Comments by tankhughes

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  • 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

  • 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

  • "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

  • NOT my last name but pretty close.

    Brain hugeous.

    September 19, 2017

  • 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

  • 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

  • Hi!

    September 11, 2017

  • 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

  • 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

  • He is right. alexz. It's Spanish for handsome. The villain in Three Amigos is "El Guapo."

    August 21, 2017

  • enough already! :)

    August 7, 2017

  • "This page is helpfuler than I thought it would be." - friend I told about Wordnik.

    August 3, 2017

  • Welcome over here, QPheevr!

    July 20, 2017

  • See also: Dragon Bro comics by Floccinaucinihilifilipication on tumblr: http://floccinaucinihilipilificationa.tumblr.com/tagged/dragon-bros

    June 30, 2017

  • See also: mlem

    June 5, 2017

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • backlash against the group messaging app Slack. http://www.slacklash.com/

    May 2, 2017

  • 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

  • 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

  • A nickname for 2017 US Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

    April 14, 2017

  • 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

  • See: nut paragraph

    March 21, 2017

  • 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

  • *eats a chocolate old-fashioned* good idea, bilby.

    March 17, 2017

  • An American punk rock band.

    March 10, 2017

  • nippleless

    March 7, 2017

  • Raynaud's phenomenon is often a sequela.

    March 3, 2017

  • 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

  • Short for International Correspondence Writing Month: http://incowrimo.org/

    Every February

    February 21, 2017

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • You get em, qms. Sub-limerick the bastard.

    February 8, 2017

  • I think you're thinking of couture, pumpumrock. Good definition.

    February 8, 2017

  • It seems like a lot of these are backformations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations

    February 3, 2017

  • See the comments about Lawcast on WordSmith2099's page: https://wordnik.com/users/WordSmith2099

    January 30, 2017

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Sometimes also called puzzle monkey tree, which might be a cutthroat compound - a tree that would puzzle a monkey.

    January 3, 2017

  • took me a second, ruzuzu, but it was worth it.

    December 29, 2016

  • A baby was born on December 24, 2016 and now has Euphemia as her middle name.

    December 27, 2016

  • 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 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.

    December 13, 2016

  • Just saw this video of kulning by Swedish person Jonna Jinton.

    https://youtu.be/6fglBL7eQIA

    December 11, 2016

  • buttwoman also means fishwife: http://tankhughes.com/?p=983

    December 7, 2016

  • cherry+pumpkin+apple pie.

    December 6, 2016

  • Name of a comedy show with Seth Morris, Jason Mantzoukas and Nick Kroll. It's a clipped compound. MOR-ZOUKS-NICK.

    December 6, 2016

  • 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

  • For more examples, look at this list: https://wordnik.com/lists/contranyms--1

    November 23, 2016

  • It's the fictional planet where those gassy, baby-faced aliens come from in Doctor Who. (Season 1 of New Who).

    November 14, 2016

  • What's going on with you, lady-birds. Why you called lady-cow sometimes?

    November 14, 2016

  • 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

  • You're my only hope.

    November 13, 2016

  • 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

  • Paging qms or other poet for hollop-based limerick. Request from Twitter: https://twitter.com/GillHoffs/status/792865904598118401

    October 31, 2016

  • Are there any greek/latin adjectives describing something that is tea-like? Like nimbiform, vulpine, cretaceous?

    October 30, 2016

  • so dek and lede are both editorial nicknames that are spelled differently to denote their technical journalistic meaning. OK.

    October 24, 2016

  • Most examples are misspelling of controversy.

    October 24, 2016

  • More legible as co-religionist.

    October 24, 2016

  • Also contra-remonstrance.

    October 24, 2016

  • Misspelling of consequentialist.

    October 24, 2016

  • Another name for a grimme, which is a West African antelope.

    October 24, 2016

  • Misspelling of cogent mostly, in the examples.

    October 24, 2016

  • Misspelling of conflagration.

    October 24, 2016

  • Misspelling of condescension?

    October 24, 2016

  • Also misspelling of communism.

    October 23, 2016

  • Misspelling of colloborate.

    October 23, 2016

  • Misspelling of coenamour.

    October 23, 2016

  • Misspelling of cochineal.

    October 23, 2016

  • Typo of outdoor or outdoors?

    October 22, 2016

  • Misspelling of audacity.

    October 22, 2016

  • Abbreviation of opportunity in tweets and newspaper ads.

    October 22, 2016

  • Misspelling of ophidiophobic?

    October 22, 2016

  • Misspelling of ontophany.

    October 22, 2016

  • Misspelling of odontode?

    October 22, 2016

  • Misspelling of ongoing.

    October 22, 2016

  • MORE LIKE WINE CELLAR, AMIRIGHT?

    October 22, 2016

  • nunc millennialism

    October 21, 2016

  • See numismatist.

    October 21, 2016

  • nulliparity?

    October 21, 2016

  • http://brendanoneill.co.uk/archives April 2012 article says it.

    October 21, 2016

  • Misspelling of nubivagant.

    October 21, 2016

  • Then wouldn't it be nostrich? Neither has citations outside of the previous comment.

    October 20, 2016

  • Some example are hypyhen line breaks on cognoscible.

    October 20, 2016

  • either nuked or part of a larger phrase like three-nooked or four-nooked.

    October 20, 2016

  • Misspelling of noctivagant?

    October 20, 2016

  • Misspelling of nitpick.

    October 20, 2016

  • Is this a superlative of the slur, or a misspelling of biggest?

    October 20, 2016

  • 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

  • Misspelling of neologism?

    October 20, 2016

  • Yiddish term.

    October 20, 2016

  • Misspelling of garrulous.

    October 20, 2016

  • Tagalog word.

    October 20, 2016

  • mucilaginous?

    October 19, 2016

  • Line break on homophobia.

    October 19, 2016

  • mooch

    October 19, 2016

  • monopoly tourism

    October 19, 2016

  • Misspelling of moiety.

    October 19, 2016

  • Misspelling of mistake. Seems intentional often for. Irony? For humor.

    October 19, 2016

  • Misspelling of misshapen.

    October 19, 2016

  • Line breaks with deterministic or maybe monastic misspelling.

    October 19, 2016

  • Mostly misspelling of milquetoast but might refer to milk toast.

    October 19, 2016

  • An eggcorn for first of all. What an adorably adoptable eggcorn.

    October 19, 2016

  • Wouldn't it be double L like mellifluous?

    October 18, 2016

  • Korean word.

    October 18, 2016

  • Has anyone made a list of post-positive adjectives? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpositive_adjective Someone ought to.

    October 17, 2016

  • Tagalog word.

    October 16, 2016

  • Pompeii brothel?

    October 16, 2016

  • luminance

    October 16, 2016

  • Slovenian word?

    October 16, 2016

  • liminal? liminally?

    October 16, 2016

  • Limarin is a drug.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of leverage.

    October 16, 2016

  • leucocytozoons?

    October 16, 2016

  • Mostly meant as lecherers or lecturers but it also seems like an old spelling of lecherer as in lechery.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of lesson or lesion.

    October 16, 2016

  • German "leading-word style" "was coined by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig and applied to the field of Biblical textual studies."

    October 16, 2016

  • Variant of leg up or leg-up.

    October 16, 2016

  • Racist urban legend that a black woman named her child "Le-a" pronounced "Ledasha."

    October 16, 2016

  • Spanish word, dimunutive of leche meaning milk.

    October 16, 2016

  • Spanish word.

    October 16, 2016

  • Hard-to-translate Korean word.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of Kubrickian or kubrickian.

    October 16, 2016

  • See klabautermann?

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of kerygmatic.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of Greek kerygma.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of kibosh.

    October 16, 2016

  • Also juvenescence.

    October 16, 2016

  • Related to Latin ipse, which is a reflective pronoun or something like that.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of iontophoresis.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of inviolable.

    October 16, 2016

  • interfaction misspelling?

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspellin of inimical, enemy-like.

    October 16, 2016

  • Short for infra dig or infra dignitatem, a Latin phrase meaning "beneath one's dignity."

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of indumetal?

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of inchoate?

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of incantatory.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of anastatic?

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of impulsive.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of imperturbability I think.

    October 16, 2016

  • Misspelling of impediment.

    October 16, 2016

  • I hear this more often as idiolect.

    October 15, 2016

  • 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

  • Related to hypokeimenon?

    October 13, 2016

  • Misspelling of hypnagogia?

    October 13, 2016

  • hydropic or hydrophobic ?

    October 12, 2016

  • Misspelling of hullabaloo.

    October 12, 2016

  • Variant of hootenanny ?

    October 12, 2016

  • Misspelling of hooliganism.

    October 12, 2016

  • 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

  • Seems to be mostly a ellisive misspelling of the suffix headedness.

    October 11, 2016

  • From "A Softer World" comic: http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=152

    October 11, 2016

  • sometimes short for racist sexual term Mexican hat shag. mostly a misspelling of hashtag.

    October 11, 2016

  • Yiddish word meaning if only; "Would that it be so".

    October 11, 2016

  • Turkish.

    October 11, 2016

  • grelot means tiny bell in French but also refers to a type of onion.

    October 10, 2016

  • Korean food name. Also written as guksu.

    October 10, 2016

  • Most examples are misspellings of golf.

    October 10, 2016

  • misspelling of gimcrack?

    October 10, 2016

  • Where mushrooms go to college?

    October 10, 2016

  • Misspelling of fungible?

    October 10, 2016

  • long s spelling of submission

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of frustule

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of frisson?

    October 9, 2016

  • frenchifried

    October 9, 2016

  • 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

  • Also written as fogbow or fog bow.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of fluctuate?

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelled backformation from flourescent. See fluoresce.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of fluviatile.

    October 9, 2016

  • In the video game Super Mario Bros., this is spelled fire flower.

    October 9, 2016

  • long s confusion? Do the examples mean silky?

    October 9, 2016

  • Literal translation of Korean food bulgogi.

    October 9, 2016

  • Variant spelling of fylfot meaning swastika?

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of fictitious.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of fibrous.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of fastidious.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of fastidious.

    October 9, 2016

  • Variant spelling of verkakte.

    October 9, 2016

  • emphasized variant of freezing.

    October 9, 2016

  • Maybe misspelling of exculpate?

    October 9, 2016

  • unable to explain -> inexplicable -> explick

    Backformation of the verb from the adjective.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of exophthalmic.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of exuberance.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of exequatur?

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of euxinic.

    October 9, 2016

  • Anglo-French relative of squeamish.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of equanimity?

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of ephemeral.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of ephemeral.

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of apercu / aperçu?

    October 9, 2016

  • Misspelling of enmity?

    October 9, 2016

  • Icelandic word meaning timeless or endless?

    October 9, 2016

  • Also written as comfortable bread.

    October 9, 2016

  • short for cuckholded? Been seeing it a lot on Twitter this political year.

    October 8, 2016

  • misspelling of emolument.

    October 7, 2016

  • misspelling of metaphorically?

    October 6, 2016

  • Some tweets are misspellings of drunk.

    October 5, 2016

  • 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

  • misspelling of densely.

    October 1, 2016

  • dégagé

    September 30, 2016

  • misspelling of tchotchke i think.

    September 26, 2016

  • Misspelling of caricature.

    September 20, 2016

  • "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

  • "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

  • I didn't know tony was a capitonym. Then I did. That time is now.

    September 8, 2016

  • "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

  • According to 1999 Wired Style, they made daemon into the backronym "Disk And Execution MONitor."

    August 31, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • feeling numb

    August 17, 2016

  • Misspelling of corporation.

    August 10, 2016

  • 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

  • Do we need a list of sheaths? I can only think of scabbard and holster.

    August 5, 2016

  • 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

  • Related song/video: https://youtu.be/mmvqb9Uzu8k

    (sounds creepy but it's not a creepy video)

    August 3, 2016

  • <3 think tank is my criminal mastermind name.

    August 2, 2016

  • I can't believe this isn't a dialect variant on dandelion.

    July 19, 2016

  • "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

  • test 1 2 3

    July 15, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Just learned this term as applied to the board game reviewer in this video: https://youtu.be/VHS2ZzXiw_Q

    July 12, 2016

  • 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

  • Time for your dental appointment.

    July 7, 2016

  • brainstormer vs barnstormer, who wins?

    July 6, 2016

  • *passes by several minutes later*

    June 28, 2016

  • Did anyone coin this before June 24, 2016, the morning of the result?

    June 24, 2016

  • 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

  • It's now a clipped compound for Chicago "TRibune ONline Content"

    June 2, 2016

  • As written by #HaggardHawks in Word Drops (2016),

    The adjective adamless means "entirely inhabited by women."

    June 1, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • An internet-wide inside joke.

    May 3, 2016

  • Can stand for the Catholic minced oath "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"

    -https://twitter.com/StanCarey/status/727584184890470400

    May 3, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • They Might Be Giants has a song about falling in love with a cephalophore. https://youtu.be/anWrcmKsYI8

    April 28, 2016

  • *hug bilby quite tightly*

    EVERYBODY JUMP ON OR THIS WORD WON'T MAKE ANY SENSE!

    It's Hug an Australian Day!!

    April 26, 2016

  • ram-cat is another name for a male cat. (OED 1672)

    April 24, 2016

  • I so love that it's called the Cow Palace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Palace

    April 20, 2016

  • NOT a dentist?

    April 12, 2016

  • A video of guinea pigs popcorning, via my guinea pig owner coworker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjC94EhAs00

    April 12, 2016

  • bilby: It's her CB handle.

    March 28, 2016

  • 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

  • i'm intrigued by the intersection of definitions 1 and 2.

    March 23, 2016

  • @Fritinancy: "TIL: San Francisco's newest art district is nicknamed DoReMi after the 3 neighborhoods it comprises: DOgpatch, PotREro Hill, MIssion."

    March 21, 2016

  • parrot fever

    March 21, 2016

  • sounds like an underweater fart or the beginning of Hercules Mulligan's intro rap from Hamilton.

    March 17, 2016

  • "Keep them in the dark and feed them shit."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_management

    March 14, 2016

  • Never heard of this until NotXButX tweeted it today.

    March 11, 2016

  • broadly specified

    March 10, 2016

  • outstanding?

    wonderful for having extra positive qualities, or missing something crucial.

    March 9, 2016

  • Used to describe the sudden bloom of wildflowers in Death Valley National Park due to recent rainfall.

    March 6, 2016

  • What?

    March 4, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • sabertooth?

    February 29, 2016

  • See serotonin.

    February 29, 2016

  • HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WORDNIK!

    February 29, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • A famous Variety headline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticks_nix_hick_pix

    February 26, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • Lake Forest Park in Washington state.

    February 25, 2016

  • bleach meant "to blacken" in the 1600s: https://twitter.com/E_Briannica/status/702886862914920448

    February 25, 2016

  • It's fun to say ong-oing. Reminds me of Homestar Runner's pronunciation of doing. Can't remember which episode.

    February 24, 2016

  • Are they designing any jet black jetpacks?

    February 18, 2016

  • vodka-flavored

    February 18, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • Are the Flickr images related to the tumbleweed?

    February 18, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Ah, so it's what happens to marine snow.

    February 15, 2016

  • 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

  • Qualified Security Assessor. Involved with PCI compliance.

    February 12, 2016

  • Secure Development Lifecycle

    February 12, 2016

  • 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

  • IANL - I am no lawyer. Variant of IMO or IMHO.

    February 11, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • Sorry bilby, you have to wait for April. Then we'll dogpile you.

    February 2, 2016

  • I always think this is a spoonerism for flag station.

    January 30, 2016

  • A sensible alternate spelling for broccoli. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BrVbeHwIEAAfyDu.jpg

    January 29, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • see also: Irish spotting

    January 25, 2016

  • 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

  • Pandas hate spam.

    January 24, 2016

  • I GUARD THIS WORD NOW.

    !KSIR NWO RUOY TA KCATTA

    January 21, 2016

  • The crew that creates the excellent cartoon Steven Universe. Their tumblr: http://stevencrewniverse.tumblr.com/

    January 20, 2016

  • cf bête noire and bete noire.

    January 13, 2016

  • 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

  • This definition is wrong, but fun!

    January 7, 2016

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Hillary Clinton just used this in the New Hampshire Democratic Debate. "...that President Obama has impaneled."

    December 20, 2015

  • 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.

    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.)

    December 20, 2015

  • A shart could also be said to be breechloading.

    December 17, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • Which Steven? I hope this one: https://youtu.be/QOAwHG95mlk

    December 14, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • As coined on a live episode of the Spontaneanation podcast (2015), Cackattackers are fans of the improviser Craig Cackowski.

    December 8, 2015

  • 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

  • Partyboob seems like a variant on party tit: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/804585-calm-your-tits

    December 5, 2015

  • This is the content I'm here for. A semordnilap worth backwardsitizing.

    December 4, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • On iZombie, the shipping name of Major, Ravi, and Liv.

    December 2, 2015

  • bastard + bitch + masturbator

    December 2, 2015

  • SoLoMo = social + local + mobile

    December 2, 2015

  • Thanksgiving + Halloween + Christmas.

    December 2, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • I saw this as an eggcorn for one fateful day on Tumblr.

    "But then. One faithful day, while I was working in the back room, I found this in my returns"

    November 22, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.  


    Gretchen McCullloch wrote about these terms in September 2015: http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/123065455961/brot3

    Related list: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/1-word-couple-names

    November 17, 2015

  • OT3 shipping name from Pretty Little Liars: Spencer x Emily x Aria

    November 17, 2015

  • OT3 shipping name from Pretty Little Liars: :Emily x Aria x Hanna

    November 17, 2015

  • OT3 shipping name from Pretty Little Liars: :Spencer x Hanna x Emily

    November 17, 2015

  • OT3 shipping name from Pretty Little Liars: :Spencer x Hanna x Aria

    November 17, 2015

  • 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

  • My personal favorite when discussing an uncountably large number. 


    s-mobile is a fun weird catch-all to explain new words in English.

    November 17, 2015

  • compulsion+push+urgency, as listed in the Portmanteau Dictionary, Thurner 1950.

    November 17, 2015

  • Michigan+Illinois+Indiana, as listed in the Portmanteau Dictionary, Thurner 1950.

    November 17, 2015

  • Texas+Arkansas+Louisiana, as listed in the Portmanteau Dictionary, Thurner 1950.

    November 17, 2015

  • optical+tactile+converter, as listed in the Portmanteau Dictionary, Thurner 1950.

    November 17, 2015

  • More information and lists on the logolepsy page.

    November 17, 2015

  • As learned in Series 11 of Only Connect, Lady Godiva is Cockney rhyming slang for a fiver, i.e., £5.

    November 16, 2015

  • As learned in Series 11 of Only Connect, bag of sand is Cockney rhyming slang for a grand, i.e., £1000.

    November 16, 2015

  • Ok, deleted.

    November 16, 2015

  • Hey sugar caddy, Hansel needs some sugar in his bowl.

    November 13, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • :/ 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

  • 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

  • haaaa.

    November 9, 2015

  • 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.


    I stole this definition from the OED.

    November 5, 2015

  • 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

  • A portmanteau name for an area in Northern California made up of LAfayette, MORaga, and OrINDA.

    November 4, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Labicose.

    October 29, 2015

  • Labreeding.

    October 29, 2015

  • Yeah, the almost Solveig page genuinely terrifies me. I appreciate the offer, but I can't afford your insurance policy.

    October 29, 2015

  • Even more than Carolingian minuscule, I like saying Carolingian thereminuscule, as some sort of musical instrument/alphabet hybrid.

    October 28, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Amazing wonderful.


    Non-industrially, a cockmate is a best friend and a shirlcock is a bird.

    October 28, 2015

  • 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

  • turn-

    (No surprise, it's a cutthroat).

    October 27, 2015

  • You're right! There's nothing here. Maybe this is a ghost user account for Halloween.

    October 26, 2015

  • This term (which refers to rape seed) is trying to ruin the good name of cake :(

    #triggerwarning

    October 26, 2015

  • 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

  • Maybe hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophilia, as the opposite of hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

    October 23, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • A B-movie released in 1984. Stands for: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller.

    October 16, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • From Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755)

    "oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."


    Rude.

    October 9, 2015

  • Algebraic! https://youtu.be/vpG1nR0p0OE

    October 8, 2015

  • 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

  • Wall Street Journal (May 27, 2011) "As Slang Changes More Rapidly, Expert Has to Watch His Language"
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704281504576331494075796656

    "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."

    October 7, 2015

  • I wish I had a reason to say Nietzsche niche. /niˈtʃə niʃ/

    October 7, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • (See discussion of American fulfill vs British fulfil popularity at the single-l fulfil page.)

    October 7, 2015

  • ¡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

  • 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.


    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?

    October 7, 2015

  • Minimal pairs with diacritical marks: lamé & lame, resumé & resume.

    October 5, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • His name is associated with a pastry, a brandy, and a short person psychological issue.

    October 3, 2015

  • sharklike a man, tark like a man, walk like a man my son ♫

    -(Frankie Valli and the Four Sea-Fins)

    October 2, 2015

  • "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

  • 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

  • When I lived in North Portland in 2007, we humorously referred to the local police as the NoPo PoPo.

    October 1, 2015

  • 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

  • A motorcycle made with parts from Triumph and Norton, two vintage British motorcycle brands.

    September 30, 2015

  • A motorcycle made with parts from Triumph and Greeves, two vintage British motorcycle brands.

    September 30, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • Trigger warning: there are pictures of clowns at the bottom of the coulrophobia page.

    September 29, 2015

  • 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

  • Same as namesake? Name-father is a creepy new term to me.

    September 29, 2015

  • Hey dacalberto!

    There's more information about this word with lowercase-f feague page. Wordnik is case-sensitive. Happy word hunting!

    September 28, 2015

  • 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

  • It's pronounced jliff, not gliff. #dictionarytroll

    September 25, 2015

  • 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

  • "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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • I hope my life is going in a bearward direction.

    September 18, 2015

  • You'll find dictionary definitions here: floccinaucinihilipilification


    This page is the same spelling, but with a space before the first letter.

    September 18, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • The king of toilets!!

    September 17, 2015

  • 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

  • "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."

    -Sharon Lynn Pruitt on TheMarySue.com Sept 16, 2015 (http://www.themarysue.com/stop-hating-and-love-blerd/)

    September 17, 2015

  • @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

  • CONMEBOL is a regional fútbol federation. The name comes from CONfederacíon sudaMEricana de fútBOL.

    September 16, 2015

  • 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

  • A company found on the Wikipedia list of portmanteaus "Ohaton, from the Osler, Hammond and Nanton company."

    September 16, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • I consider my laptop to be a modern vade mecum. http://tankhughes.com/?p=465

    September 15, 2015

  • "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

  • 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

  • ...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

  • I love the skepticism embedded in the Wiktionary definition.

    September 15, 2015

  • Go support the Wordnik Kickstarter! http://kck.st/1US7Dra

    Here's why I support Wordnik: http://www.encyclopediabriannica.com/?p=105

    September 15, 2015

  • chocolate leg

    September 15, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • "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

  • http://tankhughes.com/?p=1649

    September 11, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Thinking about a list with grammar Nazi, feminazi, software pirate and similarly less-severe villains. Minnesota Vikings, maybe.

    September 9, 2015

  • I feel like this is my stretch of English language highway to keep tidy for the year. So far, so good.

    September 9, 2015

  • 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

  • '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

  • 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

  • I don't think it's a sicnifigant problem.

    September 4, 2015

  • 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

  • English -yant words from French: abeyant, buoyant, chatoyant, clairvoyant, flamboyant, foudroyant.

    September 2, 2015

  • I thought my favorite burglar-related word would forever be (Sp.) ladrón, but I was wrong. That word is uproariously burglarious.

    September 1, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • I was unaware that cauldron had any cousins, but here it is.


    Also: chauldron which is chawdron which is entrails.

    August 28, 2015

  • Acknowledgment appreciated, @FuriousPeng.
    -@TankHughes

    August 28, 2015

  • You said it, bilby. And what's wrong with clearing the front page of international spam in the process?

    August 28, 2015

  • 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

  • spaghetti strap

    August 26, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • Busy baver.

    Baver dam.

    Eager baver.

    Not the sam.

    August 25, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Lovat or leave it?

    August 21, 2015

  • This can't be right.

    August 20, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • This is a wug.

    Now there is another one.

    There are two of them.

    There are two ____.

    August 19, 2015

  • Do collarless green sheep sleep furiously as well?

    August 19, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • Oh god, I never would have thought of clarify as a synonym of defecate. #buttertrauma

    August 18, 2015

  • 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

  • a murder of pilcrows is great, as is a fling of cow pies.

    My cousin enjoys: a smug of Prii.

    August 14, 2015

  • Was this used on a TV show or in a movie recently? Seems to be spiking among young'uns on Twitter.

    August 14, 2015

  • Outside of industrial settings, vibrator means sex toy. Only Wiktionary includes that definition.

    August 14, 2015

  • HaHA! I affect the universe!! *mad scientist background lightning*

    August 14, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • This word is an opportunity to expand your insult vocabulary, on analogy with weaksauce.

    August 13, 2015

  • 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

  • Not a radish.

    August 12, 2015

  • The irrigation systems at grocery stores mistify me.

    August 12, 2015

  • Also the name of the Marvel superhero Black Panther, real name T'Challa, who is the prince (then king) of Wakanda.

    August 12, 2015

  • Where in the World is Carmine Sandiego?

    August 11, 2015

  • Awwwwwwwwww <3

    August 11, 2015

  • 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

  • Nobody wants to get kicked in the jards.

    Somebody should make a horse anatomy list, they have so many unique terms.

    August 11, 2015

  • hootenanny?

    August 11, 2015

  • MacGuffin

    August 11, 2015

  • An appropriately unwieldy word.

    August 10, 2015

  • 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

  • Word I Ink <3


    But wait... where's that 2nd I coming from?

    August 10, 2015

  • kk (ㅋㅋ) in Korean.

    August 7, 2015

  • Spoonerism spoonerized,

    August 6, 2015

  • dilly-dally

    August 5, 2015

  • adj. Birdshit-loving? Used to describe plants that grow well in bird manure-rich soil.

    ornithocaprophilous would be birdgoat-loving.

    August 4, 2015

  • It feels like this should be an idiom but it isn't... yet.

    August 3, 2015

  • Do we have a list of things that sound like alien races? Chelonian belongs there.

    August 3, 2015

  • 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

  • mandible, mandibular, TMJ, lockjaw

    July 30, 2015

  • That was so incredible I need hyperbole, no, epanorthosis, to describe how it felt.

    July 29, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • That is a STUNNINGLY bad slogan.

    Ottawa: You have to go there (for work).
    Ottawa: Conveniently located near an airport.

    July 28, 2015

  • napiform = shaped like a turnip.

    July 24, 2015

  • Bialya from DC.

    Middle Earth  from LOTR
    Third Earth from Thundercats
    Thundera from Thundercats

    July 23, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Puddleglum is a marshwiggle.

    July 22, 2015

  • 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.

    July 22, 2015

  • bilby Wordnik doesn't seem to like apostrophes in headwords.

    July 19, 2015

  • 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

  • Perth? Or must it sound like pert?

    July 16, 2015

  • 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

  • See also: Rich Kids of Instagram: http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/

    July 15, 2015

  • ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Broke the internet.

    I think that's the new American dream, so congratulations to vendingmachine and alexz.

    July 15, 2015

  • I'm looking forward to a future when a robo-stand-up comic ends their joke with DRUM DRUM CYMBAL.

    July 14, 2015

  • 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

  • re: gigglement


    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.

    July 14, 2015

  • I heard this more as prefunk or prefunc during college in 2005. Related: disco nap.

    July 13, 2015

  • I forgot I did this.

    July 10, 2015

  • 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

  • Well I am a quack.

    July 8, 2015

  • Resynergizing the instrument of languaging to pulse the overall scope of the work and leverage versioned deliverables.

    July 8, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • Wahoo! champagne and cream puffs for everyone!!

    July 1, 2015

  • gamekeeper's thumb is the same injury as skier's thumb.

    June 29, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • Would another example be Oblivia Neutron Bomb for the star of Xanadu?

    June 25, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • Bubblegum was not initially a flavor, it just described the kind of gum it is. What flavor is bubblegum? Pink sugar?

    June 22, 2015

  • 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

  • Woo! This is grand. This list only exists because I wore a strapless bra yesterday. #BehindTheList

    June 17, 2015

  • 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

  • I read the etymology text wrong several times. See how you do.

    June 12, 2015

  • An eggcorn for guinea pig in the test subject sense, as in "gimme that, I'll try it out."

    June 12, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • DSNA can also stand for the Dictionary Society of North America: http://www.dictionarysociety.com/

    June 9, 2015

  • It sounds like you have a cold.

    May 30, 2015

  • I'm disappointed every time I go to a potluck where there are no potstickers.

    May 29, 2015

  • internet money?

    May 29, 2015

  • "Where you put the cows." - Erin McKean

    May 29, 2015

  • I'm glad I can help with the healing, ruzuzu. I carried around my camoflague mistake for a long time.

    May 28, 2015

  • 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

  • Is there a list of non-animal objects with animal names? This and frogs from clothing go on that list.

    May 21, 2015

  • 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

  • Howbout one-eyed Jacks found in playing cards?

    May 20, 2015

  • Related: the tacocat palindrome. One more and it's an official feline Mexican food trend.

    May 19, 2015

  • 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

  • This list makes me so happy <3.You take the cake, ruzuzu.

    May 15, 2015

  • 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

  • Indefatigibility. It makes me a little tired and nauseous getting through all the stressed syllables in this word.

    May 14, 2015

  • "...from the way we architect our services." As heard in the 3 hour meeting I just got out of.

    May 13, 2015

  • I've always thought remedy would be a lovely name for a storybook character.

    May 13, 2015

  • 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

  • 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

  • So, it's a blend of clumsy and cumbersome? Maybe the sound symbolism of clump as well, alluding to an innumerate number of weighty difficulties.

    May 12, 2015

  • You've also got fuckwind as a variation of windfucker to describe a windhover/kestrel.

    May 11, 2015

  • Yes, a noun. A haughty sort of person who swings their breeches side to side as they walk, full of pomp and circumstance. An obsolete slang term I've come across in my cutthroats research. A person who swings their breeches. A quakebreech is a coward, a shuffle-breeches moves slowly, and the cowardly shit-breech adds nothing to society but the load in their pants.

    May 11, 2015

  • I don't like brain fart. It's either a lazy excuse, or a terrible volcano eruption in your head that could cause irreversible damage.

    May 8, 2015

  • Ziffy Whomper was an orange plastic sled my family owned in the late 1980s. It was a great toy, and so much fun to say. The sled itself puts a hyphen in the name Ziffy-Whomper.

    May 8, 2015

  • In the May 1, 2015 episode of the podcast How Did This Get Made (http://www.earwolf.com/episode/face-off-live/), discussing the movie Face/Off, Paul Scheer uses the term face waterfall to describe the motion that John Travolta (and other characters) repeatedly do in the movie. Slowly touching another person's face down from their forehead all the way to their chin with a flat palm. It's weird. There's a Youtube compilation video of it called Face/Off Face/Touch.

    May 6, 2015

  • Hi, vendingmachine. It seems to be a name for neoconservatives, specifically American republicans during the George W Bush administration. It could technically be a blend with neoliberal as well, but my guess is it's aimed towards conservative Republicans only. We should ask a political blogger.

    May 6, 2015

  • There's no N.

    May 5, 2015

  • If artists were superheroes, they could seek justice in a Caldermobile.

    May 5, 2015

  • Truly, I have no strong feeling about this. I have stronger feelings about my favorite numbers. This does reminds me of the Radiolab episode (http://www.radiolab.org/story/love-numbers/) that explores the emotional opinions that people have about numbers - ones they love, hate, or think of as gendered. In most cases, the reasoning had to do with the shape of the symbol or usage on a very base level. 1 is phallic and independent and male, whereas 2 is curved and feminine and partnered and secondary. Using those thoughts:

    I, L, T, Y are kinda phallic.

    B, C, G, O, Q, U are rounded like lady-parts (yonic?).

    O is used at the end of masculine nouns in Romance languages, and A for feminine. That carries into a lot of names (Julio, Julia), so O seems conflicted between feminine shape and masculine marker use.

    I think of Roman numerals as a pretty masculine system, but out of that context C, D, I, L, M, V, X don't really strike me as gendered. An interesting thought to pursue, though.

    May 5, 2015

  • Eunomia looks like it means 'well-named' which is a weird self-referential pat on the back by the scientist/discoverers. "We're so good at naming things, this one is called the well-named bug." No. Eunomia is also a Greek goddess, where -nomia means order, not names. You get a pass, genus eunomia.

    May 5, 2015

  • I got out of an adult charity spelling bee on this word. It angers me because I was close to the "lightning round" which was a novel format I feel like I could have pwned.

    The word is defined on this pyrotechnic site: http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/ttpyro.html, "An explosive can be characterized by the amount of energy it releases when detonated, as well as by its shearing and shock effect, or 'brisage'."

    May 5, 2015

  • As explicked on QI Series D episode 7, Eskimos (Inuit?) have 32 words for demonstrative pronouns, whereas English has 4 (this that these those). They pack prepositions into their demonstrative pronouns, so you get words that mean "that one up there" and "those ones inside." HOWEVER, the fake fact is a convenient way to say that a lot of languages have synonyms, and that there's more than one right way to say something. The fact about sharks always having to move is also untrue, but is also a convenient shorthand. There are many others.

    tl;dr: Some common knowledge is not true, but it's useful, so keep using it. Dance your heart out at the shark-in-motion surplus snow vocab party, but be prepared to be confronted by grumpy fact-focused people out in the harsh world.

    May 5, 2015

  • "The Fishstick" is a dance proposed by the You Look Nice Today podcast in the 2008 Sacks-Minelli Disease episode: http://youlooknicetoday.com/episode/sacksminnelli-disease.

    The Fishstick is a dance that is not noticeable unless someone <i>really</i> pays attention to the "dancer" for several minutes. You can do the Fishstick to any song, but a recommended song for beginners is Tighten Up by Archie Bell and the Drells. There are many Youtube videos of people possible doing the Fishstick.

    This is not an instructional video: https://vimeo.com/1063136

    May 5, 2015

  • I love g'night's inclusion to the list. If it weren't limited to word-initial gn, hangnail would eagerly join the party.

    How about gnaphalium for the botanist set?

    Related: http://tankhughes.com/?p=1249

    May 4, 2015

  • oarginary. oarthopedic. oarly. orlish.

    May 1, 2015

  • Jonathan Green (Mister Slang) said in a recent podcast interview (http://slate.me/1tyUHIO) that slang is from the male perspective. Men have historically ruled the public sphere, so the shaming slang comes from them and shows their biases about the place of men and women in society. 


    Men do things and it's cool and normal. Women do the same thing and they're not good, not worthy, not allowed to participate in society. Men doing "women" things are also bad, maybe worse.

    For a male equivalent, see the affectionate common use of wifebeater shirts.

    Are harpy, succubus, and siren applicable? Maybe a male mythical beast like troll could work.

    April 29, 2015

  • My friend Mr. Goines brought up an interesting point about rhyme.

    Such a small list leads to the question Why do most words rhyme? One answer: because it is easier to remember a story when it's written in verse. Reciting an epic poem, or the history of your village is easier when you know every other line will end in a predictable way. Most words rhyme on purpose, as memory aids.

    Why are so many non-rhymers color words? I don't know, but that question interests me. Thanks papageno.

    April 29, 2015

  • Love your style, oroboros, unless you're serious in which case great job adding another legit definition. If facetious, perhaps this list will interest you: https://wordnik.com/lists/are-you-sad--misparse-me.

    April 27, 2015

  • "bilby commented on the user bilby

    I went to leave a comment on your page, and I arrived at a 404 and a steampunk rhino. Both of which are about right in your case."

    Are you talking to yourself?

    April 27, 2015

  • I recommend listening to the children's song "Crazy ABCs" by Barenaked Ladies for further inspiration.

    April 27, 2015

  • The definition sounds like it was written by an august great aunt who has recently taken over as guardian of some children and has no interest in learning about what makes them happy, least of all ice cream.

    April 24, 2015

  • I know it's not Fosse, but please consider visualizing gorillas doing jazz hands.

    April 23, 2015

  • I saw this in a list. Maybe in a newspaper contest about neologisms? Ickpocket is the pocket that you put the DIRTY kleenex into when you've sneezed and you're out and about. And sometimes you accidentally put your hand, or clean things into it, and it's gross.

    Citation needed, me.

    April 22, 2015

  • As rhymed in a student poem in "Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger " by Louis Sachar

    Purple

    by Allison

    The baby won't stop crying.

    His face is turning purple.

    Will anything make him feel better?

    I bet a burp'll.

    April 21, 2015

  • It rhymes with purple!

    April 21, 2015

  • I'd respond to you on my list... BUT I DELETED IT! *shock* It made more sense to add my 4 to tbtabby's Location Slang list instead. I'm happy someone else has made a large list that I can legitimately add Canadian tuxedo and Mexican wave to.

    April 21, 2015

  • Happiness pro tip: Make hacksawing a folksy reading of hack-swing.

    April 20, 2015

  • There should probably be a secondary definition - most people know the Star Wars cannon fodder and not their namesakes from the 3rd Reich. (I was one of those people until recently).

    April 18, 2015

  • I really love how PC the title of this list is. We don't wanna insult the underlings. :)

    April 18, 2015

  • One time I was on a plane and a kid said "I'm stubbing my toe!" Normally, the event is so brief, you can only talk about it in the past, but somehow this child had the presence of mind to describe the trauma while still in the middle of it.

    April 17, 2015

  • A feature of RP (Received Pronunciation, AKA Southern Standard British English) where the /æ/ vowel in HAPPY is tensed, pulling it forward and up and sounding more like /ɪ/ in KIT or /ɛ/ in DRESS.

    Used profusely in the Superego sketch "M" (Season 3, Episode 3 from 2011) making fun of the exceedingly British character of M, James Bond's superior officer. http://www.gosuperego.com/podcast-episode-3-3/

    RP and happy tensing also heard in Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951) when Alice shouts "Mister Rabbit!"

    In summary: it's fun, even just to use in the term happy tensing itself.

    April 13, 2015

  • My friend and I made and used this in elementary school to mean "special and neat." Maybe a blend? It was a real shock to find it written down on a Halloween-themed rubber stamp one day, we'd thought it was a totally unique creation.

    April 13, 2015

  • Oh hello, bilby. The scholarly use of the word is about rituals, not cooking. But! If you were a hippophage, you could roast it for that reason and the roots would back you up.

    I just know the first time I saw this word, I pictured the systematic extinction of 1940s hippos, which is historically tragic, and then the real definition didn't really lift me out of that hole of sadness. So by talking about this word, I'm making other people also have these thoughts, but it's making me feel less depressed and alone about that imagery. This is my free internet word therapy. How are you?

    April 9, 2015

  • A catchfart is an obsolete slang term that referred to a servant who walked closely behind their master, and was therefore likely to catch the farts of their master in their face. One of my favorite cutthroat-type compounds.

    April 9, 2015

  • It's not the same as hypocaust. It's the (ritualistic) burning of a horse. hippopotamus = river horse. Holocaust = wholly burned. hippocaust = burn a horse.

    April 7, 2015

  • How about yapock?

    April 3, 2015

  • Pumpernickel, sourdough, ciabatta, pita, challah. I have a great breadth of knowledge.

    April 1, 2015

  • This is just Spanish for Jupiter, the planet or the god. The accented "u" gives this word the hiccups, and I love it. A lot of good plosives in this word.

    April 1, 2015

  • Zurda means left-handed in Spanish. It comes from Basque. It sounds like the name of a South American revolutionary. I'm a fan.(Yeah, I'm left-handed).

    Spanish takes most of their vocab from Latin, which gave them 'sinestro' for left, which is full of sinful and criminal connotations. To find a more neutral left-meaning word, they borrowed two words from their northerly neighbors: zurda and izquierda. Zurda means left-handed, and izquierda means left in the directional sense.

    April 1, 2015

  • It means unfortunately in Spanish. The word just keeps going! On and on! Spanish words are often longer than their English equivalents, but this one feels like a child's rollercoaster, up and down and around longer and more enjoyable than you'd expect.

    To make an adverb in Spanish, take the fem. form of an adjective, then add "-mente". You did it, good job.

    April 1, 2015

  • In Spanish, if you say "Estoy lista" it means "I'm ready to go". If you say "Soy lista" it means "I'm clever" as in "my mind is ready, quick-witted, and sharp." I recommend looking into Spanish adjectives that change meaning based on their pairings with SER and ESTAR. Meanings move from the concrete to the abstract in a certain way that make sense once you know them, but would be hard to predict if you came upon them, unprepared, in the wild.

    April 1, 2015

  • It means everyday and is a cognate for quotidian in English. I enjoy the adjectival form of 'everyday' and I enjoy that in Spanish, it is not a fancy synonym, but rather the everyday word you would use to describe mundane routines. Spanish vocabulary is far more Latinate than English, there are far fewer synonyms, and no highbrow/lowbrow variants based on language borrowings like English has - beef/cow, pork/pig, canine/hound. They have one word, so that's your everyday word.

    April 1, 2015

  • Gaelic for "water of life." It is from this word that we get 'whiskey.' Manhole covers in Dublin say "UISCE" in the same way they would say "WATER" in English. At the beginning of some lovely Irish drinking song, they explain the history of the word whiskey, and the way the man says "uisce bheatha... water of life" makes me want to hug my relatives in Counties Galway and Mayo (god help us).

    April 1, 2015

  • I learned this word from reading works by Miguel de Unamuno, a lovely existential Spanish philosopher and generally badass guy, historically speaking. Anhelo is that sort of deep existential yearning that makes your heart hurt. Something is wrong and the feeling is anhelo.

    April 1, 2015

  • Sounds like a Pokemon hybrid of Eevee and... Pichu?

    March 26, 2015

  • The Dalles is/are a city near Portland, OR. It doesn't sound like Dallas, TX. It rhymes with pals.


    It uses the TRAP vowel /æ/.

    March 26, 2015

  • I couldn't find this list so I made my own! I'm also trying to remember a few female portmanteaus, but they're harder to find.

    March 23, 2015

  • I couldn't find this list so I made my own! I'm also trying to remember a few female portmanteaus, but they're harder to find.

    March 23, 2015

  • I've tried to make a terrible tankhughes.com Monday Comic about subjunctivitis for a long time.

    A: "It's important that I understand what's happening to me. If you were me, wouldn't you want to know, doctor?"

    B: "I recommend that you rest. And if I were you..."

    C: "OH NO IT'S CONTAGIOUS!"

    The conditional mood and a moody condition may also belong on this list.

    March 18, 2015

  • Yup bilby, the loosest interpretation of body parts should be used here. The goal is to make plain-looking words more interesting, like cockpit and earmuff. Have fun.

    If you want to list all of the bones in the human body, I probably can't stop you. Personally, I'm just hunting for the fun ones, not cataloging the whole species of compounds. But it's a free internet! Do what makes you happy.

    October 25, 2014

  • Welcome to Wordnik :)

    October 24, 2014

  • This is a confession. I've been adding some words, but not tagging 'behead.'

    October 16, 2014

  • Is this a scarecrow compound? It could be (a thing that) MAKES HAWKS. Or it could be a HAWK that MAKES new useful hawk soldiers for the falconers. OED this when I get home for sure.

    September 5, 2014

  • why did you make this list? It is a good list.

    I am trying to find words that are morphologically similar to stick-to-itiveness and I'm coming up blank so far. PHRASE+ADJ Marker+Noun Marker without having any history of an adjectival form... it baffles me.

    September 2, 2014

  • thanks hemesheir. Spurred by your comment, I've added more of the common and modern examples. I have a huge Excel spreadsheet of the 500+ I found in my research, but it doesn't seem helpful to list all of the obscure ones here.

    Interested parties can watch my 2013 Ignite Portland talk about these compounds: http://youtu.be/x1pYC0AAbJ0

    March 6, 2014

  • HA! Just noticed your list. i've made a similar list, because I found that most of the verbs that end in -ish in English comes from Old French stems that ended in -iss, and I'm writing up an explanation about it.

    December 17, 2013

  • I've found about 500 total, but this list sadly has 8.

    December 17, 2013

  • Hi everybody. I did my dissertation about this kind of exocentric verb-noun compound last year. Some linguists call them 'scarecrow compounds' because that's a popular example. They come from French and were mildly productive for a few hundred years. I made a list of all of them I could find in English - 483 in total, the newest of which is 'pesterchum.' The abstract for my dissertation is up on my site, tankhughes.com. Anyway. I know too much about this topic. This list and the comments make me happy. :)

    September 7, 2013

  • Just learned about this word through reading about the history of bishop and the bishop piece in chess. It looks like al-fin was the Arabic for elephant in which 'al' is the definite article like 'the' in English. The chess piece used to look like an elephant, then changed to archer then bishop.

    July 6, 2013

  • I made this list too a while back, but I didn't include Arsenic or Krypton. Don't know how I missed 'em. http://tankhughes.com/?p=91

    February 3, 2013

  • It's French for potato. Lit "apple of the earth" where apple is a generic food word.

    June 14, 2012

  • from the Christmas special, how about caretaker?

    January 22, 2012

  • Hey marky- I started tagging words with 'vcccv' patterns in January 2010. I've also tagged words as ch sounds like k, rh, and one-dollar words. I know C and V are used academically for sounds and not letters, and I made some linguists mad, but I wasn't trying to record the sounds, and I don't know what other system I might have chosen. I think organizing things which appear unrelated can bring out new features that have not been visible or considered. Mendeleev, Linneaus and Roget are my heroes. I'm not saying I accomplished anything with this idea yet, but tagging words in this way (which mollusque called convowel) was very cathartic for me at the time and I'm happy I had wordnik as an outlet. I've been thinking about possible uses for this list recently. No success yet, but you can watch me flail on tankhughes.com.

    December 10, 2011

  • <3 hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. thanks for tagging cvcvcvcvcv!

    May 12, 2011

  • Wow, thanks! Right now I have the time to contribute here and it amuses me. Thanks for the heads up on the error, I'm definitely human. I have a blog that, among other things, tracks the silly tags I've been adding on wordnik: http://tankhughes.blogspot.com/search/label/wordnik

    February 14, 2010

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