Word For Today

Because "Word of the Day" was taken

[fuckofffanpol]

In honor of my most popular (and controversial) post:

Are you familiar with the word "squick"?

Yes

No

Voting ended onAug 7

[fuckofffanpol]

yeah i'm definitely going to have to submit this to one of those poll blogs to get a better sample size

[word-for-today]

Wenis - Wikipedia

Wenis - Wikipedia

I had always thought referring to your elbow skin as a weenus was an in-joke in my high school friend group, but apparently it’s widespread enough that there’s a whole Wikipedia article not just documenting the term but actually discussing some anatomical points while consistently calling it that and not the medical term “olecranal bursa”

[theodysseyofhomer]

odysseus absolutely does present a threat to penelope if he perceives her as at all unfaithful, and i feel the unfairness of this, and i think people tend to undersell how much tension at least potentially exists between odysseus and penelope. but i'm also like. his reaction, all speculation aside, his actual reaction in the odyssey to her flirting with the suitors is delight, because he immediately ascertains that she is running a con. sorry that they're so in-sync in spite of the forces that try to drive a wedge between them, including their own misgiving hearts. sorry that they invented homophrosyne ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[strinak]

oh, you meant they literally did, ok

[o-craven-canto]

Alternate timeline in which all Greek and Latin roots are swapped:

catastrophe -> contraverse cephalopod -> capitoped chlorophyll -> viridofolia democracy -> populimpery homicide -> anthropoctony homosexual -> equigamic kilometer -> millimensure interregnum -> mesarchy magnanimous -> megapsychic manuscript -> chirography motorcycle -> ergatorote microscope -> parvovisor oxygen -> acidofex polyamory -> multierasty television -> remotoscope universe -> monostrophe

[word-for-today]

Word for today: swarf

What sawdust is to wood, swarf is to stone, metal, and other materials; not sure how far this goes. Plastic? Bone? Cheese?

[depsidase]

[word-for-today]

(Midcentury teen slang)

[word-for-today]

Hotbed - Wikipedia

Hotbed - Wikipedia

I’d never really thought about what a genuine literal hotbed is but yeah obviously it’s from gardening where you cover up a patch of land to trap heat and encourage plant growth

[word-for-today]

Word for today: armigerous

Entitled by the traditional rules to bear a coat of arms. (Opposite: nonarmigerous.)

[word-for-today]

Word for today: thrave

Two completely unrelated meanings: as a verb, to urge, and as a noun, a group of 24 wheats or sometimes 12 or sometimes any large number in that region

[blancamzlooksat]

Southern & Appalachian Slang, Sayings, Recipes & Culture | Hillbilly Slang

Discover authentic Southern and Appalachian slang, sayings, accents, audio recordings, recipes, folklore, traditions, and stories — with cul

[word-for-today]

https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/110/docs/uncleftish-beholding.html

In 1989 sci-fi author Poul Anderson published the essay “Uncleftish Beholding”, imagining how to explain atomic science using English without any words from Greek, Latin, or Romance languages.

[succumbing-song]

[vriskakinnieaynrand]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

#know your fandom history

[adreamthatsworthkeeping]

I found this at work and it reminded me of this post so I thought I'd share.

Some of them are old but some are still used frequently.

[word-for-today]

Words for today: telic and atelic

Describing an action that is progress towards a certain goal, or one that is not. Useful when discussing, say, politicians that like to say or do goofy shit to distract from the things they are actually working on.

[real-language-facts]

one may think "language" is french or spinach for "the nguage". this is a folk etymology myth, it is actually more like mile -> mileage. "How much language are you getting out ofthose words"

[galileosballs]

I regret to inform everyone that this is actually not that far off the real etymology. The 'langue' part of language comes from the latin 'lingua', meaning 'tongue', and the '-age' suffix is something the word picked up in old french as a suffix of action (like how a 'pilgrimage' is 'that thing pilgrims do'). So really it's more like 'what that tongue do'

[unfavorableinstigation]

Well, that's upsetting.

[allthingslinguistic]

I'm a linguist and this is completely true.

Also the Proto Indo-European root for tongue is cursed and needs to be brought to your attention:

late 13c., langage "words, what is said, conversation, talk," from Old French langage "speech, words, oratory; a tribe, people, nation" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *linguaticum, from Latin lingua "tongue," also "speech, language" (from PIE root *dnghu- "tongue"). The -u- is an Anglo-French insertion (see gu-); it was not originally pronounced.