw up (the line grimped into a hard knot)"
February 26, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word sticks nix hick pix
A famous Variety headline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticks_nix_hick_pix
February 26, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word pangram
Buck could be a verb in that. not sure what else to do to make it a sentence. It's a Variety headline at best.
(See sticks nix hick pix)
February 26, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word pangram
When people say "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" they are adding 2 extraneous letters to the pangram. One of those the's should be an a. 33 letters vs 35.
February 25, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list city-names-with-three-or-more-words
Lake Forest Park in Washington state.
February 25, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list contranyms--1
bleach meant "to blacken" in the 1600s: https://twitter.com/E_Briannica/status/702886862914920448
February 25, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ongoing
It's fun to say ong-oing. Reminds me of Homestar Runner's pronunciation of doing. Can't remember which episode.
February 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list onomatopoeia-that-best-describes-you-greatest-hits-vol1
mrph
February 23, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word jetpack
Are they designing any jet black jetpacks?
February 18, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list jumbo-shrimp
vodka-flavored
February 18, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word vodka-flavored
Vodka-flavored is a fun modern oxymoron. I know vodka can be infused, but then it tastes like that thing. The standard is "odorless, tasteless, colorless." OO someone could make a vodka crest in Latin. sine odor, sine sapor, sine color.
February 18, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hairy panic
Oh my! That's like the Strega Nona story where the person who learns the spell to make infinite pasta, but not the spell to stop it, and the town gets covered in pasta. http://www.vindiebaby.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/960x/17f82f742ffe127f42dca9de82fb58b1/s/t/strega_nona_3.jpg
February 18, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word hairy panic
Are the Flickr images related to the tumbleweed?
February 18, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word pakeha
I think that it's healthy to be aware that sometimes a beret is not enough. It interests me because anyone's personal sample size is pretty small, and I wonder if there are certain sounds that repeat - like how barbarian is an attempt to mimic the language of the others. And the folk etymology for guiri is because tourists say "Where is?" all the time when they visit Spain.
February 16, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word pakeha
Has someone made a list of foreigner terms like gringo, guiri, gaijin, gadjo, shixa, paya, etc? It could be racist, but it would also be interesting to see them all together, since it's aimed at local geographical neighbors or white people.
February 15, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word toa
In a high school World Religions class, a group presented on Taoism (Daoism), but consistently misspelled the main idea of the tao as the toa. It tickled me and Maryann, so my high school notebooks were soon filled with "Follow the Toa" in the margins. It's very possible I'll accidentally call it the toa in polite company one day soon.
February 15, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word mulm
Ah, so it's what happens to marine snow.
February 15, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word PAN truncation
PAN means: "primary account number, i.e., the "card number" on either a debit or a credit card. PAN truncation simply replaces the card number printed on a customer receipt with a printout of only the last four digits, the remainder being replaced usually by asterisks."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAN_truncation
February 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word QSA
Qualified Security Assessor. Involved with PCI compliance.
February 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word SDL
Secure Development Lifecycle
February 12, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word PCI compliance
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. Essentially any merchant that has a Merchant ID (MID)
https://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pci-faqs-2/
February 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word IANL
IANL - I am no lawyer. Variant of IMO or IMHO.
February 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word temperment
Wow. I've been leaving out the a in this word. This is more shocking than the lack of a 2nd i in mischievous.
February 3, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Dogpile An Australian Day
It also happens on April 26th, but you can hear a faint rumbling in the distance, getting ever closer on the night before, also known as Dogpile an Australian Eve.
February 2, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Hug an Australian Day
Sorry bilby, you have to wait for April. Then we'll dogpile you.
February 2, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word stagflation
I always think this is a spoonerism for flag station.
January 30, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word brogle
A sensible alternate spelling for broccoli. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BrVbeHwIEAAfyDu.jpg
January 29, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word bitchcakes
The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English has the first citation from 2004. https://books.google.com/books?id=4YfsEgHLjboC&lpg=PA166&ots=7KTEP8p10g&dq=bitchcakes%201994&pg=PA166#v=onepage&q=bitchcakes%201994&f=false
January 27, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word bitchcakes
This was a new and unique expression in the NewsRadio episode Physical Graffiti. which first aired on March 24, 1996. Was it coined for the episode or was it an exclamation before the episode aired?
Is it like fetch in Mean Girls, manufactured slang that fails to catch on? Or is it like frak, frell, shazbot, and smeg, made-up swearwords writers use to get around censors?
January 27, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word maven
I get the feeling that, even though it's not a gendered word, maven is used more often to describe women, maybe because it rhymes with maiden? Pet theory, anyway.
January 26, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word irish spotting
see also: Irish spotting
January 25, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Irish spotting
In dog breeding, Irish spotting refers to dogs with specific amounts of white that spread throughout their coat. "On a dog with irish spotting, white is found on the legs, the tip of the tail, the chest, neck and muzzle."
And a possible etymology: "The term "irish spotting" actually comes from a term used in the early 20th century to describe a white pattern found in rats in Ireland."
-http://www.doggenetics.co.uk/white.htm
I just wanted to know if I should call the white tuft of hair on my otherwise black Mini-Schnauzer a blaze, or if blaze is only used to describe markings on the face of animals (especially horses).
January 25, 2016
TankHughes commented on the list foodpanda-coupons
Pandas hate spam.
January 24, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word boustrophedonic
I GUARD THIS WORD NOW.
!KSIR NWO RUOY TA KCATTA
January 21, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word Crewniverse
The crew that creates the excellent cartoon Steven Universe. Their tumblr: http://stevencrewniverse.tumblr.com/
January 20, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word bete noir
cf bête noire and bete noire.
January 13, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word starchild
I don't know how to define starchild, but I know it's often used to reference David Bowie, related to his single Starman, and his persona Ziggy Stardust.
January 11, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word comprimise
This definition is wrong, but fun!
January 7, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word pentester
A job position at security consultant companies, short for "penetration tester." People hired to hack to show the flaws in a security system. It's white hat/gray hat for a good reason?
January 6, 2016
TankHughes commented on the word ghoti
I wrote about this 4 years ago, with some bonus discussion of minims and Churchillian Drift thrown in: http://tankhughes.com/?p=727
January 4, 2016
TankHughes commented on the user gnorris12345
Thanks for the added definitions, gnorris12345!
Wordnik is case-sensitive, so if you go to the lowercase adroit and incisive pages you'll find some more juicy information than the uppercase version's page. The agastopia page doesn't have a dictionary definition, but many users have added it to their lists and a few have discussed it in the discussion section.
December 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word impanel
Hillary Clinton just used this in the New Hampshire Democratic Debate. "...that President Obama has impaneled."
December 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word 😂
Sorry to "Frankenstein is the doctor's name" you, but the emoji was chosen by Oxford Dictionaries, not the Oxford English Dictionary. OED doesn't choose a word of the year, they're more about the words of every year from the beginning of English time.
Merriam-Webster chose -ism for 2015, and Dictionary.com has chosen identity. The American Dialect Society and the Macquarie Dictionary will also choose their #WOTYs in early January. I think Cambridge Dictionaries Online also chooses "the people's word of the year."
The different reasons these dictionaries have for choosing the words were covered on this podcast last year: http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2014/12/lexicon_valley_peter_sokolowski_of_merriam_webster_erin_mckean_of_wordnik.html To be very honest, the interviews are insulting and patronizing, repeatedly accusing the lexicographers of being drunk when making these decisions.
December 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word breechloading
A shart could also be said to be breechloading.
December 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word perplex
I remember playing a word search computer game with my friend when I was young, and we got all of them except this one. "Well there's purple, but it's with an e!" "No, it's gotta be something else!" Pretty sure a mom finished it for us. So now I read it as PERPLE-X.
December 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word microaggression
On this episode of Poetry Off the Shelf, Saaed Jones compares these to paper cuts: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/5428
Not deadly enough to go to the ER about, and no one wants to hear about them, but they can sting for days and they add up.
December 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list steven--adjectives
Which Steven? I hope this one: https://youtu.be/QOAwHG95mlk
December 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word cypher
We need the hip-hop definition of cypher here. I don't know it properly yet. http://www.bet.com/video/hiphopawards/2015/cyphers/hamilton-cypher-explicit.html
December 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Benson bubbler
What public water fountains are called in Portland, OR. Named after philanthropist Simon Benson.
The Flickr pictures below show their unique four-prong design.
More on water fountains: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fountain-drinks/
December 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Cackattacker
As coined on a live episode of the Spontaneanation podcast (2015), Cackattackers are fans of the improviser Craig Cackowski.
December 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list three-toed-portmanteaus
I've now written up a little post about these multi-part blends. What they describe, what parts of the words are used, what order they come in. Enjoy: http://www.encyclopediabriannica.com/?p=245
December 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word partyboob
Partyboob seems like a variant on party tit: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/804585-calm-your-tits
December 5, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word boobytrap
This is the content I'm here for. A semordnilap worth backwardsitizing.
December 4, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Dowisetrepla
From the TV show "How I Met Your Mother", a fictional neighborhood near a sewage treatment plant.
"Downwind from the Sewage Treatment Plant."
December 4, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word BoCoCa
From Wikipedia:
BoCoCa is "three adjacent neighborhoods in the Brooklyn borough of New York City: Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens."
December 4, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Bond Mitzvah
On the "For Your Eyes Only" episode of the James Bonding podcast (Oct 2015), Thomas Lennon, Matt Gourley and Matt Mira realize that the Bond movie that they each saw when they were 11-13 is the one they love the most. That movie imprints, and is also a rite of passage from youth to be able to see a Bond movie in the theater, with or without a chaperone. For Thomas Lennon, it was "For Your Eyes Only". For Matt Gourley, it was "A View To A Kill". http://nerdist.com/james-bonding-031-for-your-eyes-only/
December 3, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Major Ravioli
On iZombie, the shipping name of Major, Ravi, and Liv.
December 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word basticherbator
bastard + bitch + masturbator
December 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word SoLoMo
SoLoMo = social + local + mobile
December 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Thankshallowistmas
Thanksgiving + Halloween + Christmas.
December 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Captain Charming Floor
On the TV Show Once Upon a Time, Prince Charming and Captain Hook wake up on the ground (floor) near each other a lot. (gif proof: http://vickyvicarious.tumblr.com/post/130385810066/lenfaz-emmasawn-captain-charming-floor) Captain Charming Floor is the fanmade broT3 name for this phenomenon.
November 30, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word lipogram
I filled out an Ask Me Another contestant quiz the other day, and the last questions asks you to write a lipogram omitting o's. I've known the concept for a long time, but I think having written one now, the word for the concept will stay in my head, especially since I ended it with "That's my lip_gram."
Is it not related to liposuction? Lipo means fat, like lipids. Looks like the Greek ancestor was leipogrammátos meaning 'leaving out a letter.' What a difference an e makes.
November 24, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Dasariski
Comedy improv troupe: http://www.dasariski.com/ The name combines the surnames of the three members: Robert DASsie, Rich TalARIco, and Craig CackowoSKI.
November 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word sundowning
Just learned this term from this article: http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2015/11/sundowning-seniors-nightfall-delirium.
Our elderly vocabulary is going to keep growing and becoming mainstream for the next 30 years, thanks baby boomers.
November 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word one faithful day
I saw this as an eggcorn for one fateful day on Tumblr.
November 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word 5
5 "being one more than four" is a spectacular definition, and if it wasn't meant as a reference to the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, it is now. https://youtu.be/xOrgLj9lOwk
November 21, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word OTP
I'm just here to find how three-part portmanteaus appear naturally in the wild. I'm the Jane Goodall of shipping! Observing and cataloguing. I'm not here to judge, though it gets tough when it involves real-life people or incest.
See related terms at OT3.
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word SeKaiLu
OT3 from the real-life K-pop group EXO (broken into EXO-K in South Korea and EXO-M in Mainland China): Sehun, Kai, and Lu Han.
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word OT3
OTP stands for 'one true pairing', referring to a fan's favorite romantic or platonic couple in all of fiction and real life. OT3 means it's a threesome. OTP and OT3 are likely to be romantic, whereas broTP and brot3 are more clearly platonic. noTP is the opposite of OTP, an unacceptable pairing.
Related list: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/1-word-couple-names
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word spemaria
OT3 shipping name from Pretty Little Liars: Spencer x Emily x Aria
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word emarianna
OT3 shipping name from Pretty Little Liars: :Emily x Aria x Hanna
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word spannily
OT3 shipping name from Pretty Little Liars: :Spencer x Hanna x Emily
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word spannaria
OT3 shipping name from Pretty Little Liars: :Spencer x Hanna x Aria
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word BriTANicK
A comedy duo made up of Brian and Nick, specifically Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher.
I thought it was Brian, Danny and Nick, but I guess Danny Pudi just makes a cameo in the one video I know them for, which is great and the least appropriate to watch with family members called A Monologue for Three: https://youtu.be/mephJf3-zYE
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word smabillion
My personal favorite when discussing an uncountably large number.
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word compushency
compulsion+push+urgency, as listed in the Portmanteau Dictionary, Thurner 1950.
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Michillinda
Michigan+Illinois+Indiana, as listed in the Portmanteau Dictionary, Thurner 1950.
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Texarkana
Texas+Arkansas+Louisiana, as listed in the Portmanteau Dictionary, Thurner 1950.
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Optacon
optical+tactile+converter, as listed in the Portmanteau Dictionary, Thurner 1950.
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Legolepsy
More information and lists on the logolepsy page.
November 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Lady Godiva
As learned in Series 11 of Only Connect, Lady Godiva is Cockney rhyming slang for a fiver, i.e., £5.
November 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word bag of sand
As learned in Series 11 of Only Connect, bag of sand is Cockney rhyming slang for a grand, i.e., £1000.
November 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list bher--to-bear-or-carry
Ok, deleted.
November 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word sugar caddy
Hey sugar caddy, Hansel needs some sugar in his bowl.
November 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user defender61
Welcome! We think Wordnik is neat, too.
If you use Chrome, you can add a Wordnik plugin to search even faster.
Check the 'Community' page to find recent discussions to jump into, or start a very specific list, or just click 'Random word' until your dashboard says you've looked up 26,000 words. That is what I do, apparently...
November 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word realpolitik
I read this word in two articles today, so it must be a conspiracy to force me to learn the meaning of the word, and not just let my brain wander and think about apparatchik and beatniks.
November 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list bher--to-bear-or-carry
:/ Christopher rather. The Christ-bearer. St. Christopher is famous for carrying a young child across a river on his shoulders, and then, plot twist!, that child is Jesus. Also Christopher probably didn't exist. #Catholicism. I do love saints though.
November 12, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word ampersand
Re: my list of three-part portmanteaus (https://www.wordnik.com/lists/three-toed-portmanteaus), ampersand is made of three or four parts, depending on how you count them. I'm putting it on the list, with an awareness that it's a weak member of the list.
and+per se+and or and+per+se+and
November 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word aibohphobia
haaaa.
November 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word pussy-gut
U.S. regional (chiefly derogatory). A fat person (esp. a man); (also) a fat stomach, a pot belly. Also in pl. form with sing. concord. Also pussy-gutted, pussy is a variant of pursy, meaning fat-stomached.
November 5, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Morindette
A portmanteau for an area in Northern California, made up of MORaga, OrINDa, and LafayETTE, which phonetically sounds like "More in debt."
November 4, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Lamorinda
A portmanteau name for an area in Northern California made up of LAfayette, MORaga, and OrINDA.
November 4, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Theodosia
That's the trouble with living in a time when portmanteaus are explodingly productive - everything sounds like a blend and every blend can be interpreted in many ways.
An e-piknik, presumably, where we each sit under our own vine and fig tree? (More lyrics from Hamilton).
October 31, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Theodosia
I can't stop listening to the Hamilton soundtrack. Aaron Burr falls in love with a British officer's wife named Theodosia. Eventually, they marry and have a daughter named Theodosia. I love the way he sings this name in "Wait for it".
When little Theodosia grew up and married, she and her husband were reportedly the first couple to honeymoon at Niagara Falls. She died at sea when she was 29. Wikinik.
October 31, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word founder
Just learned this verb-form from the title of a GM Hopkins poem: "The Loss of the Eurydice: Foundered March 24. 1878" I'm trying to find the poem's publication/written date. The ship sunk in 1878, he died in 1889 so It must be sometime between those.
I found the poem because he made up and used daredeath in it. Welcome home, little compound orphan.
October 31, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word alkyd
Labicose.
October 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word alkyd
Labreeding.
October 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list whats-my-favorite-word
Yeah, the almost Solveig page genuinely terrifies me. I appreciate the offer, but I can't afford your insurance policy.
October 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list whats-my-favorite-word
Even more than Carolingian minuscule, I like saying Carolingian thereminuscule, as some sort of musical instrument/alphabet hybrid.
October 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list industrial-cockblock
Luxurious greetings and regards to you as well, madmouth.
Wordnik is genderless utopia, but let the record show that I am a pretty lady as part of, and in addition to, my troublemaking activities on Wordnik.
October 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word fearful
Very true, rolig, it is an autantonym. Fear used to serve the opposite purpose, describing the frightener and not the frightenee in a sentence like "she fears me." I became aware of this from two pairs of cutthroat variants:
scarecrow and fear-crow (a non-living protector of cornfields)
scarebabe and fear-babe (a bogeyman creature who scares children)
October 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word columnas salomonicas
Salamancan columns twist around but stand upright. They are not used for actual structural support, they are adornments. I learned about them in Spain, where they appear in elaborate church altarpieces.
October 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list industrial-cockblock
I also tweeted all of the -cock surnames listed in the "Patronymica Brittanica" back in April: https://twitter.com/E_Briannica/status/590396311867817984 They all sound funny but only some of them are genuinely rude.
October 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list industrial-cockblock
Amazing wonderful.
October 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word chaparral-cock
Yep, from the OED, turn-cock is "A water-works official entrusted with the turning on of the water from the mains to supply-pipes, etc." There are so many industrial -cock words in the OED, it's very distracting.
October 27, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word chaparral-cock
turn-
(No surprise, it's a cutthroat).
October 27, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user CamouflageCat
You're right! There's nothing here. Maybe this is a ghost user account for Halloween.
October 26, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word rape cake
This term (which refers to rape seed) is trying to ruin the good name of cake :(
#triggerwarning
October 26, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Bondgenue
We gotta have a Wordnik Googchat party or something, bilby.
I think if we can all be clever in realtime, we can make the kind of discoveries or potentially destroy the world more efficiently than CERN and the LHC.
October 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word onomatopoeiaphobia
Maybe hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophilia, as the opposite of hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.
October 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Bondgenue
The ingenue role in a James Bond movie, coined by Matt Mira in Episode 030 of the James Bonding podcast (October 8, 2015, minute 59).
October 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word pig Latin
In "Games of Washington Children" on the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/stream/jstor-658879/658879#page/n33/mode/2up), there is a brief mention of dog Latin (adding -us to the end of most words) and cat Latin (adding -liga to the end of words ending in a vowel, and -aliga,-iliga, -oliga to words ending in consonants).
October 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word mollycopter
At least you cop to it, bilby.
As a NorCal girl I like saying hellapad (helipad) and I was briefly in a fake band called Helicopteradactyl. That 'pter-' part is the same Greek flying root.
October 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word mollycopter
A portmanteau of mollycoddle and helicopter parenting.
https://twitter.com/Fritinancy/status/656501733011537920
"One of my readers proposed a new word for this unhealthy phenomenon: "mollycopter" (mollycoddle + helicopter)."
October 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word biscuit yurble
On Neopets.com, you can adopt unique animals, name them, feed them, play games with them, and 'paint' them with a Neopets paintbrush.
One of the species kind of looks like a bear/lion/hedgehog and is called a yurble.
One of the paintbrushes is called biscuit and makes the animal look like it's made out of cookies. (Neopets is a British company).
Saying biscuit yurble outloud makes me happy.
October 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word chitarra
Thanks, Rowlandwithaw! I had a mushroom pizza instead, so I never saw its appearance.
I also got stuck thinking about the Chitauri, the alien warriors that attack New York via a portal in The Avengers.
October 18, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word chitarra
Yesterday I saw Squid Ink Chitarra on a menu in Jack London Square. It was not a lute, it was a food something.
October 18, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word C.H.U.D.
A B-movie released in 1984. Stands for: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller.
October 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user glennbiegon
Hi glennbiegon! You can write your proposal definition for Hoaxwagen in the Discuss section of the Hoaxwagen page. Is this re: the Volkswagen Clean Diesel TDI scandal?
Keep in mind that Wordnik pages are case-sensitive to differentiate between words like March and march. Happy hunting!
October 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Leonard Maltin game
http://dlm.wikia.com/wiki/Leonard_Maltin_Game
October 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word poker mouth
The audio equivalent of a poker face, poker mouth is used to sarcastically describe someone in a betting situation who reveals their weaknesses instead of staying coy about their abilities. Used by Doug Benson in many episodes of the Doug Loves Movies podcast during the betting phase of the Leonard Maltin game.
"Nice poker mouth."
October 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word tradictionary
A spontaneously created portmanteau, coined tonight by my friend Steven W, while I was explaining the difference between Wordnik and traditional dictionaries (tradictionaries).
October 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word cispacifically
The term cisatlantic has been used since the 1800s to describe the similarities and differences between people and cities on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. But! It's not as fun to say as cispacific.
October 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word soft prank
A prank that's not that funny, but is not mean-spirited either. A light prank that doesn't hurt and slightly amuses. Mentioned in the opening minutes of the October 11, 2015 Doug Loves Movies podcast episode. http://art19.com/shows/dlm/episodes/9170001b-ba38-4459-a565-e1590fdb88d3
Doug Benson encourages future audiences to give standing ovations to his guests as they come on stage, even though it's a audio medium and none of the listeners will know.
October 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word lexicographer
The full definition from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755)
"lexicographer: A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words."
October 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word oats
From Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755)
"oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."
October 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word algebraic
Algebraic! https://youtu.be/vpG1nR0p0OE
October 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word crepuscular
One morning, my brother brought home a box of Krispy Kreme donuts, and left them on the kitchen table.
My mother and I sat at the table and looked out the window, talking about birds and how smart crows and ravens are, and how when I see a group of them around sunset, I think of the word crepuscular because they are active at dusk.
My mother is a visual learner so I wrote the word down for her to see. We finished talking, and left the room.
My brother came back and saw the note on the table. He thought it was a comment card for the donuts. He assumed it was a compliment, as in "Thank you for the donuts. They were very... crepuscular."
Now crepuscular makes me think of corvids and donuts.
October 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word roman à clef
Wall Street Journal (May 27, 2011) "As Slang Changes More Rapidly, Expert Has to Watch His Language"
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704281504576331494075796656
October 7, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Nietzsche
I wish I had a reason to say Nietzsche niche. /niˈtʃə niʃ/
October 7, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user ralex7474
Hi ralex7474! A good word for an unfortunate concept.
You can put your proposed meaning straight into the Discuss area of the courtalize page on Wordnik. If the word catches on and gains additional examples, you can proudly point to your first timestamped record of it.
Verb on.
October 7, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list fictional-acronyms
The WABAC machine from Rocky & Bullwinkle looks like an acronym, but I can't find anything that shows it really ever stood for anything. The wiki says it's on analogy with UNIVAC, sort of a portmanteau, or just a stylizing of way back with a machine-looking spelling.
We could make an acronym, make a backronym for this fake acronym (fauxcronym?), call it an anachronym. Maybe one of the A's could be anachronistic or animated.
October 7, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word fulfill
(See discussion of American fulfill vs British fulfil popularity at the single-l fulfil page.)
October 7, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user NYDenizen
¡Bienvenidos!
I recommend:
-hitting 'Random Word' often
-checking the Community page for fresh comments and lists
-adding your two cents any time you have two cents to add
-using brackets in comments to hyperlink to the words you're discussing
:)
October 7, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word dementianal
Urban Dictionary and my uncle use this word to describe someone with dementia.
Relatedly, he's described someone who does not appear to have dementia as non-dementianal. I thought it was a humorous construction, like calling Target Targét, but it appears that my uncle is serious.
October 7, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word lamé
Minimal pairs with diacritical marks: lamé & lame, resumé & resume.
October 5, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user Harrietu
Hellow Harrietu! Excellent missing word. You can write your information in the Discuss area of the okayable page itself, so that future travellers can learn from you.
Also keep in mind that Wordnik is case-sensitive (Polish vs polish). Enjoy!
October 5, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user Helphand
Hi Helphand! You can add your McUrbia and agriculture citations directly into the Discuss section of their respective pages to educate future word hunters. Keep in mind that Wordnik is case-sensitive.
Thanks for the new information!
October 5, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user arkady
Hi arkady! You can put that information in the Discuss area of the clearning page for future word hunters.
Do you pronounce the vowels in the first syllable like clean or learn?
If I saw that word without explanation, I'd think it involved cleaning and learning, a class you take while doing household chores.
October 4, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Napoleon
His name is associated with a pastry, a brandy, and a short person psychological issue.
October 3, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word sharklike
♫sharklike a man, tark like a man, walk like a man my son ♫
-(Frankie Valli and the Four Sea-Fins)
October 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Tenochtitlan
"The name of the city derives from tetl meaning rock, nochtli, the prickly-pear cactus and tlan, the locative suffix. Of similar origin is the term Tenocha which the Méxica sometimes called themselves and the name of their quasi-legendary priest-leader Tenoch."
-(http://www.ancient.eu/Tenochtitl%C3%A1n/)
The entry for Itzcoatl has its etymology, but Tenochtitlan was lacking.
October 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word warth
The examples are typos of wrath and warmth, and dialect versions of worth.
But I would drive a Ford Warth, if it was fuel-efficient.
October 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word PoPo
When I lived in North Portland in 2007, we humorously referred to the local police as the NoPo PoPo.
October 1, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list morphologically-intriguing-words
Re: stick-to-itiveness: On the Teddy Shapiro episode of the Howl.fm "You Know Me" podcast, his wife is described as having a getting things done-i-tude.
September 30, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Triton
A motorcycle made with parts from Triumph and Norton, two vintage British motorcycle brands.
September 30, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Grumph
A motorcycle made with parts from Triumph and Greeves, two vintage British motorcycle brands.
September 30, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word fulfil
Hi digik! If you put fulfill and fulfil into the Google Ngram Viewer (https://books.google.com/ngrams) you'll see that over time, the double-ll version has overtaken the single-l version.
If you toggle the corpus from English to American English or British English, you'll see that fulfil seems to be chiefly British, and fulfill is American, and that the American spelling is seen more commonly overall. But if I was writing a paper for a class in England and I saw the red spellcheck squiggly line come up, I'd ask a local.
September 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word auth
Back-formation is one of the lovely ways that new words enter the lexicon!
"Normally", words start short and get longer, cat->cats, talk->talked, follow->unfollow, celebrate->celebration.
Sometimes, when we see the longer version of the word, we assume it came from a shorter word and use that shorter form instead. That's back-formation. Escalator, evaluation, and baby-sitter all existed in English before escalate, evaluate, and babysit were formed from those longer words.
Jocular back-formation is common. The excellent book "The Ways of Language: A Reader" (Pflug, 1967) includes an article with this very example. Something like: "In the future, will writers auth books? Will boats anch in the harbor?"
The answer: if you like saying it and you find it useful, and others like saying it and find it useful, it will stick around.
September 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word coulrophobia
Trigger warning: there are pictures of clowns at the bottom of the coulrophobia page.
September 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word 바보
This says babo in Hangul (Korean). Babo means a foolish or stupid person, in a neutral or malicious way:
http://www.sweetandtastytv.com/blog/2012/04/17/blog-for-kwow-45-whats-babo
September 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word name-father
Same as namesake? Name-father is a creepy new term to me.
September 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Feague
Hey dacalberto!
There's more information about this word with lowercase-f feague page. Wordnik is case-sensitive. Happy word hunting!
September 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word flip off
In this confession bear meme, (http://9gag.com/gag/aGRAgdG) the person uses the term middle fingered instead of flipped off. You can also give someone the bird. Other names for middle finger gestures?
September 26, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word gliff
It's pronounced jliff, not gliff. #dictionarytroll
September 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Megalith
Megalith is a 10-year project recently announced by Jeff Lindsay that I feel will be incredibly influential in shaping the world 10 years from now. I'm calling it now. Mark the date.
https://youtu.be/xFG7xqCVFjw
September 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word webhook
"So, what exactly is a webhook? A webhook (also called a web callback or HTTP push API) is a way for an app to provide other applications with real-time information."
https://sendgrid.com/blog/whats-webhook/
September 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word wake down
My sleepy college roommate once said, "Why do we have to get up in the morning? Why can't we... get down?"
September 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word shot and killed
One time in high school, my friend Resham fell asleep while taking notes in class. Her pen continued to move for a while. After class, we attempted to decipher her unconscious notes.
We figured out that "?!+k" meant shot and killed. I enjoy using the term ?!+k in my own shorthand. It's aesthetically pleasing, but it's hard to spread awareness of it because it involves introducing people to the concept of unconscious note-taking.
September 24, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word FLUDD
In the video game Super Mario Sunshine, FLUDD is a sentient water cannon that Mario uses to wash away evil goo that covers the island of Delfino. F.L.U.D.D. stands for "Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device."
September 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word sizzle
My brother uses this term to mean 'get a song stuck in someone else's head." If you sizzle someone, you've given them your earworm. It's mostly done intentionally, humming a tune near someone, but it might also just be stuck in your head, and giving it to someone else exorcises it from you. Or it gets the two of you stuck in a self-reinforcing loop.
You can sizzle yourself if you pick up an object and a song gets stuck in your head. Working in an energy-efficient appliances incentive program, I saw General Electric and Frigidaire a lot. Every new application for the first month, I'd get sizzled by Insane in the Membrane by Cypress Hill "General Electric, ey the lights are blinking" or Two Sleepy People "picking on a wishbone from the Frigidaire."
Feel free to use this term if you find it useful.
September 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word thighbrow
I don't understand what give this value, but I'm excited I have a new two body part word to add to my collection: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/two-body-parts
September 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word -
This topic interests me, but I don't have a good answer to your specific question. Maybe mobile typing difficulty is being counteracted by auto-fill results, so you type in sticktoitiveness and it recommends stick-to-it-iveness. What I offer is a historical perspective on writing.
Before doing an MA that involved learning about English compounding 1000-present, I thought there was a natural progression of compound orthography (compound word -> compound-word -> compoundword). But! That's not true. Orthography does not tell if if something is a compound. English writing styles have changed for many reasons.
This is a casual recounting, but true in general:
First there was scriptio continua, no spaces between any words, which helped to save on paper (vellum) which was costly, but hard to read, and on top of that they used minims.
Then when Irish monks were taking dictation, they didn't know what the words meant, so they made spaces between the words, based on the way the head monk spoke them.
When French was quite in fashion, hyphenating became popular in phrases and compounds.
German has had some spelling reforms to include MORE hyphenation, to help tourists who are intimidated by space-less compound strings in public signage.
Some very well-established compounds have always had a space (ice cream) or hyphen (co-op) to help with legibility.
Many phrases have several co-existing variants that vary depending on the style guide.
Hyphens definitely matter in 3-part compounds, where the middle word could be linked to either the 1st or 3rd word, e.g., "AP interviews lion hunting dentist." https://twitter.com/katz/status/643445960169943041
September 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Epcot
Looks like this is becoming the most common way to capitalize the international portion of Walt Disney World in Florida, home to that big sphere known as Spaceship Earth.
It's an acronym. EPCOT stands for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow."
September 18, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word bearward
I hope my life is going in a bearward direction.
September 18, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word floccinaucinihilipilification
You'll find dictionary definitions here: floccinaucinihilipilification
September 18, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word pumpkin
I used this term on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) to indicate the time I really really no joke had to stop talking to my friend and go to bed. (In reference to Cinderella's midnight deadline).
"FYI, pumpkin is 11:30 tonight. I have a test first thing tomorrow."
September 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word lookupable
From the Wordnik Kickstarter: http://kck.st/1US7Dra
"About this project
We want to find a million words that haven't been included in major English dictionaries and give them each a home on the Internet.
At Wordnik we believe that every word of English deserves to be lookupable!
The internet is, for all practical purposes, infinite. Wordnik can and should include every English word that's ever been used."
September 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word looking
The king of toilets!!
September 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word power ballad
Looking up the Google Book Ngrams for this, I found one instance in 1887. However, that example isn't really about "power ballads", it's describing the "power (that) ballads" had over the people:
" Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun mentions in one of his words, the instance of a person who “believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation “ *-a passage that has been frequently quoted to exemplify the great power ballads exercised over the public mind, more especially, it may be added, on such burning questions as religion and politics.” "
-The Broadside Ballads of Devonshire and Cornwall: With Notes as to Their Collection, &c
By Thomas Nadauld Brushfield
Otherwise, this first appears in 1985 in books about song writing, then Billboard magazine.
September 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word blerd
"It would be a long time before the word “blerd,” a portmanteau of the words black and nerd, would enter into my vocabulary, and when I did start to see it sprinkled among Myspace profiles and Livejournal groups, the word and its emerging popularity didn’t bring me any relief."
September 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word soi-disant
@BCDreyer just used this on Twitter and I didn't know what it meant.
https://twitter.com/BCDreyer/status/644183607540625408
"And New York, the soi-disant center of the civilized universe, is not, by a long shot, off the hook."
September 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word CONMEBOL
CONMEBOL is a regional fútbol federation. The name comes from CONfederacíon sudaMEricana de fútBOL.
September 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Filoli
An historical horticultural landmark near San Francisco: http://www.filoli.org/
Filoli is short for FIght, LOve, LIve: "Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.”
September 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Ohaton
A company found on the Wikipedia list of portmanteaus "Ohaton, from the Osler, Hammond and Nanton company."
September 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word how Can I hear the word pronounced
Hi tlaufen!
Wordnik pronunciations are currently limited to American Heritage DIctionary robot man voice, but if you're dying to hear hippopotomonstrosesquipedialiophobia outloud, here's me saying it a few minutes ago: https://soundcloud.com/tankhughes/hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliop
September 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user lanamcentire@mail.com
Hi lanamcentire!
Wordnik search is case-sensitive. You'll find the most crappy information on the lowercase crap page, not so much on cRAP or crAp. This matters for capitonyms, words that change if capitalized (like Polish/polish, Herb/herb, March/march, Catholic/catholic, etc).
If you want, you can write in the "Discuss" area of capital-C Crap and populate that page with its own crap.
September 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word vade mecum
I consider my laptop to be a modern vade mecum. http://tankhughes.com/?p=465
September 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word qué mono
"Qué mono" is the way to say "How cute!" in Spanish. I like it because if mono is treated like a noun instead of an adjective, it could mean "WHAT MONKEY?"
September 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word truthiness
The new Howl.fm podcast 'Words of the Years" dicusses the inclusion of truthiness in 2005 by the American Dialect Society and in 2006 by Merriam-Webster. http://howl.fm/audio/playlists/4163/words-of-the-years
"Stephen Colbert's word for truth based on intuition not evidence or reason."
September 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word grammar Nazi
...and Soup nazi! Yes, and the NFL has the Oakland Raiders, Minnesota Vikings and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Pirates of the Caribbean maybe belongs to the list, with their warm and fuzzy modern animatronic public image.
September 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word ghostbuster
I love the skepticism embedded in the Wiktionary definition.
September 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Kickstarter
Go support the Wordnik Kickstarter! http://kck.st/1US7Dra
Here's why I support Wordnik: http://www.encyclopediabriannica.com/?p=105
September 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list chocolate-phrases
chocolate leg
September 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word chocolate leg
In 2008, Dutch futból player Robbin van Persie scored a goal with his right leg (his nondominant foot), which he called his chocolate leg. I remember it meaning something like: it looks about the same as a normal leg, but it has less content, it's a little hollow inside.
“I know I can shoot with my right leg. Of course my left one’s better but it’s down to your belief in the power of your wrong leg. In Holland we call it your chocolate leg.”
http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/74836/Robin-joy-at-his-hot-chocolate
September 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word tone-deaf
The official definitions above do not include the sense of "an inappropriate response to a situation which does not take into account how that response will look in that particular context or in the bigger picture."
Examples of tone-deaf responses by politicians to the Charleston shooting here: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tone-deaf-responses-to-the-charleston-shooting-have-been-downright-baffling-2015-6
(trigger warning: references to gun violence)
September 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word friable
"The most challenging part “was the emotional intensity of recovering the fossils themselves,” says Elliott. “There was so much material and it was friable and delicate. And every day, we realized that we were pulling out another 40 or 60 fragments of this thing that was going to be incredible.”
from the Sept 10, 2015 Atlantic article describing the discoveries of Homo naledi in South Africa. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-hominin/404362/
September 12, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word I could care less
http://tankhughes.com/?p=1649
September 11, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word in broad daylight
This phrase is used to express shock at something happening (crime, nudity, drunken behavior) in the middle of the day, instead of at night, when the sky is dark and people are more comfortable with unpunished crimes happening. As if the sun should function as a security camera and prevent all crime.
I would love to see if there are early examples (early 1800s) that only use the phrase to pin down the time of day.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=in+broad+daylight&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cin%20broad%20daylight%3B%2Cc0
September 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list the-end--1
They all end in eth (ð) except for absinthe which ends in theta (θ).
They're all verbs except absinthe and scythe.
Absinthe is a recent addition (1842) from French.
September 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Sinecure
Hi Lilt. Capitalization matters on Wordnik. You'll notice all the Examples and Tweets on this page have Sinecure with a capital S. The word sinecure has a full page of information when written in lowercase.
Case-sensitive words are called capitonyms. Polish vs polish, March vs march, I vs i.
Happy word searching!
September 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word grammar Nazi
Thinking about a list with grammar Nazi, feminazi, software pirate and similarly less-severe villains. Minnesota Vikings, maybe.
September 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word quiddity
I feel like this is my stretch of English language highway to keep tidy for the year. So far, so good.
September 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list mountweazels
I forgot the word for these! I was reminded today in an episode of The Allusionist, a very fine etymological podcast by Helen Zaltzman. http://www.theallusionist.org/
One missing from this list is jungftak: a Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing, on the right side, and the female only one wing, on the left side.
September 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word talmbout
'Hell You Talmbout' is a powerful 2015 protest song by Janelle Monae & Wondaland Records. You can hear it on soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/wondalandarts/hell-you-talmbout
Talmbout is a shortened version of talkin' 'bout, a shorter version of 'talking about.' Phonetically, the n in talkin becomes an m in anticipation of the b. Your mouth is open for the a, then you close it, and suddenly you're making a b. Very convenient.
September 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list rubber-phrases
The Rubber Room. - A 2010 documentary about rooms full of teachers who are waiting to have an official hearing for misconduct in the classroom. They can no longer teach, but they are tenured so they have to be paid, and they must spend all day in one room with other teachers in the same situation for weeks or up to 10 years.
The term rubber room also refers to padded-wall rooms in psychiatric hospitals.
September 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word prodical
I don't think it's a sicnifigant problem.
September 4, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list fans-and-superfans
A lot of musical examples here too: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/beliebers-directioners-barbz-whats-with-pops-fanbase-nickname-craze/260798/
September 3, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word biblical
Daily Express headline on September 3, 2015, as tweeted by JK Rowling (https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/639128612172599296)
"Chaos as 'biblical' migrant crisis spreads across Europe"
Biblical often means
1. on an epic scale "of biblical proportions"
2. euphemism for a sexual relationship "he knew her in the biblical sense"
Neither is the linguistic legacy the Bible was probably going for.
September 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word foudroyant
English -yant words from French: abeyant, buoyant, chatoyant, clairvoyant, flamboyant, foudroyant.
September 2, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word burglarious
I thought my favorite burglar-related word would forever be (Sp.) ladrón, but I was wrong. That word is uproariously burglarious.
September 1, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word farch
As of this year, I say farch when I want to swear but the situation does not allow for it, or does not quite call for it. A personal minced oath. It was not an intentional use at first, but more of a long drawn out faaaaaa...rch when a situation is slowly revealed to be more terrible than previously anticipated.
August 31, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list naphthenic-acid-fraction-compounds
True! None of the dictionaries Wordnik pulls from are technical dictionaries like Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary. My day job involves chemical reports, so I made a list of unique terms I've come across through that: https://wordnik.com/lists/editing-technical-chemical-reports
Few of them have dictionary entries, but they have clickable pages. You can add your own definition in the Comments section to help future Wordniks interested in naphtha.
August 31, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word pauldron
I was unaware that cauldron had any cousins, but here it is.
August 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word baver
Acknowledgment appreciated, @FuriousPeng.
-@TankHughes
August 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word password frustration
You said it, bilby. And what's wrong with clearing the front page of international spam in the process?
August 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list p--f--compounds
Nooooo... It's my own self-made DaVinci Code National Treasure hunt, and it's slowly murdering me. I haven't left myself enough clues. I do too many weird things with language to narrow down that it might be.
It could be song lyrics, it could be Spoonerized, it could be an innovation on a compound, it could be non-English, there are just too many possibilities. I like how big this list has gotten, though. Wordniks are swell folks.
August 27, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list to-eat--or-not-to-eat
spaghetti strap
August 26, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word humpiest
If you'd like to ruin the heart-wrenchingly romantic song "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds, please think of this word when you next hear it.
August 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word trap card
In trading card games (namely Yu-Gi-Oh!), a card you place face down on the board so the other player cannot see what it is, but it can be brought into play when certain conditions are met. For example, your opponent thinks they are attacking you undefended, but they fall into your trap and you crush them.
Used in the phrases "you just activated my trap card!" and now "you have triggered/set off my trap card!"
August 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word baver
Busy baver.
Baver dam.
Eager baver.
Not the sam.
August 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word put your leg in the fire
Brought this up a few times yesterday and here's the best answer:
A merger between put your feet to the fire as a high-stakes testing environment, and add another log to the fire meaning to add a new idea to the mix.
August 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word omoplata
For a moment, I thought post-temporal meant that omoplata was a time-travelling fishbone. Then I remembered there are temporal lobes of the brain. It's a boring non-time-jumping fishbone.
August 24, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word put your leg in the fire
I heard this repeatedly in a meeting this morning, used like stick your neck out in the context of volunteering to do QA between three websites. Before someone said that, I said "I know I'll probably kick myself for mentioning this, but..." so maybe kick primed a leg-based sacrificial idiom? Is it a translation or corporate jargon or a mixed metaphore?
August 24, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word lovat
Lovat or leave it?
August 21, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word paper-and
This can't be right.
August 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list fictional-acronyms
I guess I was thinking of acronyms that go under the radar (ha!) and that aren't immediately recognizable as acronyms from the sound of them. Most (if not all) seem like backronyms.
LCARS is a hybrid, part initialism. L-CARS. like T-Mobile, b-boy, or the Animaniacs referring to Dr. Scratchansniff as a p-sychiatrist.
August 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word gregueria
I learned about these in my Spanish Lit class in Granada! My favorite was something like ... Remember well that the first swords were held by angels.
August 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word wug
This is a wug.
Now there is another one.
There are two of them.
There are two ____.
August 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word collarless
Do collarless green sheep sleep furiously as well?
August 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Uncle Fucker's Chucklehut
A fictional stereotypical comedy club name. The point is to make fun of the over-the-top names a lot of comedy clubs have. Real ones: Rooster T. Feathers, Laugh Factory, Acme Comedy Club, Wisecrackers, Zanies, Helium, Hyena's, FunnyBone, Hilarities, Go Bananas, etc. Presumably during the 1980s comedy boom, a lot more comedy clubs popped up, and the multitude meant they were more likely to have ridiculous names.
Kevin Pollak uses the term a lot during his video podcast interviews on the Kevin Pollak Chat Show. He attributes it to another comedian, whose name escapes me.
August 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word spunktrumpet
Never apologize for creative swearing, ry. Jennifer Lawrence recently swore up a storm for charity on Conan, and my favorite of her impromptu expletives sounded like steak twat. https://youtu.be/PlTuiW7oTW0 I love the dismay of those around her. Fuck 'em.
I just wondered if something had popularized it lately, since it's showing up on Twitter and Urban Dictionary.
August 18, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word clarify
Oh god, I never would have thought of clarify as a synonym of defecate. #buttertrauma
August 18, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Waldemar
I've never known a Waldemar
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhar
I'd rather see than be one.
August 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list •open-list-madeupical-collective-nouns
a murder of pilcrows is great, as is a fling of cow pies.
My cousin enjoys: a smug of Prii.
August 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word spunktrumpet
Was this used on a TV show or in a movie recently? Seems to be spiking among young'uns on Twitter.
August 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word vibrator
Outside of industrial settings, vibrator means sex toy. Only Wiktionary includes that definition.
August 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list what-the-dickens--1
HaHA! I affect the universe!! *mad scientist background lightning*
August 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the user sandyjmc11books
That's a lovely new word, Sandy. If you copy your comment and put in the Comments area of the empty page for seafloorese, you'll be helping future visitors to learn the meaning of that word in context. Same for ostracon.
August 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word chuzzle
Ooh! cheatlaw is a cutthroat, as are lackwit, puzzle-wit, shatter-wit, wantwit, and our own (well, qms') fictional adventurer, Ernest Bafflewit: https://wordnik.com/lists/ernest-bafflewit--1 This bodes well, Thanks slumry and ruzuzu for not forcing me to wait post-commute for this knowledge.
August 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word weakfish
This word is an opportunity to expand your insult vocabulary, on analogy with weaksauce.
August 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word chuzzle
Martin Chuzzlewit is the eponymous protagonist of a Dickens' novel. Is Chuzzlewit a cutthroat? Seems like it. What does chuzzle mean? It looks like a frequentative verb, like guzzle comes from gust (to taste, savor).
Chuzzle is now a match 3 online game, so it's harder to search for academic answers.
Chuzzle -> choose? Martin Choosewit? Did Dickens make up chuzzle, or will I find it in the OED tonight?
August 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word dykon
Not a radish.
August 12, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word mistify
The irrigation systems at grocery stores mistify me.
August 12, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Black Panther
Also the name of the Marvel superhero Black Panther, real name T'Challa, who is the prince (then king) of Wakanda.
August 12, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word carmine
Where in the World is Carmine Sandiego?
August 11, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word and taking it home in a snug wee basket
Awwwwwwwwww <3
August 11, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word TankHughes
I started Monday Comics in January 2010, along with a lot of other projects (like tagging convowel on Wordnik). It's the one new year's I've taken seriously as an impetus for a fresh start. I started the comic because I had a lot of mediocre jokes & ideas that I was waiting on to ripen, but they weren't ripening, they were just taking up brainspace. By posting rough drafts of their potential, I could let them go and make room for more (and possibly better) jokes & ideas. Thus: I keep doing it. It keeps everything moving. I have pages and pages of unpublished ideas and they are all terrible and I try to keep them quarantined from the public.
TankHughes comes from my last name, Hughes, and my love of the WWII tank aesthetic. The combination came from a typo during an AIM chat in high school. Additionally, I like that Tank Hughes sounds very tough and militaristic, but if you say it outloud, it's a cute baby voice thanking you. One time, comedian Doug Benson said it outloud and the whole audience got it: http://tankhughes.com/?p=619
Thank you for asking. Why are you curious?
August 11, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word jards
Nobody wants to get kicked in the jards.
Somebody should make a horse anatomy list, they have so many unique terms.
August 11, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list all-that-hoo-ha
hootenanny?
August 11, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list not-quite-the-real-thang
MacGuffin
August 11, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word unwieldily
An appropriately unwieldy word.
August 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list wordnik-word-list
SOME FULL ANAGRAMS:
Drink Ow.
Ink-Word.
Dork Win.
Work Din.
Kind Row.
Rid Know.
Ink-word's my favorite. (It's a cutthroat).
August 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list anagrams-for-wordnik
Word I Ink <3
August 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word huehuehue
kk (ㅋㅋ) in Korean.
August 7, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Moonerspism
Spoonerism spoonerized,
August 6, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list hocus-pocus-i-see-a-crocus
dilly-dally
August 5, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word ornithocoprophilous
adj. Birdshit-loving? Used to describe plants that grow well in bird manure-rich soil.
ornithocaprophilous would be birdgoat-loving.
August 4, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word lap the pace car
It feels like this should be an idiom but it isn't... yet.
August 3, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list chelonians
Do we have a list of things that sound like alien races? Chelonian belongs there.
August 3, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word glass cannon
A term (I've seen mostly in gaming) for a weapon or character that has a lot of offense, but very little defense. Hard to defend against, but easy to defeat.
July 31, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list the-masses--the-common-or-ordinary-people
villains publicans peasants townies plebes proles denizens citizens tax-payers
July 30, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list jaw--1
mandible, mandibular, TMJ, lockjaw
July 30, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word epanorthosis
That was so incredible I need hyperbole, no, epanorthosis, to describe how it felt.
July 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list overlapping-open-compounds
No trouble, vendingmachine. I hadn't thought about lists clinically until you brought it up. It is an interesting situation, but I'm not sure what would wish for to change it.
Also, I make foolish puns on a weekly basis and should not be feared: http://tankhughes.com/?cat=519
July 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word barrad
I found more hat lists using toque and fedora.
https://www.wordnik.com/lists/hats-and-headgear
July 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list overlapping-open-compounds
This is under "New Lists" on the community page, so it is new, but it's true after they fall off of that list, lists are timeless and their changes are only traceable through "Recently Listed Words"
A space station wagon sounds like a sister product to the Winnebago from Spaceballs.
July 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word technically beautiful
That is a STUNNINGLY bad slogan.
Ottawa: You have to go there (for work).
Ottawa: Conveniently located near an airport.
July 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list shape-words--1
napiform = shaped like a turnip.
July 24, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list fantastic-places
Bialya from DC.
July 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Johnlock Conspiracy
This is the fan theory that the writers of BBC Sherlock have always intended, from the beginning, that John Watson and Sherlock Holmes (shipping name Johnlock) end up in a romantic relationship on the show.
July 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list loud-phrases
Firm believers in the Johnlock Conspiracy on BBC Sherlock call all of the subtle costume and set design choices (e.g. green carnation wallpaper) the loudest subtext in television.
July 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Benelux
I want to make a list for Benelux and Delmarva but what else would go there? Portmanteau places? Three words squished together? turducken hmmm. The croc-gu-phant was a favorite book of mine: http://www.amazon.com/Croc-gu-phant-Sarah-Ball-Books-Sara/dp/086724125X
July 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word tyuyamunite
I misspelled tyuyamunite in an adult spelling bee a few years ago. It was pronounced as "T"-"U"-ya-moon-ite, something a gangster would say. I never had a chance. It's named after Tyuya-Muyun, the city in Kyrgyzstan where it was discovered. I'm always hoping it will come up in conversation.
July 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list wedge-schwa
Sure, why not!
I hurt my foot and I'm trying to keep my brain occupied.
I'm avoiding instances of schwar in things like other and under but otherwise, have at it.
July 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Puddleglum
Puddleglum is a marshwiggle.
July 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word chin-music
Another definition is a pitch in baseball that is high and inside and makes the batter back up so they don't get hit in the face. It's chin music because it's so close, they can hear the air whoosh by. Sometimes it's intentional if the batter has been crowding the plate. Sometimes it's just a wild pitch.
July 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list no--nay--never
bilby Wordnik doesn't seem to like apostrophes in headwords.
July 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list perty
Sweet. I've had a soft spot for Perth ever since the demonym episode of the now defunct Lingua Franca podcast. People from Perth can be called Perthlings.
July 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list perty
Perth? Or must it sound like pert?
July 16, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Professor Stealwater
A villain who has caused the California drought, as created on a Comedy Bang Bang podcast episode in October 2014, "Y'all Heard Any of These Names Before?" http://www.earwolf.com/episode/yall-heard-any-of-these-names-before/
July 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word plutography
See also: Rich Kids of Instagram: http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/
July 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word I think I broke Wordnik
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Broke the internet.
I think that's the new American dream, so congratulations to vendingmachine and alexz.
July 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Ba-dum tsss
I'm looking forward to a future when a robo-stand-up comic ends their joke with DRUM DRUM CYMBAL.
July 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list banes
I am a fan of Anatoly Liberman's post on tautological compounds, which includes henbane as perhaps meaning death death: http://blog.oup.com/2006/06/between_beriber/
July 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word giggle loop
re: gigglement
The harder one resists the urge to laugh, the funnier the idea of what would have happened HAD you laughed becomes, resulting in an even stronger urge to laugh. Coined by the British sitcom Coupling."
Coupling ran on BBC2 from 2000-2004. The Episode in question is from Series 1, Episode 3: "Sex, Death and Nudity", which aired in May 2000.
July 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word predrank
I heard this more as prefunk or prefunc during college in 2005. Related: disco nap.
July 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word periodic symbol words
I forgot I did this.
July 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word yonderblown
2004 on Urban Dictionary: "To be utterly obliterated to the point that you need assistance in your decision making."
It sounds like it should have been made two centuries earlier, and related to wanderlust, but it just means very drunk.
July 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word languaging
Well I am a quack.
July 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word languaging
Resynergizing the instrument of languaging to pulse the overall scope of the work and leverage versioned deliverables.
July 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word languaging
I... just deleted my own comment like a damn fool.
tl;dr Languaging is gross corporate jargon speak. I heard this yesterday in a team-building meeting:
"That languaging has judgment in it."
July 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word dux
My brother was part of the Dead Language Society in high school, and I memorized the phrase on the back of his shirt:
"Sibili si ergo, fortibuses inero. Nobili demis trux: sewatis enim? Cowsendux!"
It's nonsense in Latin, but if you say it out loud it's a dumb catchy poem that you've made a suite for in your permanent memory banks.
July 8, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word erinmckean
Wahoo! champagne and cream puffs for everyone!!
July 1, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list occupational-hazards--1
gamekeeper's thumb is the same injury as skier's thumb.
June 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word tmesis
In English, tmesis mostly happens when the inserted word is placed in the syllable right before the primary stress syllable:
fan-TAS-tic, so fan-frickin-TAS-tic.
But sometimes right before the morpheme boundary is a more natural place to break up the word:
un-/be-LIEV-a-ble, so: un-frickin-/be-LIEV-a-ble OR un-/be-frickin-LIEV-a-ble.
In English, compounds normally have a primary stress on the first word, so tmesis doesn't work out so well.
*BASE-frickin-ball, *FIRE-damn-fighter, *PAN-da-damn-cub.
June 26, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list sounds-of-silence
Excellent input, team!
I was thinking about silence because of an episode of the Comedy Bang Bang podcast where their 'intern' Gino Lombardi is supposed to quietly provide water for the guests then leave, but ends up co-hosting the episode. When reminded he should be quiet, Gino invokes 'podcast silence' but then continues to talk: http://comedybangbang.wikia.com/wiki/Podcast_Silence
June 26, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word disspelling
Would another example be Oblivia Neutron Bomb for the star of Xanadu?
June 25, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word plinth
Okay okay, I have a new answer for you, ruzuzu. Put the plinth down, don't hurt your back.
You: "Also, how do you feel about the word plinth?"
Me: "It's alright, but I wouldn't put it on a pedestal."
(See also: rimshot)
June 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list plosives-from-front-to-back
I'm not sure how to answer that, ruzuzu. Are you getting me a plinth for my birthday?
I've never thought much about plinths, but I hope that there are Corinthian plinths somewhere, and absinthe labyrinths.
June 23, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word bubblegum
Bubblegum was not initially a flavor, it just described the kind of gum it is. What flavor is bubblegum? Pink sugar?
June 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list clothing-missing-parts
I don't have a pair of seatless chainsaw trousers right now vendingmachine, but they sound like part of a Wallace & Gromit caper, so I'll look into it.
A hoodless hoodie is like dehydrated water. Why define it by the thing it doesn't have and therefore is not? Hoods make the hoodie. There are other zip-up pull-over sweater/jacket names available.
June 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list clothing-missing-parts
Woo! This is grand. This list only exists because I wore a strapless bra yesterday. #BehindTheList
June 17, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list secret-club
Speak, friend, and enter.
Scott Pilgrim clip showing secret passwords so hip they're easy to break: https://youtu.be/rX_F2YYUUMQ
June 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word jhatka
I read the etymology text wrong several times. See how you do.
June 12, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word gimme pig
An eggcorn for guinea pig in the test subject sense, as in "gimme that, I'll try it out."
June 12, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word steganography
Last year I couldn't remember this word, and tried to figure out what my brain meant by "like cryptography, but also dinosaurs."
(See stegosaurus)
June 10, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word inner momologue
That voice that tells you to sit up straight and press your shirts and heat the plates in the oven before serving a fancy dinner. It sounds like your mom, but it only represents the critical parts of your mom that focus on how you should appear and behave in polite company, not the lovingkindness.
June 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list what-superheroes-are-made-of
Nth metal is from the planet Thanagar (DC universe), where Hawkman and Hawkgirl are from. It's sort of like iron.
Should mithril be here, or is Middle Earth fantasy too far from superheroics?
June 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word DSNA
DSNA can also stand for the Dictionary Society of North America: http://www.dictionarysociety.com/
June 9, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word hiberdating
It sounds like you have a cold.
May 30, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word potluck
I'm disappointed every time I go to a potluck where there are no potstickers.
May 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word bitcoin
internet money?
May 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word byre
"Where you put the cows." - Erin McKean
May 29, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list words-that-lost-me-spelling-bees
I'm glad I can help with the healing, ruzuzu. I carried around my camoflague mistake for a long time.
May 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word world suck
Also written as worldsuck. The online community of Nerdfighteria, home to the Nerd Fighters, has established the Foundation to Decrease World Suck. http://fightworldsuck.org/.
It's a curious compound, maybe related like world peace, using suck as an mass noun.
May 22, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word pack-duck
Is there a list of non-animal objects with animal names? This and frogs from clothing go on that list.
May 21, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word Fragonard
This sounds like a great insult. "Unhand me, thou simpering Fragonard!" but then I look up his paintings that have soft light, like vaseline on the lens, and I feel a bit bad for wanting to drag his name in the mud just for fun.
May 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list jack--1
Howbout one-eyed Jacks found in playing cards?
May 20, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word purrito
Related: the tacocat palindrome. One more and it's an official feline Mexican food trend.
May 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word exR
This is the ship name for Enjolras and Grantaire, two of the barricade boys from the book/play/movie Les Miserables. The x in exR is a common element in shipping that connect the two names in a pair (e.g. KirkxSpock). e is for Enjolras and R is for Grantaire, a pun off of his name sounding like "big r" in French (grand r). I don't know how you would pronounce it, maybe just as an initialism. I don't personally ship it, but there are strong OTP believers wherever fandoms are found.
May 19, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list that-really-takes-the-cake
This list makes me so happy <3.You take the cake, ruzuzu.
May 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word mountingly
What a jolly word to misinterpret. I'm not sure how I could ever take this word seriously if I met it in the wild.
May 15, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word indefatigability
Indefatigibility. It makes me a little tired and nauseous getting through all the stressed syllables in this word.
May 14, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word architect
"...from the way we architect our services." As heard in the 3 hour meeting I just got out of.
May 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list eccentric-girls-names
I've always thought remedy would be a lovely name for a storybook character.
May 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the list words-that-sound-dirty-but-aren-t-2
Maybe rapier? As discussed in the Alec Baldwin episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (starting about 5:40): http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/alec-baldwin-just-a-lazy-shiftless-bastard
Several industrial valve parts end in cock: blow-cock turncock stopcock
May 13, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word justificaketion
I went to a wedding in August 2010 where the mother of the bride had baked 7 different cakes. ...Well you have to try a little bit of all of them, you don't want to be rude. That's justificaketion.
Related: anticipicaketion or caketicipation, which is the antsy feeling you experience during the reception when you're waiting to try the 7 cakes, but it's not time to eat them yet.
May 13, 2015
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