“The cold winter wind seemed to carry with it a steaming, fetid wind from Green, as a frigid old man, penurious and hoary with age, might bear in his arms the rotten corpse of a beautiful young woman.”
Though Milos ruined the Fibonacci sequence, we can still make the year–comments relation conform with the number of nonisomorphic groupoids with n elements. Only, then we’ll have to post 3330 comments next year . . .
Edit: And if that doesn’t work out, this sequence might still save us.
I’m at 10,000 grains now; it says “You have donated 10000 grains of rice. Wow! Now THAT is impressive!” and the bowl is empty again. There are a few screen shots of that on the Internets.
Edit: At 20,000 it says “You have donated 20000 grains of rice.
I’ve found that sometimes children’s spelling mistakes can be quite elucidating regarding phonological features of their respective accents. Is there by any chance a searchable corpus of school children’s writing? (I couldn’t find any trace of one.) If not, why?
I’d be interested in little promotional banners/buttons, esp. in the sizes 120×90, 120×60 or 88×31 for Wordnik. From time to time it would be fun to have something neat to make some promotion for the site. Has someone already created something of the sort?
By the way, during the concert on February 8, 2010 in Berlin (:-D) they once used “teetotaling”. It might have even been somewhat of a paronomasia, for there is a lot of tea in the air during the show, but I don’t think it was punnily connoted in its immediate sentence context (which I can’t recall, unfortunately).
Okay, it’s not really a pet peeve, but to me it looks kinda awkward in an English text and it was constantly bugging me (a bit) when I was reading Gene Wolfe’s ‟There Are Doors”. ^^
(Doesn’t it look as if the editor felt direct speech was somewhat icky?)
Among other things the Rs sound fudded (or bilabialized) to me, his realization of /ə/ at the end of words like “here” goes into the direction of ɐ and /æ/ seems a bit closer than I’d expect.
“The Office, in contrast, and I might have chosen other examples such as I’m Alan Partridge or The League of Gentlemen, is, if only obliquely monumental though avowedly anti-sentimental, certainly ‘mental’ in at least three senses of the word. Firstly, it is cerebral. Secondly, it is anarchic. Thirdly, it is angry.”
—Peter Stear, Mockumentalism: Re-Casting the Void in Contemporary British TV Comedy
I remember Alice using the word “curiouser” quite toward the beginning of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There is (of course) already a citation on its comments page.
For example, inserting square brackets via [ and ], the way we did it on Wordie emeritus, doesn’t seem work anymore, but there are two Unicode characters that look similar (albeit a tad bit clumsier). Also there are all those neat typographic quotation marks and dashes that I like so much.
You can create a new palette just by copying in these example repertoires (or parts of them):
“‘Thou wretch!—thou vixen!—thou shrew!’ said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding; ‘thou witch!—thou hag!—thou whippersnapper—thou sink of iniquity!—thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable!—thou—thou—’ here standing upon tiptoe, seizing her by the throat, and placing my mouth close to her ear, I was preparing to launch forth a new and more decided epithet of opprobrium, which should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of her insignificance, when to my extreme horror and astonishment I discovered that I had lost my breath.”
I just added a keyword search for comments and definitions. When I type “n foobar” in the address bar it takes me to the definitions page; when I type “w foobar” I get the comments page. Here is a little how-to.
I’m only waiting for a few known bugs to be fixed and a few oft requested features to be implemented, otherwise I’m pretty content with Wordnik’s Wordieness—and there is really quite a lot that has improved.
Mollusque, a few weeks ago we’ve been given this review of The Elegance of the Hedgehog in one of my university courses as an example of how to organize and write such a text. (Just my compulsive need to point out—or sometimes photograph—coincidences.)
Haha! “These devious dollops of defecation pack a pungent punch that could make an onion cry”, “mounds of malicious manure”, “clandestine nocturnal deposits-o-dung” . . .
Somehow I here those alliterative sentences read in Jim Dale’s (Pushing Daisies narrator) voice. :-D
Emerson: … We’re investigating the death of Roland Stingwell.
Ned: His assistant said there was a heated legal dispute between Mr. Stingwell and your clients, the Fits and Giggles Novelty Company.
Chuck: And we know that Mr. Stingwell was about to make public that one of your client’s factories was illegally disposing dangerous chemicals into the Papen County dam reservoir.
Lawyer 1: These are baseless allegations.
Lawyer 2: Our client did not, nor would they ever dispose of any kind of chemicals into the reservoir. This is a categorical denial.
Lawyer 3: Maybe once.
Lawyer 1: And one time only.
Lawyer 2: Once, we may have inadvertently allowed a small amount of chemicals into the reservoir. But it was a long time ago.
Lawyer 3: It was Tuesday.
Lawyer 1: Very, very early Tuesday. Nearly Monday.
Chuck: What kind of lawyers are you?
Lawyer 1: We are Mennonites, which would not normally be a liability were it not for our own personal commitment not to lie.
“A study led by Margo Lillie, a doctor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, concludes that cow tipping by a single person is impossible. Her calculations found that it would take at least two people to apply enough force to push over a cow if the cow does not react and reorient its footing. If the cow does react, it would take at least four people to push it over.” :-D
From Pushing Daisies episode “Window Dressed to Kill”:
Olive: Ned, I never thought I’d say this, but we need to back off on the PDA, ’cause Vivian’s P’s and Q’s have gone AWOL and I can’t take much more of what I just took before I’m DOA.
From Pushing Daisies episode “Window Dressed to Kill”:
Emerson: People who need people to do every damn thing for ’em aren’t always the luckiest people in the world. Sometimes those peeps get pissed off and start resentin’ their lazy-ass bosses. Erin and Coco’s peep done gone postal and killed both of ’em.
From Pushing Daisies episode “Window Dressed to Kill” (Pie names given in italics):
Olive: I’m sorry you never looked at me the same way you look at Chuck.
Ned: I wouldn’t say never.
(Days later:)
Narrator: Confused not by the particulars but by this particular usage Olive read about sentence structure and the use of the double negative. And with passive-aggressive panache, broached the subject with the Pie-Maker.
Ned: Try this one again.
Olive (tasting Pearway to Heaven): I definitely don’t hate it.
Ned: What does that mean?
Olive: Just what I said.
Ned: Means you like it?
Olive: Υou tell me.
Ned: You said it wasn’t less tasty than Kick in the Kumquat, but more unfulfilling than Rock Me Amade-Quince. (Pause.) I don’t like giving funny names to the pies. Does it not seem disrespectful?
Olive: Τhere you go. Υou did it again.
Later in that episode:
Randy: People who have super-powers don’t not wanna use them.
It’s the first time I notice that toaster as the “suffix” -aster. And I always trusted it with my bread . . .
Owing to its terribly-hard-to-grasp networky structure the brain actually remembers thing better when they come with more information. When one, for example, wants to learn a word like toaster, one might look for lots of definitions, read through examples, listen to pronunciations, look up etymologically or morphologically related terms as well as synonyms and antonyms, look at pictures, try to come up with puns on it, etc. And then of course one should reactivate a.k.a. use it from time to time. That way the word becomes better connected within the mental lexicon and thus more readily accessible.
Hi. The vertical space between a pronunciation and its attribution is bigger than the one between each attribution and the next pronunciation, which looks very misguiding if there are a few more pronunciations.
“Vivian Charles: Mr. Cod, I’m here against my better judgment considering the callous braggadocio with which you previously gave me the heave-ho.
Emerson Cod: Well, if I did do any ho-heavin’ it was for your own good. There’s a time for callous braggadocio and a time for sensitivity. To the Norwegians, that time is never.
Vivian Charles: I suppose it’s a holdover from their Viking ancestry. It would be difficult to rape and pillage with the subtlety of a humanist.”
Sometimes I notice that I can’t remember the names of people I haven’t met or thought about for a few years. Then I try and find out what it was, and that often leaves me puzzled either because the answer was so obvious or because the name sounded so entirely foreign to me. Quite disquieting either way. And of course when you know that you know some wonderfully apposite word, but it just won’t manifest on your tongue. I know a great example just a few months back, but I can’t remember which word that was . . .
Edit: “Fastidious” *hugging browser history*
But it’s also quite irksome to be presented with a problem that’s actually pretty much down your alley, and yet you lack knowledge, experience or creativity to come up with a feasible solution.
So I’m trying to apprehend and prepare to prevent. And of course to allay those worries themselves, as opposed to offsetting them, which would never sufficiently mitigate them, I guess.
I can think of fewer cases in which not knowing would be worse than not remembering than vice versa and I thought that this difference, which you pointed out, could be alleviated by adding the two terrifiers separately.
Uselessness, do you feel or know of any geographical or sociolinguistic links with the degree of r-coloring within the US? That’s been puzzling me for quite some time now . . .
(Oh, and you pronounced my name, sort of. I’m honored. ^^)
“One hour, 23 minutes and 42 seconds ago, Olive Snook made two alarming discoveries. First, that in time of duress the Pie-Maker’s penchant for stress baking was matched only by the petite waitress’s predilection for stress binging. Second, . . .”
Does anyone feel or know of any phonological, geographical or sociolinguistic differences between the pronunciations /ˈæntaɪ/ and /ˈænti/ within the US?
I often try to find this and other numbers hidden in license plates, names and so on. Knowing the indices of the letters in the alphabet greatly facilitates these quests.
I was about to aver that at least the stories from the fiction fraction haven’t ceased to be pretty prolific in sporting each their own teensy time bubbles whose artificial temporal worlds look exquisitely eternal from our plane. Yet, how a reader receives and reinterprets written representations changes with her dispositional developments or manners of imagination. Here a fear of New Year would appear rather random since it weighs no more heavily than other days.
Also, this year, I took to mistaking it for 2010 since August.
Do the list URLs change if I rename them? If so, it would be useful to know the list IDs. On Wordie emeritus you could still find them in the source code somewhere. If you happen to know the ID you can still call the up, so it would be great if you could include it in the page somewhere, perhaps as HTML comment.
Also I can’t edit my comment on jwn197’s profile. (The picture goes over the text, of course . . .) After sending the edited version the page goes blank and nothing happens.
Edit: I can’t edit today’s comment there either, so it’s probably not about the picture.
Thanks!
(Hi, marky. I’m waiting, too. And patiently, too. ;-))
Wow. That suggests that Wordnik tunes in on our brainwaves and automatically tries to find the quotations we are going to post so to save us the trouble. I hope it works for Gene Wolfe, too.
She also uses a high pitched ［ʀ］ (uvular trill), which is actually my signature sound. Hers is much higher however, and I think I close my lips further.
This might be off topic by now, but many of my former schoolmates who had French seem to remember “Arthur est un perroquet” as culmination point of that experience.
What about a list like “Words you were amazed to hear in a song” as an open list with a request to give title and artist in a comment? I might just do that. Thanks!
By the way, Terminus Est is of course about The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe and it was thanks to that song that I became aware of him and started reading his grand opus.
This has probably been reported before: When I move a word (from my 5-0 to my 5-1 list) it essentially works, but the subsequent reloading of the list page breaks off, leaving me with a blank page.
The deletion works as it should, I guess, but in both cases I’d much rather have some kind of AJAX magic that just set a display:none on the word entry without reload, because if you are on page 12 of your list, somewhere in the middle and the reload throws you back to the top of page one, it’s rather tiring to constantly try and search for the spot where you left off.
By the way, thanks a bunch for #description! :-)
Edit: I’d just like to use this post to again mention how useful a bulk moving feature would be. (As discussed on wordnik and numerous other pages before that.)
The second one sound a bit like the bulk moving feature that has often been requested. Would be great if you could just tick the words and then select at the top and/or bottom of the page to “Take these words and . . .” and in two dropdown lists “. . . move them . . . / . . . copy them . . . / . . . delete them.” and then “. . . to list foobar. / . . . to list foobaz. / . . . to list fnord.”
I just realized that I would like to see this Twitter feed change places with Pronunciations and Charts. Pronunciations I need almost every time, Twitter almost never.
Since I use this customary high-pitched voice, it’s sometimes not altogether easy to understand. If asked I then eagerly explain the Wordniky context and uselessness’ crafty plot underneath.
Quite recently I had been wondering what the acoustic differences between the two (American) English /r/-allophones ɹ (alveolar approximant) and ɻ (retroflex approximant) are. I downloaded the audio files from the respective Wikipedia articles and analyzed them using Praat. These two shiny formant spectrograms were the result:
In the case of the retroflex approximant the lowering of the third formant was much stronger and more sudden than with the alveolar approximant. Also this low position was maintained for a longer period of time. The second formant moreover seems to have remained more constant.
Those of course are just two audio files, so they are hardly representative.
Does any one of you know if and when you use which sound?
For the last several days, saying this “choo choo twain” to friends and random strangers at university has been a major source of amusement for me. :-)
noun Any of various Old World chickenlike birds of the genus Coturnix, especially C. coturnix, small in size and having mottled brown plumage, a short tail, grasslike leaves, purple flower heads, and an edible taproot.
Wonderful! Finally, “spam for spam’s sake” or “le spam pour le spam”*! I mean those URLs aren’t working for me at all! This way spam is about to replace music as the purist of the arts! Wonderful!
I agree! There ought to be an open list to collect Wordie canonical surrogates for that big green thumbs-up button I once proposed, back on Wordie emeritus.
Oh dear, I’ll keep my fingers crossed (or “press my thumbs” whichever you prefer) that everything goes smoothly now.
And about your last message on You-Know-Which-Social-Networking-Platform-Other-Than-Facebook: Phonetics. As long as you are not expected to produce qualified responses, a little phonetic analysis can turn the most tedious and one-sided conversation into a thrilling adventure. Also works with lengthy lectures. ;-)
What I tried to tell you was that noise produced by other voices, of course consists of frequencies close to those which we use for talking. (Being human and all that.) So though it might not be perceived as especially loud, such noise pretty efficiently scrambles our communication.
Since I don’t have a strong voice I used to call to a friend of mine (at school) in a very low register if it got noisy in the room. That way he could understand me fairly well.
Also, on a completely unrelated note: Eureka! But I’ll send you a private message, explaining that. Private messaging is a feature this site lacks—and that by design I’m afraid.
(I doubt that the Wordie/Wordnik spirit is so fragile that it would suffer in any way from such an addition but last time I suggested it, those worries abounded. Perhaps, a little postscript like this, added from time to time might serve to dispel such fears . . .)
I’ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray, by the way; had I known that what the noise kept you from telling me was “Dorian” and not “Dominic”, the contextual help would have proven perfectly effectual. ;-)
Then books written in a language I don’t understand wouldn’t contain any words when I “read” them. Or would I then just not qualify as communicatee? In that case, if a sentence in such a language were embedded in an English text, for example to show all the pretty characters, I would cease to be communicatee for a second while I read that sentence? That strikes me as rather unintuitive . . .
I’d rather say that a word becomes a word for someone when (s)he either associates some concept with its form or comes to believe that someone else might do so.
“Madeupical” then could just mean that someone wants to point out that the originator of the word is a specific person and moreover a person that is felt to be close to some degree, be it temporally, socially or in some other way.
Thanks. And it seems I’ve found a way to circumvent that dot bug by editing the hidden fields on some other pronunciations page (via WebDeveloper toolbar) in such a way that the recording is posted to the right one. :-)
Der dicke Dachdecker was an attempt to record a phrase ending in a dot by editing the HTML with the help of the WebDeveloper toolbar. Unfortunately I can’t play any pronunciations at the moment, so I haven’t been able to test whether it worked...
Due to some dot related bug I accidentally recorded something on this page that ought to have been recorded on this page. Can move that over? Or, if not, delete the pronunciation? Thanks!
During a lecture I just hacked together a very little stub of a style sheet, which makes the lists a little more compact and the fonts a tad smaller. When I have a new version, I’m just going to overwrite the old one, so the following link might be much newer than this post:
I suspect that it might me somewhat hard for John to track all the different bug reports and suggestions (and multiples thereof), as they are legion and scattered. Perhaps someone from the Wordie–Wordnik team (John himself?) could set up a launchpad or a trac to alleviate this problem, if indeed it is one.
Unless coffee has altered my memory more than I’m aware of, I’m pretty sure the Wordie comment box had always been at the bottom and that I’ve often resented all the scrolling it entailed. So that’s a great improvement!
I’m also in favor of directing at least the wordie.org domain directly unto Zeitgeist—a setting to switch the whole of Wordnik from “dictionary mode” into “social mode” of course goes beyond that and would be much appreciated.
And what about hiding the empty fields on the profile pages? That would render the list more concise and efficient, thus creating potential for more fields.
And little glitch: Since I fixed a Unicode mishap in its title, I can’t open my list “Bored now.” – Evil Words anymore.
On the right, there is this “Be the first!” link to create a new list... What are the chances that some word inspires someone to create a complete new list for it (not too low, I own, but wait for the second part of this sentence) in comparison to the probability that someone just wants to add it to an existing list? A little AJAXy interface, summonable with a single click, as on Wordie emeritus, would be more called for I think.
And I like frindley’s novel idea of moving the comment textarea to the top. :-)
whichbe: Was that a variation on a Buffy quote? :-D
Case sensitivity is glorious. In German all nouns are spelled with a capital letter; not being able to list them that way had kept me from making any German lists before. (I’m a tad perfectionistic. ^^) I’ve been so looking forward to this change.
And to the whole Wordie–Wordnik team: The change and improvement are palpable and it’s only been one day! Great work! Now that Unicode works again, take a hot beverage: ☕
<sarcasm>Edit</sarcasm> (which I hope isn’t going to be filtered, turning all this into unfathomable jabber): AJAX puts new comments at first somewhere above the “n Comments” text. After a reload everything’s fine again of course.
And thanks for fixing the Zeitgeist.
Edit: Thanks for Edit, I fixed the filtered “HTML” up there—I hope. :-)
Thanks! Also the Zeitgeist page is not up-to-date, but I guess that is obvious enough that I needn’t mention it. The want of edit buttons however induces me with surges of trepidation whenever I’m about to post something.
New IPA data source: Yay, there are (soon were) also inconsistencies between IPA and audio regarding yod-dropping (at least in one case, adduce).
Inspired by my Literary Studies professor when he used “as it were�? a few times during a lecture, and this article I found upon my subsequent googling for “as it were�?.
I can’t believe I haven’t added antepenultimate yet! Do you want to? Regarding quodlibetarian I gave my preference the spelling without the “r”—it seems to be more “common”. ^^
/p??n?lt?m?t/ looks like an error. A stressed schwa?
Random House says /p??n?lt?m?t/ which not only looks more reasonable but also agrees with my printed version of the Heritage Dictionary (including the /?/s and schwas in the unstressed syllables).
“When we landed here, it seemed natural to us to direct our lander to the shore of our bay, since we thought the water we saw was potable and might be used for irrigation.” – Gene Wolfe, On Blue’s Waters
The two German words “binden�? (“to bind�?) and “Spelunke�? come to mind (the latter with some effort). It’s a strange dated word for a small very filthy pub or dive, similar to a “Kaschemme�? only that this word is even more obscure in my view (I can’t remember ever having heard it before) and the thing it denotes even more filthy.
And then there is of course “Speläologie�? == “Speleology�?.
I once had a teacher who recommended pronouncing proper names the way they are pronounced by the people they denote, so “Jon Stewart�? is /ˈdʒɑn ˈstuɚt/ but “Patrick Stewart�? is /ˈpætrɪk ˈstju�?ət/. I’ve since grown accustomed to pronouncing “Oxford�? the British way, but there are lots of traps and pitfalls: How am I to pronounce “Dictionary�? in “Oxford English Dictionary�? (after all it’s capitalized) and how “Oxford�? in “New Oxford American Dictionary�?? It’s all very discombobulating.
Is there some guiding rule, some accepted standard, some elegant dichotomy?
I think there should be lists on various topics (perhaps not “favorites�? as that tends to make hard decisions even harder) with an artificial word maximum, so that if you want to add for example an eleventh word to a 10-words-max. list, you first have to delete another.
See also my Underwordied list. I have no strict policy on which lexemes to list and which not, but words that are already listed by three different people are unlikely to make it in.
I just found this word, twice underlined, on something that looks like an old physics homework with excursions into seemingly inscrutable calculations. Mysterious.
McKean’s Law: “Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.”
Just for illustration: Today I’ve found that McKean’s Law extends—albeit in a slightly changed manner—even to nonverbal conversations.
Our instructor in Literary Studies talked about something unrelated to “a sworn statement by an authorized official filed in court briefly describing the nature of each charge against a suspect, tantamount to an indictment but without the involvement of a grand jury” (Wiktionary: Information) when he slipped (rarity!) saying “... informations ...”.
I was like *facetiously cringe* and I saw across the room a girl was like *facetiously cringe* than we were like *eye contact* and she was like *wink* and I was like *wink*. Then I was like *oh noez*: McKean’s Law.
Five minutes later I was second in the line of students who needed to talk to our instructor. The one before me had the problem that his name wasn’t on the attendant list when the names were read out earlier. When it was my turn I said “I wasn’t on your list either”, he asked “Sorry?” and I repeated my sentence stumbling over every word.
Of course I still lack feel for the new design, but it looks pretty neat. Can I somehow rearrange the modules on the word pages? I’ll go exploring it in the afternoon. :-D
Edit: Isn’t my user name supposed to be displayed near the upper right corner? My feeling tells me it should.
“When asked the whereabouts of the campus bookstore, a university student who replied ‘There’s a great show about California condors on Channel 4 tonight’ would certainly cause raised eyebrows, though you couldn’t point to ungrammatical English as the culprit. The student’s grammatical competence would appear to be fine, but his or her communicative competence would seem not up to snuff.�? – Language: Its Structure and Use by Edward Finegan
“Eels also reach a phenomenal age. One from Lake Rotoiti in the Nelson province was more than 100 years old and 1.2 metre long. When you consider that beast was already cruising around the lake in the nineteenth century, at one time swimming about under the light of Halley’s Comet, and already quite a large animal when World War 1 broke out, it is impossible not to feel some respect for such a creature, or at least hold it in awe. Think about this: a great many of the eels caught are considerably older than the people that catch them.�? – Source
Since I read (at some point in my childhood) that despite their only six eyes the jumping spiders in our garden have such acute vision, I have always felt somewhat self-conscious around them...
“ ‘Thou wretch!—thou vixen!—thou shrew!’ said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding; ‘thou witch!—thou hag!—thou whippersnapper—thou sink of iniquity!—thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable!—thou—thou—’ here standing upon tiptoe, seizing her by the throat, and placing my mouth close to her ear, I was preparing to launch forth a new and more decided epithet of opprobrium, which should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of her insignificance, when to my extreme horror and astonishment I discovered that I had lost my breath.”
Hehe, next time I’ll choose a less conotationally equivocal term.
I made a printout of that map there to carry around with me, just in case. And I also got my hands on the CD from the Atlas of North American English which he cites on that page. It lay dormant in one of the university’s libraries.
I feel a couple Heaven forbid! getting ready to meet this suggestion, but what about little "Thanks" buttons like in many forum softwares for comments and lists?
I’m looking for another word for the meaning “an option that is selected automatically unless an alternative is specified�?, one that is less ambiguous.
(Is default commonly used in that meaning or is my proximity to computer science clouding my judgment?)
And then I have a question concerning the pronunciation: The dictionary only lists /dɪˈfɔlt/ but I frequently hear (American) native speakers say /ˈdifɔlt/. Have you made similar observations?
“Nevertheless all three of these cards appeared completely genuine, sharp-edged rectangles two thumbs by three, their complex labyrinths of gold encysted in some remarkable substance that was almost indestructible, yet nearly invisible.” (“Cards” are the currency in the Whorl.)
Yet strictly speaking you’re not yet covered by the License to Err since as of now—unless it’s a cache issue—you haven’t added it to any lists.
But that reminds me of an emendation I was planning to apply—an important emendation, at least for as long as we still have Time separating past and future. Thanks.
Mollusque, that would be great. I believe last.fm allows sending custom queries to the server and I think they prevent DoSing by allowing only one query per second.
I like my rice rather hard. I cook it only until it’s reasonably soft—or at least what I call reasonably soft—then pour it through a sieve to get rid of the hot water and quickly refresh it with cold water. Then I put the rice back into the pot and on the (switched off but still hot) cooking plate to get it dry and keep it warm while making sure it doesn’t scorch.
But don’t take my word for it; trust our countless satisfied customers:
“The License to Err has changed my life! When I was a child I was scolded for mispronouncing ‘epitome’—it was so embarrassing. Now, whenever similar things happen to me, I just tell them to check my Wordie profile, that I have the License to Err. I feel totally free now; it’s absolutely amazing! (And that’s no hyperbole.)” – Richard B., IL
“Once I flee out into the desert for fear of making mistakes. For the same reason I was just about to lose confidence in my respiratory system when a little critter with big ears hopped by, recognized my affliction and promptly produced a License to Err from his pouch. I was saved!” – Michael O., SA
“For too long I have been treading gingerly through life, eschewing any risk for fear that I might somehow err. Well, no longer. Thanks to telofy and Wordie PRO!, I now have License to Err. That’s right, boys and girls – if I screw up now, no big deal! I just laugh about it and get on with my life. And I gotta say, its a wonderful feeling. :-)” – Ptero D., NY
“For a while I pretended I couldn’t speak due to a recent removal of vocal cord nodules, but after a few years my family began to suspect that something else entirely might be my problem. I was subsequently diagnosed with atelophobia and prescribed a License to Err. I promptly got better.” – Jennifer F., TN
“I know what your thinking!” – Henry C., CA
So what are you waiting for? Add the License to Err now; it’s completely free!
And if you add the License to Err within the next several decades you’ll receive all grammar errors in this post free of charge!
So add the License to Err now!
(Now please comment so the rest of the world has an opportunity to obtain the License to Err.)
What about something equivalent to a blockquote/blockquote BBCode tag that highlights quotations in some pretty way? (Perhaps with some built-in method of handling the source?)
Colloquy, confabulation—mmmh! While “confabulation�? sounds kinda funny I think, “discourse�? could perhaps serve as a more serious alternative.
And what about marking citations in some way instead of splitting comments into citations and foobar?
And while I'm at it, is Wordie going to be redesigned? I don't mean—in this case—any changes affecting the structure or appearance of the site, but perhaps changing the (base) font-size values in the css to pt, sweeping out some of the redundancy, assigning IDs and class names to elements to set their properties in the style sheet, etc.?
(I've always been using Wordie with the Stylish add-on to make it look the way I prefer. ;-))
Yes, schwa is teh alsome. I also like its rhotic brother ɚ as is apparent from r-coloring.
And /ə/ (as a phoneme) has so many pleasant allophones in English. Sometimes I hear the unstressed “a�? in such words as askance, about or aura pronounced with a somewhat a-ish inclination (�? I'd say). In Blackadder I even once heard the schwa in “Blackadder�? pronounced that way—prior to that I thought that was just a German accent thing. The same is true for other unstressed vowels that are reduced to a schwa. See Wikipedia: Vowel reduction in English or of course the main article about vowel reduction.
I'm sure John will restore both lists presently, but just in case, these are the cached versions of “Units of Language�?—I don't know what the other list was. Adding words automatically is reasonably easy using iMacros.
Often I get the feeling that I can discern three “levels�? of creativity underlying for example philosophies, methodologies or novels. Surely that is an oversimplification, but then again I know of no way of grasping anything on any level that doesn’t rely on some degree of simplification, at least on the lowest known level. Also, objectively, it feels wrong to arrange them hierarchically, yet I’ve observed that with each step upward on this imagined ladder, the works become increasingly enjoyable to me.
I’ve come across several instances where two seemingly contradictory concepts had been combined in such a way that neither of them had lost any of its appealing aspects but that they suddenly complemented each other like two at first repellent magnets that just had to be turned a little and now firmly stick together. I chose to call this a synthesis of the two concepts and to put it at the top of my imagined hierarchy.
Then there is what I like to call the compromise, where the contradiction had been mollified by way of scraping off all the—often appealing—aspects that clash. The result being some indistinct and inconspicuous gray mass or soft background noise.
And then, of course, there is the possibility to just lump the two concepts together and ignore the contradiction and the resulting inconsistencies.
What I’m asking is not really whether there is something missing from this system—surely there is, after all it is designed to oversimplify things—but what is actually wrong with it. (But mostly, I just wanted to tidy up and test-drive this train of thought.)
Yes, thanks a lot, rolig. And I’m delighted to know that there are other people bothered by such uncertainties/inconsistencies. After consulting that article (and the poll, but I’m not sure that can be called “consulting�?) I’m unsure whether that space is really as omission-worthy as is implied there, after all it’s usually a slow process—stepping on a hyphen intermediately—that leads up to that degree of coalescence. However the bigger the gap the more ambiguous seems the stress to me; one might be prone to assign a secondary stress to the “’a�?. So I’m not entirely convinced, but inclined to settle for I’m’a as a viable utilitarian compromise. For now.
“Beset, as you should know, by woe and eager for a situation of venerational tranquility, I bethought me of this manteion, the new calde’s own, as a place to which I might retire, pray and contemplate the inscrutable ways of the gods.” (emphasis in the original)
—Patera Incus in The Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe
“-ng�? is a special case, as in all accents that I’m aware of, that “-g�? is completely silent (not merely devoiced). Its influence however is that the “-n-�? is not pronounced /n/ as twice in “pronounced�? but /ŋ/ as in “sing�?; that’s the only sound (on phonemic level) that distinguishes “sing�? (/sɪŋ/) and “sin�? (/sɪn/). (Hence it’s called a minimal pair. For more information please consult The Phonetic Rap.)
At the end of words with more than one syllable that distinction is lost in some accents, for example Southern American English and African American Vernacular English, so that “tappening�? (/ˈtæpənɪŋ/) becomes what is commonly transcribed as “tappenin’�? (/ˈtæpənɪn/).
Nonetheless I’ve heard the hypercorrection /ɹɔŋg/ instead of /ɹɔŋ/ (“wrong�?) in an accent reduction video on youtube when the coach was concentrating very hard—too hard—on enunciating as clear as possible for an audience whose listening comprehension skills she couldn’t know or estimate.
You are right about the special relevance for German native speakers (and Spanish and Italian etc.): “Bund�? (“union�?) and “bunt�? (“colorful�?) are homophones: bʊnt.
Hence undue devoicing in word-final position is a common pronunciation mistake among us. Another study I skimmed over yesterday compared the ability of L2 learners with such native languages to distinguish words whose only difference is in the voicing of a word-final consonant, and to reproduce those words.
The paper I posted yesterday however makes a very important distinction in that it focuses on words in phrase-final position, so it would sound strange and German accented to constantly devoice the word-final “s�?s in sentences like “He ushered the guys out the door.�? but not in “Planes!�? (She devoiced a lot in that video; perhaps it's even a little affected.)
Scott here however demonstrates both very clearly many times (devoicing with “friends�? (z̥) in final position at about 0:03 for example and of course lots and lots of voiced /z/ (z) in mid-sentence) but I guess you guys can observe that on yourselves anyway.
I prefer z̥ and z for distinguishing the sounds because I feel the difference in the intensity of the air stream between z̥ and s rather distinctly when I’m speaking, though I don’t know if I would normally hear it.
Throughout the last one or two weeks I’ve focused on getting the distinction between /s/ (after consonant sounds) and /z/ (after all other sounds) down, which means that I read Gene Wolfe to myself. I already noticed that with some words in some contexts I had this slight epiphanic feeling like “Yeah, of course! That sounds so much better!�? and in other contexts it sounded strange and was even hard to pronounce (only usually that means that I’ll just have to practice more).
Then two days ago we (two friend and I) went to the cinema where we were presented with the 2012 trailer. Of course I had to point out the planes (“Planes! – More planes! – Flying giraffe!�?) but after the first “Planes!�? I became self-consciously aware of (1) my devoiced pronunciation and (2) the fact that two English native speakers were sitting to my left (and probably more behind and in front of me for we were watching District 9 in English). Hence my next “planes�? ended very voiced—not that anyone heard it over the noise of all that disaster-ing, catastrophe-ing and apocalypse-ing around us.
Afterwards I wondered which pronunciation had been more correct.
Yesterday then I added another layer of wondering, when I wondered what happened when a word-final /z/ is followed by a word-initial /s/; this may serve as such an example. On IDEA I learned that sometimes nothing happens and sometimes the /z/ becomes devoiced. I then (after what feels like a few months) re-watched Brooke’s video (Thanks, Brooke!) and my wonder culminated in some frantic googling which unearthed that paper that finally Oedipused the mystery for me. :-)
Oh, and about the r-sounds issue on pirates, those little articulatory gems seems to be especially controversial: I don’t think the English ɹ is especially hard to pronounce for Germans, it’s just not in our inventory, but the German �? (the one I use) as well as its voiceless counterpart x (or χ) seem to be pretty tricky (as in “Bach�?, the composer, also the German word for “brook�?. ^^)
Even some Germans have problems pronouncing the southern German ʀ—a trill—and especially hard is r—also a trill—which is heard in some older RP-ish (I think) varieties of British English (Stephen Fry uses it and of course Noel Coward—a lot) and which is the rhotic consonant in Spanish and surely also some other languages. I can’t pronounce it yet, but I think, after much training, I at least have the tongue movement down—more or less.
And then there is also the alveolar tap, ɾ, as in General American “city�? (ˈsɪɾi) which is also sometimes used as rhotic sound by people like Stephen Fry and Noel Coward. It sounds like one tap/flap of the alveolar trill r, I think.
Hmm, this looks long. Good thing my browser didn’t crash. ^^
Sionnach: Yes that's Wordie! And so wonderfully eloquent.
John, what you’re planning sounds like a very sensible (series of) next step(s) to me. Also the discussion appeared to imply that future (or Future?) Wordie and Wordnik are to be operating on the same database—at least in appearance—so I think is would be only consistent to equip them with the same range of functionality. Of course we Wordizens want to keep our design (or the structure underlying that design) and we want to be able to behold it (split!) seconds after typing “wordie.org�? into the address bar (or clicking the bookmark or typing “w�? and using the auto-complete). So my idea—for the moment forgetting all about those personalized pages*—would be to hide the functions and widgets that Wordnik brings into the marriage just one click away, and on Wordnik to, if necessary, do the same with the functions and widgets Wordie provides. Once you have a good overview over the structure and the programming of the Wordnik page, I'm sure you or the whole team will have no problem devising a design that integrates seamlessly with Wordie's minimalist approach without leaving gaps when it is hidden.
This suggestion, as I see it, has no influence on your idea of a “Zeitgeist�? page as I mostly have word pages and list pages in mind right now.
*I still like that idea though. Also a module displaying data gathered from other websites of one's choice by means of powerful regular expressions searching the source code would come in handy. ^^
I kind of like this description, but I’m afraid it might be too much of a cliché. Do you feel it’s too cliché to be used seriously without quotes, high-pitched undulating voice, “so called�? and the like?
Around here we sometimes say ™ to mark certain clichés and to distance ourselves from them. It’s practically always used in a humorous way and I think there’s a tendency to use it with oversimplifications that are often employed for promoting ideologies. For example: “You use that search engine? I thought you said it was Evil™.�? (Only in German of course.)
Is it also used that way in the English speaking world?
What is the reason that suggests this change? If it's just that the introduction is unnecessary for the regulars and just pushing the relevant part (comments, etc.) down by a couple em, I agree. Then you could just make a shiny big introduction that is deflatable and automatically—and smoothly of course—becomes a little bar once you're logged in. Or are you even planning personalized customized homepages for registered users à la iGoogle? (Not that I'm using that, but with Wordie I think I would enjoy it.)
sionnach: Yeah... Mostly they are just afraid because as long as the stick to every inch of protocol they can blame whatever goes wrong on the paragraphs; when they use their own judgment and intellect however, they are personally liable and potentially doomed. (I'm going to have to renew my ID soon, wish me luck. ^^) Yet, luckily, I observe the latter rather more frequently than I expect. And it's good to hear that this kinda thing is different in other countries.
Why Germany? I’m not saying that Germany isn’t gradually degenerating into this idea of a police state that so many politicians seem to have grown fond of throughout the recent years, in fact I’m marching against* this exact thing tomorrow, but I think that many other (industrialized) countries have gone much farther into that direction already, and in that respect I’m rather glad to be living here...
*However I like to call it marching for freedom; “against�? doesn’t accord with my Aikidoish inclination. :-)
Rule two I’ve learned exactly like that. Rule one, it seems to me, might be true sometimes, so perhaps not as a rule, but rather as an observation that allows probabilistic extrapolation or something like that...
Pauses are often accompanied by an “er” or “um”, those little words usually start with a vowel sound, so that might be a reason for the pauses-/ði/.
OK, now I’ve come up with a few—three—rather general suggestions for Wordnik.
Paul, the man behind dict.cc might be interested in cooperating with Wordnik (if he doesn’t already). It would be very convenient to have a personalized word page whose modules include one showing translations from dict.cc.
And what about Wiktionary? An IPA pronunciation that distinguishes /ɚ/ and /əɹ/, and /�?/ and /ɜɹ/ would be much appreciated.
Perhaps a compilation of regional pronunciation variations in full-blown phonetic IPA notation is a bit much to ask right now, but it would certainly be quite intriguing.
As an alternative to spamming Wordie I suggest you use meta-tags to better position your website in search results. Also—correct me if I'm wrong—you seem to target Christian customers, so why not open up to all the other religions out there and offer customized t-shirts for their followers as well?
I checked and found out that trepidatious is included at least in the Heritage dictionary and that I'm not feeling like that at all! So please make that the little neophiliac in me is right. :-)
Also this is probably a great opportunity to add a bulk moving feature for words and categorization for the lists page. And I'm looking forward to case sensitivity.
Best of luck!
(By the bye, a few years back I once used erinaceous in a school exam.)
Such a feature would be utterly redundant: You could just make an open list labeled “Friends�?; everyone could add themselves. (Why isn't it "themself" as substitute for "himself/herself"?)
“I'm sure you know this old man: One of his eyes resembles that of a vulture—a pale blue eye with a film over it. You won't believe what I've found out: I can possess him by means of astral projection. Let me show you.�?
I only know about the hair space in conjunction with em dashes, but I don’t use them there. The thin space however is very useful in German as all abbreviations of more than two letters that are separated by dots need it after the dots, e.g.: “z. B.�? (e.g.)
The Duden standard is to use a standard space if a thin space is unavailable, yet people often put no space at all, even on magazine covers...
There is even a very useful search directly on xkcd.com, but the fun is mostly in using those URLs in conversations even though there is no computer around; proves one's nerdiness.
They call me Caucasian and yet I don't know the first thing about that region...
Pretty character by the way, it looks like a heart perched on a twig—and since a twig is something divided in two that might just as well represent the one heart that is shared by two bodies and minds, metaphorically speaking.
Sometimes it's useful to know a few xkcd numbers by heart in case an argument comes up that was already refuted in an xkcd, then you can just cite the URL.
Ned is a bit of a problem: He's (one of) the main character(s) in Pushing Daisies where only his first name is known. So on the one hand one could argue that he only has one name as the reality of the series is defined by nothing but the information the series provides, however on the other hand it's supposed to be set in our reality—augmented with all the buoyancy of the forensic fairytale—which suggests that his last name in fact does exist in the series and that only it never came up.
I rather tend towards the latter option because I think it's natural to see our reality as some kind of default state or raw structure upon which and into which (if things are decidedly different) every story is built. Hence I've added the name for now.
Interesting, I knew a "de Oliveira" once, that seems to be a rather common name.
Now that the list is open to fictional characters I have rather to many ideas... I guess I'll restrict myself to the ones where the difference in populatity is expecially stark.
For comparison a letter in an upper class dialect from the same book:
30th Nemesis 332
To the Clergy of the Chapter,
Both Severally and Collectively
Greetings in the name of Pas, in the name of Scylla, and in the names of all gods! Know that you are ever in my thoughts, as in my heart.
The present disturbed state of Our Sacred City obliges us to be even more conscious of our sacred duty to minister to the dying, not only to those amongst them with whose recent actions we may sympathize, but to all those to whom, as we apprehend, Hierax may swiftly reveal his compassionate power. Thus it is that I implore you this day to cultivate the perpetual and indefatigable predisposition toward mercy and pardon whose conduit you so frequently must be.
Many of you have appealed for guidance in these most disturbing days. Nay, many appeal so still, even hourly. Most of you will have learned before you read this epistle of the lamented demise of the presiding officer of the Ayuntamiento.
The late Councillor Lemur was a man of extraordinary gifts, and his passing cannot but leave a void in every heart. How I long to devote the remainder of this necessarily curtailed missive to mourning his passing. Instead, for such are the exactions of this sad whorl, the whorl that passes, my duty to you requires that I forewarn you without delay against the baseless pretexts of certain vile insurgents who would have you to believe that they act in the late Councillor Lemur's name.
Let us set aside, my beloved clergy, all fruitless debate regarding the propriety of an intercaldéan caesura spanning some two decades. That the press of unhappy events then rendered an interval of that kind, if not desirable, then unquestionably attractive, we can all agree. That it represented, to judgements not daily schooled to the nice discriminations of the law, a severe strain upon the elasticity of our Charter, we can agree likewise, can we not? The argument is wholly historical now. O beloved, let us resign it to the historians.
What is inarguable is that this caesura, to which I have had reason to refer above, has attained to its ordained culmination. It cannot, O my beloved clergy, as it should not, survive the grievous loss which it has so recently endured. What, then, we may not illegitimately inquire, is to succeed that just, beneficent and ascendant government so sadly terminated?
Beloved clergy, let us not be unmindful of the wisdom of the past, wisdom which lies in no less a vehicle than our own Chrasmologic Writings. Has it not declared, "Vox poputi, vox dei"? which is to say, in the will of the masses we may discern words of Pas's. At the present critical moment in the lengthy epic of Our Sacred City, Pas's grave words are not to be mistaken. With many voices they cry out that the time has arrived for a precipitate return to that Charteral guardianship which once our city knew. Shall it be said of us that we stop our ears to Pas's words?
Nor is their message so brief, and so less than mistakable. From forest to lake, from the proud crown of the Palatine to the humblest of alleys they proclaim him. O my beloved clergy, with what incommunicable joy shall I do so additionally. For Supreme Pas has, as never previously, espoused for our city a caldé from within our own ranks, an anointed augur, holy, pious, and redolent of sanctity. …
Since it has to be little, it's a pencil. You win a Gene Wolfe thumbs up plus a quotation from the book I'm reading. ^^
“On legs as thin as sticks, the shadowy figures parted; a pencil of light settled on a dark bundle that stared up at her with Incus's agonized eyes. A rag covered his mouth.�? – Gene Wolfe, The Book of the Long Sun
It was probably Munich... I live comparatively far to the left of Berlin where I hardly ever come in touch with this city's eponymous slang, but even my parents have never heard that word. In Bavaria however (though in Munich somewhat less I've heard) they speak this utterly different language—if they are really good at it I won't understand a word—so it's very possible that it is/was a common slang term there.
It yields a few thousand Google hits, but hardly any of them seem relevant.
(Oh, and I forgot to mention knuffig, such a cute word.)
This Wikipedia article is from the Alemannic Wikipedia. Quite intriguing.
(Only I'm afraid to think too much in German at the moment due to an English test I have to take in about a week...)
Edit: Guessing from the context it seems uffig means as much as open in Alemannic.
Comments by telofy
Show previous 200 comments...
Telofy commented on the word penurious
“The cold winter wind seemed to carry with it a steaming, fetid wind from Green, as a frigid old man, penurious and hoary with age, might bear in his arms the rotten corpse of a beautiful young woman.”
—Gene Wolfe, In Green’s Jungles
February 26, 2010
Telofy commented on the word brei
“(Linguistics / Phonetics & Phonology) (intr) South African informal to speak with a uvular r, esp in Afrikaans Also brey”
—TheFreeDictionary
February 23, 2010
Telofy commented on the word azygous
A very useful word for describing my socks.
February 23, 2010
Telofy commented on the user pterodactyl
Glad you like it. :-)
February 23, 2010
Telofy commented on the user pterodactyl
“Pterodactyl”, with a “c”, as in cnidarian!
February 23, 2010
Telofy commented on the word misoneism
Cooler than neophobia, isn’t it?
February 20, 2010
Telofy commented on the word poofter
Apparently pronounced with an /ʊ/, not an /u/.
February 19, 2010
Telofy commented on the word rhyton
Though Milos ruined the Fibonacci sequence, we can still make the year–comments relation conform with the number of nonisomorphic groupoids with n elements. Only, then we’ll have to post 3330 comments next year . . .
Edit: And if that doesn’t work out, this sequence might still save us.
February 18, 2010
Telofy commented on the word rice
I’m at 10,000 grains now; it says “You have donated 10000 grains of rice. Wow! Now THAT is impressive!” and the bowl is empty again. There are a few screen shots of that on the Internets.
Edit: At 20,000 it says “You have donated 20000 grains of rice.
Wow! We're speechless!”
February 17, 2010
Telofy commented on the word misspelling
I’ve found that sometimes children’s spelling mistakes can be quite elucidating regarding phonological features of their respective accents. Is there by any chance a searchable corpus of school children’s writing? (I couldn’t find any trace of one.) If not, why?
Thanks.
February 17, 2010
Telofy commented on the word polygynandrous
According to OED: “Brit. /ˌpɒlɪdʒᵻˈnandrəs/, U.S. /ˌpɑlidʒᵻˈnændrəs/”
If you’re puzzled by the ᵻ, so was I. Apparently it’s some kind of more accurate but non-standard representation for what is usually /ɨ/.
Also, according to the pronunciation key, the /a/ is supposed to be pronounced as in French “mari”. Hmm . . .
February 17, 2010
Telofy commented on the user feedback
It seems I’ve listed opprobrium thrice on one list (5-0). :-o
Edit: Oh, by the way: Wordnik. (Just in case my inquiry there hasn’t reached you yet.)
February 16, 2010
Telofy commented on the word rice
They have 60 levels now. What are your scores? And is there really a surprise when you reach 10,000 grains?
February 15, 2010
Telofy commented on the word percool
See definition on per-: “5. Slang Very: percool, as in ‘That shirt is percool, man!’ ”
February 15, 2010
Telofy commented on the word Wordnik
If there are no banners yet, is there perhaps an SVG version of the logo?
February 14, 2010
Telofy commented on the word Vancouver
This is one vote for /væŋˈkuvɚ/, I’d say.
February 14, 2010
Telofy commented on the word Wordnik
I’d be interested in little promotional banners/buttons, esp. in the sizes 120×90, 120×60 or 88×31 for Wordnik. From time to time it would be fun to have something neat to make some promotion for the site. Has someone already created something of the sort?
February 13, 2010
Telofy commented on the word indeed
By the way, during the concert on February 8, 2010 in Berlin (:-D) they once used “teetotaling”. It might have even been somewhat of a paronomasia, for there is a lot of tea in the air during the show, but I don’t think it was punnily connoted in its immediate sentence context (which I can’t recall, unfortunately).
February 11, 2010
Telofy commented on the word indeed
“Emilie taught me that when we curse, if you say ‘indeed’ afterwards, it makes it more civilized.”
—Veronica Varlow, source and demonstration
February 11, 2010
Telofy commented on the word Sentinelese
Wow, an unknown language. At first I didn’t even grasp what they mean by “unknown language”. ^^
Edit: For some (anti-spam) reason the link doesn’t work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language
Edit 2: They work again. Thanks.
Edit 3: And borked again.
February 11, 2010
Telofy commented on the word timecube
Some more information can be found here and here. If someone should figure out what it’s all about, please feel free to explain. ^^
February 5, 2010
Telofy commented on the word ‟
The double high-reversed-9 quotation mark.
Okay, it’s not really a pet peeve, but to me it looks kinda awkward in an English text and it was constantly bugging me (a bit) when I was reading Gene Wolfe’s ‟There Are Doors”. ^^
(Doesn’t it look as if the editor felt direct speech was somewhat icky?)
January 31, 2010
Telofy commented on the word troglodyte
“Basically, John ［McCain］ is a technological troglodyte, and proud of it.”
—Reed Hundt (former FCC chairman)
Found here.
January 28, 2010
Telofy commented on the word hallucinations
Among other things the Rs sound fudded (or bilabialized) to me, his realization of /ə/ at the end of words like “here” goes into the direction of ɐ and /æ/ seems a bit closer than I’d expect.
January 24, 2010
Telofy commented on the word hallucinations
Wow, what is this accent? Is that common in London?
January 23, 2010
Telofy commented on the list double-dactyls
Oh dear, sorry. I didn’t realize it’s one of those semi-open lists that were closed down in the transition. It’s open now.
January 19, 2010
Telofy commented on the list double-dactyls
Nice. I once wrote a poem in pure dactyls (except the last verse in each stanza) but the word-order ended up being pretty avant-garde/experimental. ^^
January 19, 2010
Telofy commented on the list double-dactyls
Marvelous! Add it!
(If someone should favor a different pronunciation, they can file an appeal.)
January 19, 2010
Telofy commented on the list words-you-were-amazed-to-hear-in-a-song
Wow, I joined Wordie on Emilie Autumn’s 29th birthday. :-D
January 19, 2010
Telofy commented on the word gulls and buoys
Dontcry, both tend to feel peckish at times.
January 18, 2010
Telofy commented on the word w-i-f-e
Even worse: SupererogatoryHyphen
(This would be an example of U–n–n–e–c–e–s–s–a–r–y–D–a–s–h.)
January 16, 2010
Telofy commented on the word i are broken at wordnik
I read you. Loud and clear.
January 16, 2010
Telofy commented on the word internet
Yeah, that’s Bush-speak: Wikipedia: internets ^^
And there is also a video.
January 16, 2010
Telofy commented on the word internet
Do you think the “Internet” should be capitalized or is it time to minusculize it?
I’ll probably use the word in a formal (American English) text and I would like to make it look progressive, but not at the expense of moderateness.
(As comparison: I now prefer “email” to “e-mail”.)
There is also a Wikipedia article about this topic.
Thanks.
January 16, 2010
Telofy commented on the word thwart
Funny, I have no idea what my problem had been. Mouthfeel indeed. :-)
January 15, 2010
Telofy commented on the list shiny-german-words
Oh, thanks! :-D
(That’s why case-sensitivity is so important to me.)
January 15, 2010
Telofy commented on the word miserlich
The German language had been lacking something.
January 15, 2010
Telofy commented on the word teichoscopy
“. . . and the ‘teichoscopy’ (whereby characters observe and simultaneously report events that are happening off-stage).”
—An Introduction to the Study of English and American Literature
See also Wikipedia: teichoscopy and teichoscopia.
January 14, 2010
Telofy commented on the word mental
“The Office, in contrast, and I might have chosen other examples such as I’m Alan Partridge or The League of Gentlemen, is, if only obliquely monumental though avowedly anti-sentimental, certainly ‘mental’ in at least three senses of the word. Firstly, it is cerebral. Secondly, it is anarchic. Thirdly, it is angry.”
—Peter Stear, Mockumentalism: Re-Casting the Void in Contemporary British TV Comedy
January 10, 2010
Telofy commented on the list i-alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland-i-and-i-through-the-looking-glass-and-what-alice-found-there-i
I remember Alice using the word “curiouser” quite toward the beginning of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There is (of course) already a citation on its comments page.
January 9, 2010
Telofy commented on the word Fornigate
A moniker for the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
January 8, 2010
Telofy commented on the word esurient
Indeed! :-D
(Unfortunately, using such dainty words is only half as much fun when no one understands you . . .)
January 6, 2010
Telofy commented on the word esurient
Wonderful, it’s Word of the Day and I used it just this Monday (two days ago).
January 6, 2010
Telofy commented on the word if-onlys
“If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.”
—Mercedes Lackey
January 6, 2010
Telofy commented on the word garden path sentence
I’m a Wikipedia article. I come bearing mindfucks and jokes.
January 6, 2010
Telofy commented on the word firefox add-ons
The Character Palette add-on allows you to insert special characters with one click.
For example, inserting square brackets via [ and ], the way we did it on Wordie emeritus, doesn’t seem work anymore, but there are two Unicode characters that look similar (albeit a tad bit clumsier). Also there are all those neat typographic quotation marks and dashes that I like so much.
You can create a new palette just by copying in these example repertoires (or parts of them):
［］–—“”‘’
ÆæÐðȜȝÞþǷƿ
fffiflffifflſtst
ʈɖɟɡɢʡʔɸβθðʃʒɕʑʂʐçʝɣχʁħʕʜʢɦɱɳɲŋɴʋɹɻɰʙⱱʀɾɽɬɮɺɭʎʟʍɥɧʼɓɗʄɠʛʘǀǃ
ǂǁɨʉɯɪʏʊøɘɵɤəɛœɜɞʌɔæɐɶɑɒʰʱʷʲˠˤˀᵊk̚ⁿˡˈˌːˑt̪d̪s̺s̻θ̼s̬n̥ŋ̊a̤a̰β̞˕r̝˔o˞ɚɝe̘
e̙u̟i̠ɪ̈e̽ɔ̹ɔ̜n̩ə̆ə̯ə̃ȷ̃ɫz̴ə̋ə́ə̄ə̀ə̏ə̌ə̂ə᷄ə᷅ə᷇ə᷆ə᷈ə᷉t͡ʃd͡ʒt͜ɬ‿˥˦˧˨˩ꜛꜜ|‖↗↘k͈s͎
(The last one is stolen from Wikipedia.)
I hope this helps to promote prettier typography on Wordnik. :-)
Good luck.
P.S., the extension is currently somewhat buggy in my Firefox version. I hope it works better for you.
January 5, 2010
Telofy commented on the list abecedarian-insult-list
If Poe had known this list . . .
“‘Thou wretch!—thou vixen!—thou shrew!’ said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding; ‘thou witch!—thou hag!—thou whippersnapper—thou sink of iniquity!—thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable!—thou—thou—’ here standing upon tiptoe, seizing her by the throat, and placing my mouth close to her ear, I was preparing to launch forth a new and more decided epithet of opprobrium, which should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of her insignificance, when to my extreme horror and astonishment I discovered that I had lost my breath.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, Loss of Breath
It just reminded me somehow of that story. ^^
January 5, 2010
Telofy commented on the word ought
I don’t want to close this discussion just yet, but thanks you three.
January 5, 2010
Telofy commented on the word wlatsome
The pronunciation is /'leɪtsəm/? (Source)
January 5, 2010
Telofy commented on the word I miss wordie
Let’s use “wordnik” as gender neutral personal pronoun (in lieu of “he/she” and the like)!
January 5, 2010
Telofy commented on the word ought
I’ve read sentences with “ought . . . to” and sentences without that “to”:
(1) Ought the idgit to fidget?
(2) Ought the idgit fidget?
Can someone tell me whether there is some grammatical or stylistic difference?
Thanks!
January 5, 2010
Telofy commented on the word transpreantepenultimate
Yeah, why not.
(Found on the Silk for Caldé Blog.)
January 3, 2010
Telofy commented on the word I miss wordie
I just added a keyword search for comments and definitions. When I type “n foobar” in the address bar it takes me to the definitions page; when I type “w foobar” I get the comments page. Here is a little how-to.
I’m only waiting for a few known bugs to be fixed and a few oft requested features to be implemented, otherwise I’m pretty content with Wordnik’s Wordieness—and there is really quite a lot that has improved.
January 3, 2010
Telofy commented on the list books-torn-asunder-by-new-year’s-eve
Mollusque, a few weeks ago we’ve been given this review of The Elegance of the Hedgehog in one of my university courses as an example of how to organize and write such a text. (Just my compulsive need to point out—or sometimes photograph—coincidences.)
January 2, 2010
Telofy commented on the word bristol stool scale
Haha! “These devious dollops of defecation pack a pungent punch that could make an onion cry”, “mounds of malicious manure”, “clandestine nocturnal deposits-o-dung” . . .
Somehow I here those alliterative sentences read in Jim Dale’s (Pushing Daisies narrator) voice. :-D
January 2, 2010
Telofy commented on the word 2010
10 If 2010 hasn’t yet commenced for you, please go to 10.
20 Happy New Year and a happy new year!
January 1, 2010
Telofy commented on the list books-torn-asunder-by-new-year’s-eve
My book has been metaphorically severed on page 177. ;-)
I’m looking forward to more (mournful) additions to this list in some five to eight hours (when the USA are—gradually—entering the alliterative year).
January 1, 2010
Telofy commented on the word books split over the new year
Great, here we go! :-D
January 1, 2010
Telofy commented on the word books split over the new year
I was just wondering, what if one manages to finish the first book of a trilogy before midnight (waiting with the second until the next day)?
Oh right, what about that list? Anyone interested?
I’m only going to have one, perhaps two, split books.
January 1, 2010
Telofy commented on the word Mennonites
Chuck, Emerson and Ned confronting three lawyers
(from Pushing Daisies episode “Water and Power”):
Emerson: … We’re investigating the death of Roland Stingwell.
Ned: His assistant said there was a heated legal dispute between Mr. Stingwell and your clients, the Fits and Giggles Novelty Company.
Chuck: And we know that Mr. Stingwell was about to make public that one of your client’s factories was illegally disposing dangerous chemicals into the Papen County dam reservoir.
Lawyer 1: These are baseless allegations.
Lawyer 2: Our client did not, nor would they ever dispose of any kind of chemicals into the reservoir. This is a categorical denial.
Lawyer 3: Maybe once.
Lawyer 1: And one time only.
Lawyer 2: Once, we may have inadvertently allowed a small amount of chemicals into the reservoir. But it was a long time ago.
Lawyer 3: It was Tuesday.
Lawyer 1: Very, very early Tuesday. Nearly Monday.
Chuck: What kind of lawyers are you?
Lawyer 1: We are Mennonites, which would not normally be a liability were it not for our own personal commitment not to lie.
January 1, 2010
Telofy commented on the word New Year countdown
A New Year countdown for all time zones
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word books split over the new year
Hmm. Anyone interested in an open list for split books?
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ainst
Yet another anagram.
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word rhinoceroses
“A study led by Margo Lillie, a doctor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, concludes that cow tipping by a single person is impossible. Her calculations found that it would take at least two people to apply enough force to push over a cow if the cow does not react and reorient its footing. If the cow does react, it would take at least four people to push it over.” :-D
—Wikipedia: Cow tipping
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word rhinoceroses
“Can’t go crying over spilled rhinoceroses.”
—Randy in Pushing Daisies episode “Window Dressed to Kill”
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word P’s and Q’s
From Pushing Daisies episode “Window Dressed to Kill”:
Olive: Ned, I never thought I’d say this, but we need to back off on the PDA, ’cause Vivian’s P’s and Q’s have gone AWOL and I can’t take much more of what I just took before I’m DOA.
Ned: Olive . . . use your words.
(More information and no definitive answers on P’s and Q’s.)
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word peep
From Pushing Daisies episode “Window Dressed to Kill”:
Emerson: People who need people to do every damn thing for ’em aren’t always the luckiest people in the world. Sometimes those peeps get pissed off and start resentin’ their lazy-ass bosses. Erin and Coco’s peep done gone postal and killed both of ’em.
Chuck: Peep this, playa.
Emerson: Don’t do that.
Chuck: Sorry.
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word double negative
From Pushing Daisies episode “Window Dressed to Kill” (Pie names given in italics):
Olive: I’m sorry you never looked at me the same way you look at Chuck.
Ned: I wouldn’t say never.
(Days later:)
Narrator: Confused not by the particulars but by this particular usage Olive read about sentence structure and the use of the double negative. And with passive-aggressive panache, broached the subject with the Pie-Maker.
Ned: Try this one again.
Olive (tasting Pearway to Heaven): I definitely don’t hate it.
Ned: What does that mean?
Olive: Just what I said.
Ned: Means you like it?
Olive: Υou tell me.
Ned: You said it wasn’t less tasty than Kick in the Kumquat, but more unfulfilling than Rock Me Amade-Quince. (Pause.) I don’t like giving funny names to the pies. Does it not seem disrespectful?
Olive: Τhere you go. Υou did it again.
Later in that episode:
Randy: People who have super-powers don’t not wanna use them.
(Cf. negative concord)
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word neuro-history
Just wanted to share this.
December 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word Oreb
There on Silk’s shoulder, that’s Oreb.
December 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word not knowing or remembering stuff I think ought to know or remember
Lol. :-)
It’s the first time I notice that toaster as the “suffix” -aster. And I always trusted it with my bread . . .
Owing to its terribly-hard-to-grasp networky structure the brain actually remembers thing better when they come with more information. When one, for example, wants to learn a word like toaster, one might look for lots of definitions, read through examples, listen to pronunciations, look up etymologically or morphologically related terms as well as synonyms and antonyms, look at pictures, try to come up with puns on it, etc. And then of course one should reactivate a.k.a. use it from time to time. That way the word becomes better connected within the mental lexicon and thus more readily accessible.
December 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word K9
In human anatomy? Siriusly.
December 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the user feedback
Hi. The vertical space between a pronunciation and its attribution is bigger than the one between each attribution and the next pronunciation, which looks very misguiding if there are a few more pronunciations.
This fixes the issue for me:
.audio-pronunciation
margin: 10px 0;
.audio-pronunciation div
padding: 0;
Good night, whenever that is over there.
Edit: For now I’ve put a new version of my Stylish sheet up (firefox add-ons).
December 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word braggadocio
“Vivian Charles: Mr. Cod, I’m here against my better judgment considering the callous braggadocio with which you previously gave me the heave-ho.
Emerson Cod: Well, if I did do any ho-heavin’ it was for your own good. There’s a time for callous braggadocio and a time for sensitivity. To the Norwegians, that time is never.
Vivian Charles: I suppose it’s a holdover from their Viking ancestry. It would be difficult to rape and pillage with the subtlety of a humanist.”
—Pushing Daisies, The Norwegians
December 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word Tasered
It has probably just fallen prey to some stray shift pressing.
December 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word not knowing or remembering stuff I think ought to know or remember
Oh, I see. ^^
Sometimes I notice that I can’t remember the names of people I haven’t met or thought about for a few years. Then I try and find out what it was, and that often leaves me puzzled either because the answer was so obvious or because the name sounded so entirely foreign to me. Quite disquieting either way. And of course when you know that you know some wonderfully apposite word, but it just won’t manifest on your tongue. I know a great example just a few months back, but I can’t remember which word that was . . .
Edit: “Fastidious” *hugging browser history*
But it’s also quite irksome to be presented with a problem that’s actually pretty much down your alley, and yet you lack knowledge, experience or creativity to come up with a feasible solution.
So I’m trying to apprehend and prepare to prevent. And of course to allay those worries themselves, as opposed to offsetting them, which would never sufficiently mitigate them, I guess.
December 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word not knowing or remembering stuff I think ought to know or remember
Hmm? Unfortunately, not that I know of.
December 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word not knowing or remembering stuff I think ought to know or remember
I can think of fewer cases in which not knowing would be worse than not remembering than vice versa and I thought that this difference, which you pointed out, could be alleviated by adding the two terrifiers separately.
December 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the list things-that-terrify-you
Driving. Yes, ruzuzu. :-/
December 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word not knowing or remembering stuff I think ought to know or remember
I think you’re right. Should I split the entry?
December 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word keming
Rofl! I just came here to post that link.
December 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the user erinmckean
Clothing, right, another of your fortes. I’ll have to pay more attention to that.
Good luck with the scripts. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you get the permissions.
December 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the user erinmckean
Thanks, I’ll keep them coming.
Besides the writing I also love the acting, the scenery, the plots and the premises of the series. Only, those are hard to quote.
Bryan Fuller ftw!
December 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word apple pie
Uselessness, do you feel or know of any geographical or sociolinguistic links with the degree of r-coloring within the US? That’s been puzzling me for quite some time now . . .
(Oh, and you pronounced my name, sort of. I’m honored. ^^)
December 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word salsify
“‘Anybody that can say.’ Wijzer helped himself to another salsify fritter.”
—Gene Wolfe, On Blue’s Waters
December 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word binge
“One hour, 23 minutes and 42 seconds ago, Olive Snook made two alarming discoveries. First, that in time of duress the Pie-Maker’s penchant for stress baking was matched only by the petite waitress’s predilection for stress binging. Second, . . .”
—Pushing Daisies episode Robbing Hood
December 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word cahoot
“You two backing up each other’s alibis means bupkis. You're canoodling and cahooting—and you’re cahooting to kill.”
—Emerson in Pushing Daisies episode Robbing Hood
December 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word anti
Does anyone feel or know of any phonological, geographical or sociolinguistic differences between the pronunciations /ˈæntaɪ/ and /ˈænti/ within the US?
(Or perhaps for semi-?)
Thanks!
December 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word certain combinations of letters, numbers, or colors
66 is quite a potent number for me, too.
I often try to find this and other numbers hidden in license plates, names and so on. Knowing the indices of the letters in the alphabet greatly facilitates these quests.
December 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word books split over the new year
I was about to aver that at least the stories from the fiction fraction haven’t ceased to be pretty prolific in sporting each their own teensy time bubbles whose artificial temporal worlds look exquisitely eternal from our plane. Yet, how a reader receives and reinterprets written representations changes with her dispositional developments or manners of imagination. Here a fear of New Year would appear rather random since it weighs no more heavily than other days.
Also, this year, I took to mistaking it for 2010 since August.
December 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word complify
Poor Kate.
December 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word woty09
. . . by tagging it “woty09” or “poty09” respectively.
December 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word woty09
What’s going on Wordie woty09- and poty09-wise? Does anyone know?
December 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the word threescore thrift stores
“Crash Blossoms: When Words Collide” around minute 17.
December 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word satchel of deception
Indeed! I just re-watched a couple episodes. Marvelous! Bryan Fuller at his best. :-D
December 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word satchel of deception
“But the secret that weighed the most in Olive's satchel of deception, was that she was still in love with the pie-maker.”
—Pushing Daisies, Bzzzzzzzzz!
December 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ainst
Thou ainst linking properly.
December 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the word TMI
Too Much Information
December 21, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ð
An unusual one. Could be. ^^
December 21, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ð
On the back cover of my copy of The Dubliners, Dublin is spelled “Ðublin” once. So far I couldn’t find out why.
December 20, 2009
Telofy commented on the user jwn197
Woo! I now have peanut butter without sugar—even yummier.
December 20, 2009
Telofy commented on the word throught
Hyblends or, less commonly, blends. ;-)
(But those don’t say anything about the hyblending being unintentional.)
December 20, 2009
Telofy commented on the word API
A big thanks from me, too. ~
December 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the list favorite-five-letter-words
Perhaps you also like incur? I always have to think of dogs when I hear it. ^^
December 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the user feedback
Anti-spam measures, links that don’t change and 24268: Great!
API: I might have misunderstood that. I don’t have any questions yet, I just want in. ;-)
Thanks.
December 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the word 24268
ID of the highest numbered list on Wordie emeritus according to grantbarrett on feedback.
December 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the word every which way
December 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the user feedback
Do the list URLs change if I rename them? If so, it would be useful to know the list IDs. On Wordie emeritus you could still find them in the source code somewhere. If you happen to know the ID you can still call the up, so it would be great if you could include it in the page somewhere, perhaps as HTML comment.
Also I can’t edit my comment on jwn197’s profile. (The picture goes over the text, of course . . .) After sending the edited version the page goes blank and nothing happens.
Edit: I can’t edit today’s comment there either, so it’s probably not about the picture.
Thanks!
(Hi, marky. I’m waiting, too. And patiently, too. ;-))
December 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the word furtive
Amazed to hear it in Emilie Autumn’s Gothic Lolita.
December 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the word cottonless
Wow. That suggests that Wordnik tunes in on our brainwaves and automatically tries to find the quotations we are going to post so to save us the trouble. I hope it works for Gene Wolfe, too.
December 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-you-were-amazed-to-hear-in-a-song
Emilie Autumn contributes ankles: “Opheliac Out Takes” from 3:07 onward
She also uses a high pitched ［ʀ］ (uvular trill), which is actually my signature sound. Hers is much higher however, and I think I close my lips further.
December 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word critter
December 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the list thats-what-she-said-and-other-spoken-earworms
Yeah, I know that. I (usually facetiously) say “Awesomeness!” or (less often) “Teh awesomeness!” even, nay, especially in German. ;-)
December 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ogive
Wow, ogives are so goth!
December 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the user jwn197
I like peanut butter, too. :-) (But I don’t think that information sums me up especially well.)
December 16, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-you-were-amazed-to-hear-in-a-song
Prototype, MooTools, jQuery, Ajax, Firefox, JavaScript and widget by courtesy of Scott’s IE is Being Mean to Me.
December 14, 2009
Telofy commented on the word good
Well . . .
December 14, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-you-were-amazed-to-hear-in-a-song
32-bit word, APL, SNOBOL, COBOL, Java, Perl, Fortran, Unix, Sun, Lisp, hack, C, C++ and assembler are from Eternal Flame by Julia Ecklar.
December 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the user mrjyn
I suspect this is art—of sorts.
Edit: Are you Maury O’Rourk?
December 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word orgle
lol! Or an orgy of ogling.
December 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word time
“You don’t get past it, it just becomes part of who you are.”
—Echo/Rebecca in Dollhouse season 2 episode 8
December 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word the pen is on the table
This might be off topic by now, but many of my former schoolmates who had French seem to remember “Arthur est un perroquet” as culmination point of that experience.
December 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-you-were-amazed-to-hear-in-a-song
Oops. Sorry. Fixed. *blush*
December 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word acquiesce
Heard in Emilie Autumn – Save You:
“How do I save you from a fate so sweet
As being torn to pieces by a loving hand
How do I save you from a voice so soft
As that which acquiesces to your each demand
［. . .］”
December 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-you-were-amazed-to-hear-in-a-song
For fuligin, slither, heinous, stigma, penance, conciliation, Urth and lictor listen to the beautiful Terminus Est by Julia Ecklar.
Thanks to ruzuzu with her optional alveolar trill for the idea for this list.
December 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-that-should-be-heard-in-songs-more-often
That’s the stuff I listen to! :-)
What about a list like “Words you were amazed to hear in a song” as an open list with a request to give title and artist in a comment? I might just do that. Thanks!
Edit: See Words you were amazed to hear in a song.
By the way, Terminus Est is of course about The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe and it was thanks to that song that I became aware of him and started reading his grand opus.
December 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-that-should-be-heard-in-songs-more-often
For an instance of acquiesce listen to this beautiful piece: Emilie Autumn – Save You
For fuligin, slither, heinous, stigma, penance, conciliation, Urth and lictor listen to Julia Ecklar – Terminus Est. (No less beautiful.)
December 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word purloin
Confound it! Today I missed a perfectly fine opportunity to use this marvelous word.
December 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word kindrow
Like a quarrel, only friendly.
December 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word Wordnik
Word!
December 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word inarticulate
You inarticulated it well!
December 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-which-have-their-spelling-way-different-to-pronunciation--the-english-language-just-made-some-mistakes
No, no! The pronunciations are all wrong!
December 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the user feedback
This has probably been reported before: When I move a word (from my 5-0 to my 5-1 list) it essentially works, but the subsequent reloading of the list page breaks off, leaving me with a blank page.
The deletion works as it should, I guess, but in both cases I’d much rather have some kind of AJAX magic that just set a display:none on the word entry without reload, because if you are on page 12 of your list, somewhere in the middle and the reload throws you back to the top of page one, it’s rather tiring to constantly try and search for the spot where you left off.
By the way, thanks a bunch for #description! :-)
Edit: I’d just like to use this post to again mention how useful a bulk moving feature would be. (As discussed on wordnik and numerous other pages before that.)
December 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the word tappening
Right on topic. Thanks, Prolagus.
December 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the word Eris
:-)
December 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the word administrator
Our good administrator is so 1337, (s)he distributes all of her/his thousands of words evenly over zero lists.
December 8, 2009
Telofy commented on the word Gentium
See: gentium
December 8, 2009
Telofy commented on the word North American English dialects
See: north american english dialects
December 8, 2009
Telofy commented on the word McKean’s Law
See: mckean’s law
December 8, 2009
Telofy commented on the word mamihlapinatapai
“Mamihlapinatapai” explained by TheRavenOfPoe.
December 6, 2009
Telofy commented on the word whistling
I can, but I can’t snap my fingers.
December 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
The second one sound a bit like the bulk moving feature that has often been requested. Would be great if you could just tick the words and then select at the top and/or bottom of the page to “Take these words and . . .” and in two dropdown lists “. . . move them . . . / . . . copy them . . . / . . . delete them.” and then “. . . to list foobar. / . . . to list foobaz. / . . . to list fnord.”
Or something like that.
December 4, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
Yes! For quite some time actually I’ve been particularly longing for that “custom” option.
December 4, 2009
Telofy commented on the word statistics
I’d guess it’s an extrapolation from some sort of corpus—consisting of more than just news papers I hope. :-)
(And this extrapolation, I hope, takes into account things like uneven distributions over time.)
December 4, 2009
Telofy commented on the user frindley
Sure there is: Frustshoppen :-)
December 4, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
I just realized that I would like to see this Twitter feed change places with Pronunciations and Charts. Pronunciations I need almost every time, Twitter almost never.
December 4, 2009
Telofy commented on the word caterpillarness
See also tag caterpatter.
December 3, 2009
Telofy commented on the word pinky
Thanks. Subscribed.
December 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word Niky
Would be funny if they had to change their name. For example to “Eris”.
December 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word Niky
A Google Wave robot that provides Wordnik definitions and examples. It’s apparently written by someone who goes by the moniker phunny.phacts. Thanks!
December 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word choo choo train
Since I use this customary high-pitched voice, it’s sometimes not altogether easy to understand. If asked I then eagerly explain the Wordniky context and uselessness’ crafty plot underneath.
We already have three pronunciations! :-)
December 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word retroflex approximant
Quite recently I had been wondering what the acoustic differences between the two (American) English /r/-allophones ɹ (alveolar approximant) and ɻ (retroflex approximant) are. I downloaded the audio files from the respective Wikipedia articles and analyzed them using Praat. These two shiny formant spectrograms were the result:
In the case of the retroflex approximant the lowering of the third formant was much stronger and more sudden than with the alveolar approximant. Also this low position was maintained for a longer period of time. The second formant moreover seems to have remained more constant.
Those of course are just two audio files, so they are hardly representative.
Does any one of you know if and when you use which sound?
December 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word choo choo train
For the last several days, saying this “choo choo twain” to friends and random strangers at university has been a major source of amusement for me. :-)
December 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word spaghetti
Or you can break them to little pieces before cooking, that way no cutting is necessary. Honest.
December 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word vegemite virgin
Only about a week ago I tasted peanut butter for the first time—marvelous.
December 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word quailtify
Pronunciation: /kweɪltɪfi/ :-)
noun Any of various Old World chickenlike birds of the genus Coturnix, especially C. coturnix, small in size and having mottled brown plumage, a short tail, grasslike leaves, purple flower heads, and an edible taproot.
See also: qualtify
Thanks, bilby.
December 1, 2009
Telofy commented on the word License to Err
This is the correct spelling of the license to err.
December 1, 2009
Telofy commented on the word purr
Wonderful! Finally, “spam for spam’s sake” or “le spam pour le spam”*! I mean those URLs aren’t working for me at all! This way spam is about to replace music as the purist of the arts! Wonderful!
* Please correct me, I don’t know any French.
November 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word the da vinci cod
I agree! There ought to be an open list to collect Wordie canonical surrogates for that big green thumbs-up button I once proposed, back on Wordie emeritus.
November 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word YOW
Wow, so many terms for Wordie emeritus. ;-)
November 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word synesis
Yeah, I was always explaining this (to myself) as a feature of collective nouns in BrE—one I somewhat miss in AmE. Thanks for the new term. :-)
November 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the user ruzuzu
Yours is insightful, too. Especially that r-sound. Is that an alveolar trill?
November 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the user gray_90
Oh dear, I’ll keep my fingers crossed (or “press my thumbs” whichever you prefer) that everything goes smoothly now.
And about your last message on You-Know-Which-Social-Networking-Platform-Other-Than-Facebook: Phonetics. As long as you are not expected to produce qualified responses, a little phonetic analysis can turn the most tedious and one-sided conversation into a thrilling adventure. Also works with lengthy lectures. ;-)
November 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word limh
Or is it a spelling variation on limn used by ascender fans?
November 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the user gray_90
What I tried to tell you was that noise produced by other voices, of course consists of frequencies close to those which we use for talking. (Being human and all that.) So though it might not be perceived as especially loud, such noise pretty efficiently scrambles our communication.
Since I don’t have a strong voice I used to call to a friend of mine (at school) in a very low register if it got noisy in the room. That way he could understand me fairly well.
Also, on a completely unrelated note: Eureka! But I’ll send you a private message, explaining that. Private messaging is a feature this site lacks—and that by design I’m afraid.
(I doubt that the Wordie/Wordnik spirit is so fragile that it would suffer in any way from such an addition but last time I suggested it, those worries abounded. Perhaps, a little postscript like this, added from time to time might serve to dispel such fears . . .)
November 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word tinny
See also my tags “tinny” and “woody”.
November 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word gentium
That’s what Wordnik looks like with Gentium as typeface. For the Stylish sheet see firefox add-ons.
November 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the user gray_90
Yay, I’ve found you!
I’ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray, by the way; had I known that what the noise kept you from telling me was “Dorian” and not “Dominic”, the contextual help would have proven perfectly effectual. ;-)
See you in two hours.
November 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the list 5-0
I can still access this list on Wordie emeritus. :-)
Edit: And I’m totally keeping this to myself, Prolagus.
November 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the word madeupical
So every combination of letters would constitute a word. I’m wondering if such a definition is not too broad to be useful, but I kind of like it.
November 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the word madeupical
Then books written in a language I don’t understand wouldn’t contain any words when I “read” them. Or would I then just not qualify as communicatee? In that case, if a sentence in such a language were embedded in an English text, for example to show all the pretty characters, I would cease to be communicatee for a second while I read that sentence? That strikes me as rather unintuitive . . .
I’d rather say that a word becomes a word for someone when (s)he either associates some concept with its form or comes to believe that someone else might do so.
“Madeupical” then could just mean that someone wants to point out that the originator of the word is a specific person and moreover a person that is felt to be close to some degree, be it temporally, socially or in some other way.
November 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the list my-former-nicknames
Yay!
November 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the list german-pronunciations-wish-list
“superkalifragilistischexpiallegetisch” – I can’t add it either... :-/
...but I’ll just imagine it listed up there.
November 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the user Prolagus
You can’t reach the pronunciations page, but the main page has a little pronunciation module, too. :-)
November 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the user grant_barrett
Thanks. And it seems I’ve found a way to circumvent that dot bug by editing the hidden fields on some other pronunciations page (via WebDeveloper toolbar) in such a way that the recording is posted to the right one. :-)
November 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the user bilby
The tinny and woody tagging is an allusion to this Monty Python sketch. :-)
November 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the user PossibleUnderscore
Der dicke Dachdecker was an attempt to record a phrase ending in a dot by editing the HTML with the help of the WebDeveloper toolbar. Unfortunately I can’t play any pronunciations at the moment, so I haven’t been able to test whether it worked...
November 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the user ruzuzu
Hehe. Now that you have asked I guess I can record my nick without seeming self-centered. ;-)
November 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the list german-pronunciations-wish-list
Frogapplause, Häufungspunkten (capital “H”) is dative plural. Would you like me to read Häufungspunkt or Häufungspunkte instead?
November 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the user Prolagus
Oh. Oh noez. I’ll check if someone can fix that.
November 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the user grantbarrett
Due to some dot related bug I accidentally recorded something on this page that ought to have been recorded on this page. Can move that over? Or, if not, delete the pronunciation? Thanks!
November 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the user Prolagus
Thanks! I wonder what other creative usages of that feature we’ll come up with. :-)
November 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the word firefox add-ons
During a lecture I just hacked together a very little stub of a style sheet, which makes the lists a little more compact and the fonts a tad smaller. When I have a new version, I’m just going to overwrite the old one, so the following link might be much newer than this post:
Stylish sheet
(Edit: Now featuring Gentium. Get it here.)
November 21, 2009
Telofy commented on the word comments
Oh, please give this little div tag around the description on list pages an id (or a class):
<div style="padding-top:15px; font-size:18px;">
Thanks!
November 20, 2009
Telofy commented on the list german-pronunciations-wish-list
Add it, it’s open. :-)
November 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the user frogapplause
Thanks! I’m working on it. :-)
I just created a wish list since I have problems deciding which words to record.
November 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the word YEW
Really it’s Wordie emeritus.
November 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ☂
☁
Edit: Brackets please.
November 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the word janusian
And that Venusian has lots of different pronunciations. In fact I used this very word to copy in the IPA. ;-)
November 16, 2009
Telofy commented on the word illustrated sweet tooth fairy
Always delighted to help.
November 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the word suggestions
I suspect that it might me somewhat hard for John to track all the different bug reports and suggestions (and multiples thereof), as they are legion and scattered. Perhaps someone from the Wordie–Wordnik team (John himself?) could set up a launchpad or a trac to alleviate this problem, if indeed it is one.
November 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the word janusian
Thanks you, I love the concept and finally I have a name for it.
Which pronunciation do you native-speakers prefer:
/dʒeɪˈnuʃən/, /dʒeɪˈnuʃiən/, /dʒeɪˈnusiən/ or even /dʒəˈnuʃən/?
November 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ☃
That’s how I see him.
November 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the word comments
Unless coffee has altered my memory more than I’m aware of, I’m pretty sure the Wordie comment box had always been at the bottom and that I’ve often resented all the scrolling it entailed. So that’s a great improvement!
I’m also in favor of directing at least the wordie.org domain directly unto Zeitgeist—a setting to switch the whole of Wordnik from “dictionary mode” into “social mode” of course goes beyond that and would be much appreciated.
And what about hiding the empty fields on the profile pages? That would render the list more concise and efficient, thus creating potential for more fields.
And little glitch: Since I fixed a Unicode mishap in its title, I can’t open my list “Bored now.” – Evil Words anymore.
Thanks and keep up the great work.
November 14, 2009
Telofy commented on the word overused
Non-conformity also likes to use “desultory” from time to time.
November 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word suggestions
On the right, there is this “Be the first!” link to create a new list... What are the chances that some word inspires someone to create a complete new list for it (not too low, I own, but wait for the second part of this sentence) in comparison to the probability that someone just wants to add it to an existing list? A little AJAXy interface, summonable with a single click, as on Wordie emeritus, would be more called for I think.
And I like frindley’s novel idea of moving the comment textarea to the top. :-)
November 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word comments
whichbe: Was that a variation on a Buffy quote? :-D
Case sensitivity is glorious. In German all nouns are spelled with a capital letter; not being able to list them that way had kept me from making any German lists before. (I’m a tad perfectionistic. ^^) I’ve been so looking forward to this change.
And to the whole Wordie–Wordnik team: The change and improvement are palpable and it’s only been one day! Great work! Now that Unicode works again, take a hot beverage: ☕
November 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
<sarcasm>Edit</sarcasm> (which I hope isn’t going to be filtered, turning all this into unfathomable jabber): AJAX puts new comments at first somewhere above the “n Comments” text. After a reload everything’s fine again of course.
And thanks for fixing the Zeitgeist.
Edit: Thanks for Edit, I fixed the filtered “HTML” up there—I hope. :-)
November 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word betrayed
They appear to have returned. Or are they incomplete (there is some php exception in the file)?
Regarding the general structure: Ack! I would’ve preferred the design I suggested on wordnikie suggestion box (the post is prefaced with your nick).
I hope everything is going to be fine soon.
November 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
Thanks! Also the Zeitgeist page is not up-to-date, but I guess that is obvious enough that I needn’t mention it. The want of edit buttons however induces me with surges of trepidation whenever I’m about to post something.
New IPA data source: Yay, there are (soon were) also inconsistencies between IPA and audio regarding yod-dropping (at least in one case, adduce).
Good luck!
November 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
Seconded.
And my newly created list Shiny German words throws an error. Right after creation I was able to add one word, but then it wouldn’t load anymore.
November 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
Too bad edit doesn’t work yet...
In the profile page redirection a slash (virgule :-) seems to be missing.
November 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
Redefining Chronology!
Wouldn’t it be useful to have the Wordie URLs link directly to useful pages like Zeitgeist and the comments pages?
And I hope—do hope—Unicode finally works! *hɵʊp̚*
And the IPA pronunciations of words containing the “cut” phoneme (/ʌ/) is still broken.
Can I edit? *test*
November 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the user nell_nelson
Thanks and thanks for your contributions. :-)
November 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the list comparative-utility
The Blackadder classic “as useful as a barber's shop on the steps of a guillotine�? is missing.
November 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the list phrases-to-sort-of-qualify-statements-as-it-were
Inspired by my Literary Studies professor when he used “as it were�? a few times during a lecture, and this article I found upon my subsequent googling for “as it were�?.
November 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the list double-dactyls
Hehe, great movie. :-)
November 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the list double-dactyls
I can’t believe I haven’t added antepenultimate yet! Do you want to? Regarding quodlibetarian I gave my preference the spelling without the “r”—it seems to be more “common”. ^^
(And do feel free to add all those names.)
November 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the word fireplace fender bender
And the difference between banks and shoes...?
(OK, sorry, stupid cliché.)
November 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the word nicketypickety
Thanks! Only, I have a widescreen display. Perhaps it fits once I posted this...
Edit: Nope, not yet.
November 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the word nicketypickety
... and my list ➚ (more or less ;-))
November 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
I think “sweet tooth fairy” has become a perfect sweet tooth fairy by now, don’t you agree?
(I’m wondering when exactly that happened...)
November 8, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ∴
Wikipedia: therefore sign
November 7, 2009
Telofy commented on the word pardon, your shibboleth is showing!
Great, a very useful phrase.
November 7, 2009
Telofy commented on the user chained_bear
Has (s)he already a Wordie account? Anyway, another bunch of felicitations!
November 7, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
Addendum: The problem I’ve described there seems to be of general nature, nut and cut for example sound strangely unstressed, too.
November 6, 2009
Telofy commented on the word penultimate
What happened to my dear Unicode? :-o
November 6, 2009
Telofy commented on the word penultimate
/p??n?lt?m?t/ looks like an error. A stressed schwa?
Random House says /p??n?lt?m?t/ which not only looks more reasonable but also agrees with my printed version of the Heritage Dictionary (including the /?/s and schwas in the unstressed syllables).
November 6, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
Wordnik seems to be suffering from some Unicode related ailment:
Wordnik: Penultimate
(The “?�? concluding the second sentence is actually an interrobang.)
November 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word text
Wow, this article is so intriguing and hilarious, if I wanted to cite it here I’d end up copying it whole:
Pen Ultimate / Keep it short, twit
(Funny, not only if you’re pin–pen merged.)
November 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word coarticulation
See: Multiple Articulation and Coarticulation
November 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word irrigate
“When we landed here, it seemed natural to us to direct our lander to the shore of our bay, since we thought the water we saw was potable and might be used for irrigation.” – Gene Wolfe, On Blue’s Waters
November 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word irregardless
Soon this word will just unvanish away.
See also: irrigate
November 3, 2009
Telofy commented on the word aluminum
See also: Cyclops.
November 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word spellbind
The two German words “binden�? (“to bind�?) and “Spelunke�? come to mind (the latter with some effort). It’s a strange dated word for a small very filthy pub or dive, similar to a “Kaschemme�? only that this word is even more obscure in my view (I can’t remember ever having heard it before) and the thing it denotes even more filthy.
And then there is of course “Speläologie�? == “Speleology�?.
November 1, 2009
Telofy commented on the word spellbind
Ain’t.
October 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word esteem
Perhaps someone should make a list only for perfect gramograms—plus a little tolerance for vowel reduction.
October 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word earcatcher
Hardly know her. She’s in one of the courses I take at the university and we were discussing some radio program.
October 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word earcatcher
Credit for this ad-hoc coinage goes to Tina.
October 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-with-four-consecutive-vowels
I hope those French names are not too cheaty.
A thanks goes to Wordlist. :-)
By the way, I noticed that onomatopoeiaing is rather scarce in the Firefly comics.
October 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
I gathered the Poe quote was sufficient warning. ;-)
October 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
I will now play the Oedipus to the 128 bit key enigma.
October 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word it sucks to be me
Sounds like someone is afraid of being possessed.
October 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word to tell me the guy whom he subletted his room to is not so nice as him
I like the “not so ... as�? construction.
October 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the word names
I once had a teacher who recommended pronouncing proper names the way they are pronounced by the people they denote, so “Jon Stewart�? is /ˈdʒɑn ˈstuɚt/ but “Patrick Stewart�? is /ˈpætrɪk ˈstju�?ət/. I’ve since grown accustomed to pronouncing “Oxford�? the British way, but there are lots of traps and pitfalls: How am I to pronounce “Dictionary�? in “Oxford English Dictionary�? (after all it’s capitalized) and how “Oxford�? in “New Oxford American Dictionary�?? It’s all very discombobulating.
Is there some guiding rule, some accepted standard, some elegant dichotomy?
Thanks in advance.
October 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the word rfl
I think there should be lists on various topics (perhaps not “favorites�? as that tends to make hard decisions even harder) with an artificial word maximum, so that if you want to add for example an eleventh word to a 10-words-max. list, you first have to delete another.
October 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the word crwth
/kɹuθ/
October 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the list concepts-and-words-i-m-apparently-the-only-one-interested-in-on-wordie
See also my Underwordied list. I have no strict policy on which lexemes to list and which not, but words that are already listed by three different people are unlikely to make it in.
October 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word vittle
Yep, and I think, for fairness’ sake, vittle should be pronounced /ˈvɪktʃuəl/.
October 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word facile
I just found this word, twice underlined, on something that looks like an old physics homework with excursions into seemingly inscrutable calculations. Mysterious.
October 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word paronomasia
Sorry, this paronomasia is puny.
(By the way, why is the plural paronomasias, not paronomasiae?)
October 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word pick
Is that perhaps an instance of catachresis? (As described here.)
October 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word depitation
A probably madeupical word by 208.59.171.15 on Wikipedia: stylistic device (2008-09-24):
“Depitation is the over-use of extravagant or highfalutin words so as to appear more intelligent.
Example: The falluably sic irrevocable cat met its intrinsic match in the oppositional form of a dog.”
– (2009-10-24)
October 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word disadvantageous
Definitely!
And you might enjoy reading The Chaos for inspiration.
October 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word disadvantageous
/dɪsædvənˈteɪdʒəs/
Are there native speakers who pronounce this /dɪsəd'væntədʒəs/?
(That’d be some consolation...)
October 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wobe
Me too! The last time I read it was only about a week ago.
Edit: But I think it was a verb.
October 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wobe
This word appeared in a dream tonight; it had something to do with waves.
October 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word juxtaposition
Yay, I finally had opportunity to use it. Studying English is just marvelous.
October 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the list x-s-y-where-x-is-somebody-s-name
McKean’s Law, add it quickly before someone notices how long we’ve been remiss in listing it. ;-)
October 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word mckean’s law
McKean’s Law: “Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.”
Just for illustration: Today I’ve found that McKean’s Law extends—albeit in a slightly changed manner—even to nonverbal conversations.
Our instructor in Literary Studies talked about something unrelated to “a sworn statement by an authorized official filed in court briefly describing the nature of each charge against a suspect, tantamount to an indictment but without the involvement of a grand jury” (Wiktionary: Information) when he slipped (rarity!) saying “... informations ...”.
I was like *facetiously cringe* and I saw across the room a girl was like *facetiously cringe* than we were like *eye contact* and she was like *wink* and I was like *wink*. Then I was like *oh noez*: McKean’s Law.
Five minutes later I was second in the line of students who needed to talk to our instructor. The one before me had the problem that his name wasn’t on the attendant list when the names were read out earlier. When it was my turn I said “I wasn’t on your list either”, he asked “Sorry?” and I repeated my sentence stumbling over every word.
■
October 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word adsense
I have to deactivate both AdBlock and NoScript just so I can click on an ad here once in a while. ^^
October 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the word oliver
Is that “to plos�? at about 1:20 here?
October 21, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
I would also like the site to use typographic quotation marks and apostrophes, oh, and dashes (m&n) and all that fancy stuff. :-)
October 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the word chillax
Seen on Soup.
October 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
Rad indeed!
Of course I still lack feel for the new design, but it looks pretty neat. Can I somehow rearrange the modules on the word pages? I’ll go exploring it in the afternoon. :-D
Edit: Isn’t my user name supposed to be displayed near the upper right corner? My feeling tells me it should.
Edit no. 2:
Sorry, I logged out and in again: now it’s there.
October 16, 2009
Telofy commented on the word de facto
I just heard someone say “de facto�? in air quotes. That’s discombobulating.
Edit: Again!
October 16, 2009
Telofy commented on the word teh
Important question in regard to teh alsome: does /tə/ change into /ti/ before vowels?
October 16, 2009
Telofy commented on the word snuff
“When asked the whereabouts of the campus bookstore, a university student who replied ‘There’s a great show about California condors on Channel 4 tonight’ would certainly cause raised eyebrows, though you couldn’t point to ungrammatical English as the culprit. The student’s grammatical competence would appear to be fine, but his or her communicative competence would seem not up to snuff.�? – Language: Its Structure and Use by Edward Finegan
October 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ugfuzzies
“I hate ugfuzzies, you know, that sticky lint that won’t brush off of your computer monitor.”
—Wordnik FAQ
October 14, 2009
Telofy commented on the word exodus
Unless it’s employed to describe the Exodus From The Long Sun whorl through space toward either of two planets called Green and Blue.
October 14, 2009
Telofy commented on the word hoverkraf saya penuh belut
“Eels also reach a phenomenal age. One from Lake Rotoiti in the Nelson province was more than 100 years old and 1.2 metre long. When you consider that beast was already cruising around the lake in the nineteenth century, at one time swimming about under the light of Halley’s Comet, and already quite a large animal when World War 1 broke out, it is impossible not to feel some respect for such a creature, or at least hold it in awe. Think about this: a great many of the eels caught are considerably older than the people that catch them.�? – Source
October 14, 2009
Telofy commented on the word squid-zombies
Suddenly squid-zombies, thousands of them!
October 14, 2009
Telofy commented on the word vegetarian neo-tropical jumping spider
Since I read (at some point in my childhood) that despite their only six eyes the jumping spiders in our garden have such acute vision, I have always felt somewhat self-conscious around them...
October 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the list lost-for-word
Thank you all, that helps.
October 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the list lost-for-word
Hi and help! I need a word to describe the feeling you have when someone else is disappointed in you.
Thanks a bunch!
October 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word whippersnapper
“ ‘Thou wretch!—thou vixen!—thou shrew!’ said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding; ‘thou witch!—thou hag!—thou whippersnapper—thou sink of iniquity!—thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable!—thou—thou—’ here standing upon tiptoe, seizing her by the throat, and placing my mouth close to her ear, I was preparing to launch forth a new and more decided epithet of opprobrium, which should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of her insignificance, when to my extreme horror and astonishment I discovered that I had lost my breath.”
—Loss of Breath by Edgar Allan Poe
October 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the word north american english dialects
Wikipedia: Midland American English
October 8, 2009
Telofy commented on the word uo�?ƃpn�?ɹɟu�?p�?ɥɔs
Couldn’t bring myself to insert spaces. :-)
October 7, 2009
Telofy commented on the user gangerh
Hey, thanks. I’m honored. :-D
October 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word north american english dialects
Hehe, next time I’ll choose a less conotationally equivocal term.
I made a printout of that map there to carry around with me, just in case. And I also got my hands on the CD from the Atlas of North American English which he cites on that page. It lay dormant in one of the university’s libraries.
Perfectly marvelous as well!
October 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word captch
A guess at a captcha: “Correct captch (try 2)”
—Plowshare (exact source)
October 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word north american english dialects
Just wanted to share this awesome page with you guys.
October 5, 2009
Telofy commented on the word echolocution
Rebuttal of an argument by repeating it in a mocking voice?
(Heard here.)
October 4, 2009
Telofy commented on the word features
I feel a couple Heaven forbid! getting ready to meet this suggestion, but what about little "Thanks" buttons like in many forum softwares for comments and lists?
October 3, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wtf
WTF? That’s free viral publicity!
October 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word [fish]
Even more cruel if it’s plural. I can’t begin to imagine how these ♓ must feel...
October 1, 2009
Telofy commented on the word inexist
This word no longer inexists.
Remember when it was still autologic?
Haha, g’ol’ times.
October 1, 2009
Telofy commented on the word default
I’m looking for another word for the meaning “an option that is selected automatically unless an alternative is specified�?, one that is less ambiguous.
(Is default commonly used in that meaning or is my proximity to computer science clouding my judgment?)
And then I have a question concerning the pronunciation: The dictionary only lists /dɪˈfɔlt/ but I frequently hear (American) native speakers say /ˈdifɔlt/. Have you made similar observations?
Thanks!
October 1, 2009
Telofy commented on the word subjunctive case
On “as if�? rolig furnished me with some very insightful insights into the use of the subjunctive mood.
The subjunctive mood is one more thing I learned primarily thanks to The Book of the New Sun two years ago. :-)
September 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ameliorate
Lovely word! I wrote a little something about it here.
And this is the list of all words/phrases posted during that semester (by all participants).
September 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word autohint
Note to self and whomever is interested. This is all it takes to make Wordie’s typeface look cool in X:
telofy@reverie:/etc/fonts/conf.d$ sudo ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf 10-autohint.conf
September 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word encyst
“Nevertheless all three of these cards appeared completely genuine, sharp-edged rectangles two thumbs by three, their complex labyrinths of gold encysted in some remarkable substance that was almost indestructible, yet nearly invisible.” (“Cards” are the currency in the Whorl.)
—The Book of the Long Sun, Gene Wolfe
September 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word marijuana butter
Yep, it’s pretty liposoluble I’ve read.
September 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
Couldn’t think of has. If it’s awkward, that’s bearable, but if it’s wrong I’ll invoke my License to Err. ;-)
Source
September 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
As I see it, the current way of formatting bears two major problems: XSS/defacing and the impossibility of (Strict) standard compliance. A more secure solution may be using a wiki-like syntax for formatting (''foobar'' for italics, and so on), images (e.g. http://blah.org/path/name.png|alignment etc.|alt text'>Image:http://blah.org/path/name.png|alignment etc.|alt text) and something special for links (List:Fnord Words|Consult this list, Wordnik:foobar, Tag:woty09, foobar/Word:foobar for Wordie words etc.). Wikisyntax is blah, but I don’t see why that extra pair of brackets would be necessary here...
Despite the risks I do like the freedom of Some html is allowed. ^^
September 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word oogy
“Well, I think you know how I feel about rules... Or you might not: I feel oogy about them.�? – Topher Brink in Dollhouse
September 28, 2009
Telofy commented on the word schwa
Schwa is the stomach punch sound. Heard here.
(And she uses willow as an example word. :-))
September 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word quip
Quippy is cute, too.
September 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the user pterodactyl
Yes, now you are under the protection of the License to Err. And that’s an excellent idea by the way; I shall do the same.
September 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word dwell
According to OED:
dwale, dwalm/dwam, dwang, dwarf, dway-berry, dweeb, dwele, dwell, dwelth, dweomercræft, dwere, (dwerg), dwild, dwile, dwindle, dwine (plus related terms)
September 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the user pterodactyl
Another content customer, what an honor. :-)
Yet strictly speaking you’re not yet covered by the License to Err since as of now—unless it’s a cache issue—you haven’t added it to any lists.
But that reminds me of an emendation I was planning to apply—an important emendation, at least for as long as we still have Time separating past and future. Thanks.
September 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
Mollusque, that would be great. I believe last.fm allows sending custom queries to the server and I think they prevent DoSing by allowing only one query per second.
September 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word parboiled
I like my rice rather hard. I cook it only until it’s reasonably soft—or at least what I call reasonably soft—then pour it through a sieve to get rid of the hot water and quickly refresh it with cold water. Then I put the rice back into the pot and on the (switched off but still hot) cooking plate to get it dry and keep it warm while making sure it doesn’t scorch.
Tastes yummy that way. :-)
September 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word trove
I'm sure these corpora abound with examples.
September 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word license to err
Have you ever been worried you might make a mistake?
Have you ever stayed in bed for days,
afraid you might do something wrong if you opened your eyes?
Then the License to Err is just the thing for you!
License to Err, the huge Wordie PRO success, now available to the public!
Just add it to one of your lists and you’ll officially be allowed to blunder.
But don’t take my word for it; trust our countless satisfied customers:
“The License to Err has changed my life! When I was a child I was scolded for mispronouncing ‘epitome’—it was so embarrassing. Now, whenever similar things happen to me, I just tell them to check my Wordie profile, that I have the License to Err. I feel totally free now; it’s absolutely amazing! (And that’s no hyperbole.)” – Richard B., IL
“Once I flee out into the desert for fear of making mistakes. For the same reason I was just about to lose confidence in my respiratory system when a little critter with big ears hopped by, recognized my affliction and promptly produced a License to Err from his pouch. I was saved!” – Michael O., SA
“For too long I have been treading gingerly through life, eschewing any risk for fear that I might somehow err. Well, no longer. Thanks to telofy and Wordie PRO!, I now have License to Err. That’s right, boys and girls – if I screw up now, no big deal! I just laugh about it and get on with my life. And I gotta say, its a wonderful feeling. :-)” – Ptero D., NY
“For a while I pretended I couldn’t speak due to a recent removal of vocal cord nodules, but after a few years my family began to suspect that something else entirely might be my problem. I was subsequently diagnosed with atelophobia and prescribed a License to Err. I promptly got better.” – Jennifer F., TN
“I know what your thinking!” – Henry C., CA
So what are you waiting for? Add the License to Err now; it’s completely free!
And if you add the License to Err within the next several decades you’ll receive all grammar errors in this post free of charge!
So add the License to Err now!
(Now please comment so the rest of the world has an opportunity to obtain the License to Err.)
September 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
Yay, great news! :-D
I'll quickly change my email address.
Prolagus:
What about something equivalent to a blockquote/blockquote BBCode tag that highlights quotations in some pretty way? (Perhaps with some built-in method of handling the source?)
September 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
I take it you're looking for synonyms?
Colloquy, confabulation—mmmh! While “confabulation�? sounds kinda funny I think, “discourse�? could perhaps serve as a more serious alternative.
And what about marking citations in some way instead of splitting comments into citations and foobar?
And while I'm at it, is Wordie going to be redesigned? I don't mean—in this case—any changes affecting the structure or appearance of the site, but perhaps changing the (base) font-size values in the css to pt, sweeping out some of the redundancy, assigning IDs and class names to elements to set their properties in the style sheet, etc.?
(I've always been using Wordie with the Stylish add-on to make it look the way I prefer. ;-))
September 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word chicken is boring
Chicken is huge fun.
September 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word schwa
Yes, schwa is teh alsome. I also like its rhotic brother ɚ as is apparent from r-coloring.
And /ə/ (as a phoneme) has so many pleasant allophones in English. Sometimes I hear the unstressed “a�? in such words as askance, about or aura pronounced with a somewhat a-ish inclination (�? I'd say). In Blackadder I even once heard the schwa in “Blackadder�? pronounced that way—prior to that I thought that was just a German accent thing. The same is true for other unstressed vowels that are reduced to a schwa. See Wikipedia: Vowel reduction in English or of course the main article about vowel reduction.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the schwa t-shirts.
(A schwa might not be the most brilliant tune as phones go, but never judge a sound by its sound alone!)
September 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word disappearing lists
I'm sure John will restore both lists presently, but just in case, these are the cached versions of “Units of Language�?—I don't know what the other list was. Adding words automatically is reasonably easy using iMacros.
September 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordie
Hmm. I know I’m six months late, but “Wordie�? and “worthy�? are a minimal pair.
And I think it’s fun to listen to someone who uses remarkably apt words.
September 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word 403 forbidden finger
:-D
September 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word the rock
Thank you, too kind.
It’s like a tonic to my soul which henceforth no server, giving me the 403 Forbidden finger, shall be able to pierce.
September 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word the rock
Thx. But those errors discombobulate me.
Edit: Judging from the HTTP header it's probably that website that doesn't like me; via a proxy I can access it.
September 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word cranberry lifecycle
☕
September 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word the rock
Hmm, I get a 403 Forbidden and a 404 Not Found...
September 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word fourscore
Seen on xkcd.
There must be a list for this dainty disyllable (and its brothers and sisters) so I can take it off “Underwordied�?.
September 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word deathwish
cf. Thanatos
September 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the user sionnach
Wow, that’s teh alsome, you’re Over 9000! ;-)
September 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the word faszinierlich
The German word “faszinierend�? (“fascinating�? or “intriguing�?) with a different suffix to make it sound cute.
Any idea how “intriguing�? could be resuffixed to make it sound like a little fluffy bunny?
September 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the word dackelblick
“Blick�? is more like “look�? here, in the sense of (see also:) facial expression.
I usually use *puppy eyes* in English.
September 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the word happenstance
“You can expect to see this word about twice a year.�? – Wordnik
Wow, I had thought it was fairly common until I noticed that it was even missing from one of my dictionaries. But it's so useful.
September 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the word synthesis
Often I get the feeling that I can discern three “levels�? of creativity underlying for example philosophies, methodologies or novels. Surely that is an oversimplification, but then again I know of no way of grasping anything on any level that doesn’t rely on some degree of simplification, at least on the lowest known level. Also, objectively, it feels wrong to arrange them hierarchically, yet I’ve observed that with each step upward on this imagined ladder, the works become increasingly enjoyable to me.
I’ve come across several instances where two seemingly contradictory concepts had been combined in such a way that neither of them had lost any of its appealing aspects but that they suddenly complemented each other like two at first repellent magnets that just had to be turned a little and now firmly stick together. I chose to call this a synthesis of the two concepts and to put it at the top of my imagined hierarchy.
Then there is what I like to call the compromise, where the contradiction had been mollified by way of scraping off all the—often appealing—aspects that clash. The result being some indistinct and inconspicuous gray mass or soft background noise.
And then, of course, there is the possibility to just lump the two concepts together and ignore the contradiction and the resulting inconsistencies.
What I’m asking is not really whether there is something missing from this system—surely there is, after all it is designed to oversimplify things—but what is actually wrong with it. (But mostly, I just wanted to tidy up and test-drive this train of thought.)
September 21, 2009
Telofy commented on the word it's hard to sex people on the internet!
This might help. :-)
September 21, 2009
Telofy commented on the word imma let you finish
Yes, thanks a lot, rolig. And I’m delighted to know that there are other people bothered by such uncertainties/inconsistencies. After consulting that article (and the poll, but I’m not sure that can be called “consulting�?) I’m unsure whether that space is really as omission-worthy as is implied there, after all it’s usually a slow process—stepping on a hyphen intermediately—that leads up to that degree of coalescence. However the bigger the gap the more ambiguous seems the stress to me; one might be prone to assign a secondary stress to the “’a�?. So I’m not entirely convinced, but inclined to settle for I’m’a as a viable utilitarian compromise. For now.
September 21, 2009
Telofy commented on the word imma let you finish
Yay, the meme has reached Wordie! :-)
Bye the way, is Imma the canonical spelling for that or is it I’mma (or something else entirely)?
September 21, 2009
Telofy commented on the list skip-the-light-fontastic
Of course I'd like to see Gentium on this list. :-)
(wacky: nope; powerful: yeah; intriguing: hmm; whimsical: nope; exotic: hmm)
September 19, 2009
Telofy commented on the word bethink
“Beset, as you should know, by woe and eager for a situation of venerational tranquility, I bethought me of this manteion, the new calde’s own, as a place to which I might retire, pray and contemplate the inscrutable ways of the gods.” (emphasis in the original)
—Patera Incus in The Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe
September 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the word bad taxidermy
The title by itself reminded me of The Landlady by Roald Dahl, but I guess that gal was actually rather more skilled.
September 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the word pirates
Talk Like a Pirate Day might actually be fun.
On a normal day:
Someone: “C’mon, talk like a pirate, pal!�?
Somebody: “No.�?
On a September 19:
Someone: “C’mon, talk like a pirate, pal!�?
Somebody: “I’m disinclined to acquiesce.�?
(My reaction about the r-sounds somehow ended up on devoicing.)
September 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word sausage
I wonder if snausages are tinny.
September 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word devoicing
“-ng�? is a special case, as in all accents that I’m aware of, that “-g�? is completely silent (not merely devoiced). Its influence however is that the “-n-�? is not pronounced /n/ as twice in “pronounced�? but /ŋ/ as in “sing�?; that’s the only sound (on phonemic level) that distinguishes “sing�? (/sɪŋ/) and “sin�? (/sɪn/). (Hence it’s called a minimal pair. For more information please consult The Phonetic Rap.)
At the end of words with more than one syllable that distinction is lost in some accents, for example Southern American English and African American Vernacular English, so that “tappening�? (/ˈtæpənɪŋ/) becomes what is commonly transcribed as “tappenin’�? (/ˈtæpənɪn/).
Nonetheless I’ve heard the hypercorrection /ɹɔŋg/ instead of /ɹɔŋ/ (“wrong�?) in an accent reduction video on youtube when the coach was concentrating very hard—too hard—on enunciating as clear as possible for an audience whose listening comprehension skills she couldn’t know or estimate.
You are right about the special relevance for German native speakers (and Spanish and Italian etc.): “Bund�? (“union�?) and “bunt�? (“colorful�?) are homophones: bʊnt.
Hence undue devoicing in word-final position is a common pronunciation mistake among us. Another study I skimmed over yesterday compared the ability of L2 learners with such native languages to distinguish words whose only difference is in the voicing of a word-final consonant, and to reproduce those words.
The paper I posted yesterday however makes a very important distinction in that it focuses on words in phrase-final position, so it would sound strange and German accented to constantly devoice the word-final “s�?s in sentences like “He ushered the guys out the door.�? but not in “Planes!�? (She devoiced a lot in that video; perhaps it's even a little affected.)
Scott here however demonstrates both very clearly many times (devoicing with “friends�? (z̥) in final position at about 0:03 for example and of course lots and lots of voiced /z/ (z) in mid-sentence) but I guess you guys can observe that on yourselves anyway.
I prefer z̥ and z for distinguishing the sounds because I feel the difference in the intensity of the air stream between z̥ and s rather distinctly when I’m speaking, though I don’t know if I would normally hear it.
Throughout the last one or two weeks I’ve focused on getting the distinction between /s/ (after consonant sounds) and /z/ (after all other sounds) down, which means that I read Gene Wolfe to myself. I already noticed that with some words in some contexts I had this slight epiphanic feeling like “Yeah, of course! That sounds so much better!�? and in other contexts it sounded strange and was even hard to pronounce (only usually that means that I’ll just have to practice more).
Then two days ago we (two friend and I) went to the cinema where we were presented with the 2012 trailer. Of course I had to point out the planes (“Planes! – More planes! – Flying giraffe!�?) but after the first “Planes!�? I became self-consciously aware of (1) my devoiced pronunciation and (2) the fact that two English native speakers were sitting to my left (and probably more behind and in front of me for we were watching District 9 in English). Hence my next “planes�? ended very voiced—not that anyone heard it over the noise of all that disaster-ing, catastrophe-ing and apocalypse-ing around us.
Afterwards I wondered which pronunciation had been more correct.
Yesterday then I added another layer of wondering, when I wondered what happened when a word-final /z/ is followed by a word-initial /s/; this may serve as such an example. On IDEA I learned that sometimes nothing happens and sometimes the /z/ becomes devoiced. I then (after what feels like a few months) re-watched Brooke’s video (Thanks, Brooke!) and my wonder culminated in some frantic googling which unearthed that paper that finally Oedipused the mystery for me. :-)
Oh, and about the r-sounds issue on pirates, those little articulatory gems seems to be especially controversial: I don’t think the English ɹ is especially hard to pronounce for Germans, it’s just not in our inventory, but the German �? (the one I use) as well as its voiceless counterpart x (or χ) seem to be pretty tricky (as in “Bach�?, the composer, also the German word for “brook�?. ^^)
Even some Germans have problems pronouncing the southern German ʀ—a trill—and especially hard is r—also a trill—which is heard in some older RP-ish (I think) varieties of British English (Stephen Fry uses it and of course Noel Coward—a lot) and which is the rhotic consonant in Spanish and surely also some other languages. I can’t pronounce it yet, but I think, after much training, I at least have the tongue movement down—more or less.
And then there is also the alveolar tap, ɾ, as in General American “city�? (ˈsɪɾi) which is also sometimes used as rhotic sound by people like Stephen Fry and Noel Coward. It sounds like one tap/flap of the alveolar trill r, I think.
Hmm, this looks long. Good thing my browser didn’t crash. ^^
September 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word devoicing
An intriguing paper I'm reading at the moment:
Devoicing of Word-Final /z/ in English
September 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word pirates
The German pirate party’s (“Piratenpartei�?) color is orange.
September 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the list words-some-people-can-t-pronounce-no-matter-how-often-they-try
For “pin�? and “pen�? see, well, pin-pen merger.
September 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
208. :-D
September 14, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
Sionnach: Yes that's Wordie! And so wonderfully eloquent.
John, what you’re planning sounds like a very sensible (series of) next step(s) to me. Also the discussion appeared to imply that future (or Future?) Wordie and Wordnik are to be operating on the same database—at least in appearance—so I think is would be only consistent to equip them with the same range of functionality. Of course we Wordizens want to keep our design (or the structure underlying that design) and we want to be able to behold it (split!) seconds after typing “wordie.org�? into the address bar (or clicking the bookmark or typing “w�? and using the auto-complete). So my idea—for the moment forgetting all about those personalized pages*—would be to hide the functions and widgets that Wordnik brings into the marriage just one click away, and on Wordnik to, if necessary, do the same with the functions and widgets Wordie provides. Once you have a good overview over the structure and the programming of the Wordnik page, I'm sure you or the whole team will have no problem devising a design that integrates seamlessly with Wordie's minimalist approach without leaving gaps when it is hidden.
This suggestion, as I see it, has no influence on your idea of a “Zeitgeist�? page as I mostly have word pages and list pages in mind right now.
*I still like that idea though. Also a module displaying data gathered from other websites of one's choice by means of powerful regular expressions searching the source code would come in handy. ^^
September 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the list people-commonly-known-by-their-first-names
Like Marilyn Manson?
September 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word the warm and fuzzy feeling
Very probably. Thanks.
September 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ™
Very good, thanks!
September 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word unfuck
Unfuck BRD on the Freedom Not Fear march yesterday (September 12, 2009).
September 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word the warm and fuzzy feeling
I kind of like this description, but I’m afraid it might be too much of a cliché. Do you feel it’s too cliché to be used seriously without quotes, high-pitched undulating voice, “so called�? and the like?
(Related question on ™.)
September 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ™
Around here we sometimes say ™ to mark certain clichés and to distance ourselves from them. It’s practically always used in a humorous way and I think there’s a tendency to use it with oversimplifications that are often employed for promoting ideologies. For example: “You use that search engine? I thought you said it was Evil™.�? (Only in German of course.)
Is it also used that way in the English speaking world?
September 13, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
What is the reason that suggests this change? If it's just that the introduction is unnecessary for the regulars and just pushing the relevant part (comments, etc.) down by a couple em, I agree. Then you could just make a shiny big introduction that is deflatable and automatically—and smoothly of course—becomes a little bar once you're logged in. Or are you even planning personalized customized homepages for registered users à la iGoogle? (Not that I'm using that, but with Wordie I think I would enjoy it.)
sionnach: Yeah... Mostly they are just afraid because as long as the stick to every inch of protocol they can blame whatever goes wrong on the paragraphs; when they use their own judgment and intellect however, they are personally liable and potentially doomed. (I'm going to have to renew my ID soon, wish me luck. ^^) Yet, luckily, I observe the latter rather more frequently than I expect. And it's good to hear that this kinda thing is different in other countries.
September 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
Why Germany? I’m not saying that Germany isn’t gradually degenerating into this idea of a police state that so many politicians seem to have grown fond of throughout the recent years, in fact I’m marching against* this exact thing tomorrow, but I think that many other (industrialized) countries have gone much farther into that direction already, and in that respect I’m rather glad to be living here...
*However I like to call it marching for freedom; “against�? doesn’t accord with my Aikidoish inclination. :-)
September 12, 2009
Telofy commented on the word dystraction
When I'm sick of the telephone ringing. (Just an example.)
September 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word pterotrooper
Wow ptero, now I savvy how your comment about feathers on Wordnik was funny on even more levels than I thought.
Darn, I responded that I thought you were right, how lame. I should've said that I shared your ’pinion. Now it’s too late. Dang. ^^
September 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word the
Rule two I’ve learned exactly like that. Rule one, it seems to me, might be true sometimes, so perhaps not as a rule, but rather as an observation that allows probabilistic extrapolation or something like that...
Pauses are often accompanied by an “er” or “um”, those little words usually start with a vowel sound, so that might be a reason for the pauses-/ði/.
September 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
OK, now I’ve come up with a few—three—rather general suggestions for Wordnik.
Paul, the man behind dict.cc might be interested in cooperating with Wordnik (if he doesn’t already). It would be very convenient to have a personalized word page whose modules include one showing translations from dict.cc.
And what about Wiktionary? An IPA pronunciation that distinguishes /ɚ/ and /əɹ/, and /�?/ and /ɜɹ/ would be much appreciated.
Perhaps a compilation of regional pronunciation variations in full-blown phonetic IPA notation is a bit much to ask right now, but it would certainly be quite intriguing.
September 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word vanilla m and m
Here you go: Vanilla M＆M :-)
September 11, 2009
Telofy commented on the word brave new worldie
Wordie's a lexicographical phantasmagoria; this is as incontrovertible as it is double-dactylian.
September 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
Oh yes, ptero, you’re so right! I, too, want that action figure. And one of Gene Wolfe. :-)
(Is he joining us, too?)
September 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the user esperluette
Hi & welcome to Wordie! *bow*
September 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the list prayerware--2
As an alternative to spamming Wordie I suggest you use meta-tags to better position your website in search results. Also—correct me if I'm wrong—you seem to target Christian customers, so why not open up to all the other religions out there and offer customized t-shirts for their followers as well?
Here's a list. Don't forget Discordianism.
(I hope you're not offended by my split infinitive; I like it.)
September 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the word alway
In another half millennium madmouth the 15th may be tempted to add anyway to that list.
September 10, 2009
Telofy commented on the word wordnik
Numerous congratulations John and Wordie!
I checked and found out that trepidatious is included at least in the Heritage dictionary and that I'm not feeling like that at all! So please make that the little neophiliac in me is right. :-)
Also this is probably a great opportunity to add a bulk moving feature for words and categorization for the lists page. And I'm looking forward to case sensitivity.
Best of luck!
(By the bye, a few years back I once used erinaceous in a school exam.)
September 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the word changieren
Pronunciation: ʃɑ̃ˈʒi�?�?ən or, according to Wiktionary, even ʃɑ̃ˈʒi�?ʀən
Pretty German word for “to iridesce�? (and a few other things).
A little prettier even than “irisieren�? I think.
Picture.
September 9, 2009
Telofy commented on the word �?�
Yesterday's status quo is restored.
(Yay, a polar bear, now I see it! Sort of.)
September 7, 2009
Telofy commented on the word �?�
Not any longer.
September 7, 2009
Telofy commented on the word mackers
An euphemism for Macbeth. See The Scottish play.
September 7, 2009
Telofy commented on the word scew wiff
Misspelling of skew-whiff.
September 3, 2009
Telofy commented on the word 1337
In my neck of the words we have the time 13:37 (1:37 p.m.) every day—it's a great source of glee, continually.
September 2, 2009
Telofy commented on the word isv
Usually it’s “i. S. v.�?—the main reason I mention this is to use my thin spaces. :-)
August 31, 2009
Telofy commented on the word add me
Interesting, thanks.
Besides, oneself is clearly underwordied.
August 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word add me
Such a feature would be utterly redundant: You could just make an open list labeled “Friends�?; everyone could add themselves. (Why isn't it "themself" as substitute for "himself/herself"?)
August 30, 2009
Telofy commented on the word any last words
“No.�? (To the question “Do you have any cheese at all?�?)
August 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word any last words
One night in 18—:
“I'm sure you know this old man: One of his eyes resembles that of a vulture—a pale blue eye with a film over it. You won't believe what I've found out: I can possess him by means of astral projection. Let me show you.�?
August 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word any last words
“Sounds nice; what does it mean?�?
“Let's see... It says here on Wordie that when you pronounce that word and walk five steps your heart explodes...�?
August 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word any last words
Hey, let's role-play a Cyanide and Happiness comic!
August 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word any last words
Look, Hamsters love it when you tickle them like this.
August 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word lame
Recursive acronym for LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder. However LAME has since become a great mp3 encoder.
August 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word travolting
“More than one reviewer called the film Battlefield Earth ‘Travolting’.�?
Source
August 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the word resyllabification
e.g. pain-staking
Source
August 29, 2009
Telofy commented on the list x-is-my-favorite-y
Please add whatever is missing and droll.
There are far too many lists of “favorites�?, so I can't determine whether this list is unique—I hope it is.
August 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word thin space
I only know about the hair space in conjunction with em dashes, but I don’t use them there. The thin space however is very useful in German as all abbreviations of more than two letters that are separated by dots need it after the dots, e.g.: “z. B.�? (e.g.)
The Duden standard is to use a standard space if a thin space is unavailable, yet people often put no space at all, even on magazine covers...
August 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word thin space
Yay! Now I have the thin space on my keyboard. I had never been able to find out its keysym, but this page divulged it: 0x0aa7! Hooray!
Here on Wordie one can just use   by the way.
August 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word tony
Tony of Plymouth!
August 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word gentium
My favorite typeface
August 27, 2009
Telofy commented on the word 0
The symbol is reminiscent of a loop, so no wonder it has a penchant for self-referentiality.
For better illustration, Zeno's flag:
August 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the list x-s-y-where-x-is-somebody-s-name
Finagle's law (�? even unlisted so far)
August 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the word 0
Unbe-infix-lievable!
But luckily I have a list for suchlike.
August 26, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ejective voiceless uvular plosive
Here.
I would like to be able to pronounce that thing (or the stop) before I wear that t-shirt though. ^^
August 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word bunny hugging
An illustration of the original point of this page.
August 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word xkcd
There is even a very useful search directly on xkcd.com, but the fun is mostly in using those URLs in conversations even though there is no computer around; proves one's nerdiness.
As does the Summer Glau meme of course! :-)
August 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word asstard
The signature insult of Casey & Andy. This probably being its first occurrence.
August 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ღ
They call me Caucasian and yet I don't know the first thing about that region...
Pretty character by the way, it looks like a heart perched on a twig—and since a twig is something divided in two that might just as well represent the one heart that is shared by two bodies and minds, metaphorically speaking.
August 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word xkcd
Yeah, I'm hooked since the 130s.
Sometimes it's useful to know a few xkcd numbers by heart in case an argument comes up that was already refuted in an xkcd, then you can just cite the URL.
August 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ყ
My research indicates it might be /qʼ/.
August 25, 2009
Telofy commented on the word bunny hugging
Does dust bunny hugging count?
August 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ralph
"to pray to the porcelain god" (regurgitate)
August 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word join, or die.
Quite an eye catcher, this Oxford comma.
August 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the word ontic
/ˈɒntɪk/
August 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the list people-commonly-known-by-their-first-names
Ned is a bit of a problem: He's (one of) the main character(s) in Pushing Daisies where only his first name is known. So on the one hand one could argue that he only has one name as the reality of the series is defined by nothing but the information the series provides, however on the other hand it's supposed to be set in our reality—augmented with all the buoyancy of the forensic fairytale—which suggests that his last name in fact does exist in the series and that only it never came up.
I rather tend towards the latter option because I think it's natural to see our reality as some kind of default state or raw structure upon which and into which (if things are decidedly different) every story is built. Hence I've added the name for now.
August 24, 2009
Telofy commented on the list people-commonly-known-by-their-first-names
Interesting, I knew a "de Oliveira" once, that seems to be a rather common name.
Now that the list is open to fictional characters I have rather to many ideas... I guess I'll restrict myself to the ones where the difference in populatity is expecially stark.
August 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the list people-commonly-known-by-their-first-names
There are rumors that Emilie Autumn are actually her first and middle name, but they are probably no more than desultory rumors.
Update: Nope, it’s accurate.
Different question: Is this list restricted to real people?
August 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word advisalment
Source
August 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe
For comparison a letter in an upper class dialect from the same book:
August 23, 2009
Telofy commented on the word
"U+200B: ZERO WIDTH SPACE" – Ms. Unicode Table, Ph.D.
August 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the list the-cheese-connoisseur-s-list-of
There's a link missing here.
August 22, 2009
Telofy commented on the word pulchritude
Then just look for "by skipvia".
August 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the word mandatory
Thanks! So it's probably something obscure or new-fangled and British.
August 18, 2009
Telofy commented on the word rauschpfeife
True. My excuse of course is that Rausch means "high" or "intoxication" depending on the drug and Pfeife is "pipe".
August 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word enchant
album even
August 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word rauschpfeife
I hope I'm not the only one who first thought of pot...
But look here, this is also an instrument.
August 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word mandatory
Can someone tell me why Stephen Fry stresses mandatory on the second syllable in this video (around 1:28)?
I'm especially interested in that because some time ago I used to read it (hopefully never aloud) that way for a while before I noticed the mistake.
August 17, 2009
Telofy commented on the word little tail
Since it has to be little, it's a pencil. You win a Gene Wolfe thumbs up plus a quotation from the book I'm reading. ^^
“On legs as thin as sticks, the shadowy figures parted; a pencil of light settled on a dark bundle that stared up at her with Incus's agonized eyes. A rag covered his mouth.�? – Gene Wolfe, The Book of the Long Sun
August 16, 2009
Telofy commented on the word something divided in two
It was probably Munich... I live comparatively far to the left of Berlin where I hardly ever come in touch with this city's eponymous slang, but even my parents have never heard that word. In Bavaria however (though in Munich somewhat less I've heard) they speak this utterly different language—if they are really good at it I won't understand a word—so it's very possible that it is/was a common slang term there.
It yields a few thousand Google hits, but hardly any of them seem relevant.
(Oh, and I forgot to mention knuffig, such a cute word.)
This Wikipedia article is from the Alemannic Wikipedia. Quite intriguing.
(Only I'm afraid to think too much in German at the moment due to an English test I have to take in about a week...)
Edit: Guessing from the context it seems uffig means as much as open in Alemannic.
Edit: They have lots of one-letter words. Rad! ^^
August 16, 2009
Telofy commented on the word p!
Good point.
Not sure I picked the single most significant picture, but then again I had already posted the link down there anyway.
August 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the word p!
Let n=p.
Iterative definition:
Recursive definition:
Wikipedia: Factorial
August 15, 2009
Telofy commented on the word livid
“Stop! That is not spoken correcitically.�? – The Caterpillar
August 15, 2009
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