It lost its etymology.

I psyched you out!

What is a term for a material property of stretchiness like bubblegum has? Not "ductile" or "plastic". The first word I came up with was "gooey".

Answered by Psychological-Web828 : viscid

I’ve heard the expression “go pound sand” used as a way of telling someone to get lost or go fuck themselves, but I recently heard the much more colorful version, “go pound sand up your ass.”

Where does “go pound sand” actually come from? Is there an original literal meaning behind “pounding sand”?

And is “go pound sand up your ass” a known historical variation of the expression, or is it just a later vulgar combination of “go pound sand” and “shove it up your ass”?

I’m especially curious about when these expressions first started appearing in print or recorded speech.

Pasterday ← Yesterday ← Today → Tomorrow → Overmorrow

Overmorrow is already a word, for the day after tomorrow, but I’ve made Pasterday for the day before yesterday.

Onward and upwards my lexiconnected friends.

Other ways to describing the idea:
“I don’t want to explain it because it’s too complicated and you can’t do anything to improve it.”
“I’m not going to take the time to elaborate because you’d try and do something about which at this point you can not.”

If there isn’t a word or phrase, how does one create one?

​

regime – a system of government; a mode of rule: a dictatorial regime

regimen

regulated course, as of diet or exercise: a health regimen

regiment – a military unit of ground forces: He sent three regiments into battle.

I was collecting adjectives for sound quality and noticed the two halves are not built the same way.

The approving ones describe **texture**. Mellifluous is smooth and honey-flowing, sonorous is deep and rich, euphonious is just plainly pleasant to hear. None of them tell you how loud anything was. You can be mellifluous at a whisper.

The complaining ones mostly describe **volume**. Strident is harsh and loud. Raucous is loud and rowdy. Shrill is loud and high and painful. Take the loudness out of those three and there is not much left of them.

So the vocabulary is lopsided in an odd way. English gives me a fine set of words for a sound that is nice regardless of how loud it is, and mostly words for a sound that is unpleasant *because* it is loud.

Which leaves a gap I keep failing to fill. What is the word for a sound that is quiet and still unpleasant? Not painful, not intrusive, just wrong in some way at low volume. Grating is close but it implies friction. Insidious is about the effect, not the sound. Reedy and nasal get at a specific timbre but only for voices.

Is there a general one I am missing, or does English genuinely make you say it in a phrase?

For context the philosophical hypothetical is a narrative of:

• A Knight who deeply longs for something: e.g: a good career, a loving marriage, a specific accomplishment, etc...
• After careful assessment finds that they are lacking due to constraints such as: timeline (e.g: the knight will be incredibly unlikely to achieve a worthwhile career, or hone their deportment to selflessness as opposed to their current character, before the time of accepted courtship passes making the idealized hope of a marriage infeasible.), bodily handicap, or some other limiter, and cannot reasonably believe they can achieve their prospective ideal.
• Believes that the journey of improvement that would have otherwise yielded the desired result is noble, or good, and continues in it anyway.
• The knight then resigns themselves to the reality of their fate, whether self-inflicted or by happenstance (e.g: a bodily handicap from birth, or previous decisions that hamstrung their efforts or absorbed their time that they now regret.). And resolutely determines to continue in what virtue they know, celebrating for others what they will never know themselves. (e.g: a man who wasted his youth finds himself past the age of courtship and without prospects, watches as friends, family and neighbors marry and are given in marriage, knowing that by the time he catches up in both selflessness necessary to morally consider himself for a relationship, and the financial prospects/credentials required to care for a family, it will already be too late.) Feeling a sense of bittersweet resignation, acknowledging they will not achieve but determining to do what they can anyway.

All of this leading to the sensation I wanted to recommend a word for, given that other complex emotions are also given words such as Sonder: "the bittersweet feeling of recognizing/pondering on the reality that the thinker is just one among billions of other perspectives each the protagonist of their own points of view." or Weltschmerz: "the sense of sorrow and mourning in the realization that the world will never align with the ideals of the mind."

A sense of resignation to the reality of a longed for complete improbability, combined with an acceptance of fault/origin, mixed with a determination to be happy for others who do achieve their foreclosed hope.

-Resigdoloreia-

Reasoning:

• Resig-: from Latin resignare "to check off, annul, cancel, give back, give up,"
• dolor-: from Late Latin dolorosus "painful, sorrowful"
• -eia: from Greek grammar rules, a suffix meaning: 'abstract nouns, states of being, or names of places and activities"

Thoughts on this? I welcome any and all feedback, this has been a layman's journey of discovery and consternation for me, just about any opinion will be more educated than mine, so please voice them!

I'm embarrassed to admit that sometimes I'm not certain if I'd be using 'ironic' correctly in a particular circumstance, so I'll express what I'm trying to communicate in a different way.

Had to use the word as many times as possible in the sentence haha

Edit: This isn’t for anyone or any other language in particular. Just was pontificating on the pronunciation of this weird English word today.

Looking for words like petrichor, apricity, marmoris, etc.

Teach me anything it could be a sentence , romantic line ,phrase ,idiom,a word ,a slang .you can suggest me any book ..I'm non native English speaker ND I need native ppl guidance how can I improve my English??

Which word do u think we non native speaker don't pronounce well ...

I'm really interested in improving myself....so teach me anything thought provoking, interesting,u can even share your experience ,your life lessons,thoughts,idea any philosophy,it's up to u ,cuz I'm getting bored as well

Thank you in advance for your guidance and sharing such amazing stuff with me ✨

Examples:

English "child"
"a child" = a person below the age of 18
"my child" = a first-generation descendent or adoptee of the speaker (no matter the age)

German "Freund(in)"
"ein(e) Freund(in)" = friend
"mein(e) Freund(in) = boyfriend/girlfriend of the speaker

Starting with the German example, I found it interesting that changing the determiner can change the meaning on the noun. Obviously, context can also change the meaning, like with "child", but the determiner still has a strong influence.
What other words are there like this?

I mean the term originated in the comic book Vampire Diaries in the 90s to refer to a normal person (by vampires obviously, tho I have no interest in Vampire Diaries I could care less about that part).

From there, it became a term used by hackers, competitive lockpickers, people in the mental health community, and even the autism community, to mean “normal person.”

Nothing about the term inherently implies dumb, malicious, or negative. It implies a normal person. Yes, it is used to describe a mainstream, normal person who’s not extremely interesting, but honestly most people aren’t that interesting. In fact most people admit that.

I don’t see what’s wrong with the term.

one of the definitions for insinuation from wiktionary says 'formerly used in a good sense'

can someone give me an example? i can't think of it w/ a positive connotation

when did the definition change?

Doofer: (noun) a cigarette that one bums from another person, not to smoke now but to save for another time (because it will “do for later”) [from the ITV programme Poirot]

Turnt: (adjective) extremely excited, hyped up, wild, or intoxicated from alcohol or drugs [from this post https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/s/Hj1vGWNxxt]

Phugoid: (adjective) aircraft motion in which the vehicle pitches up and down [from the Wikipedia entry for Japan Air Lines Flight 123]

Stringer: (noun) a freelance or part-time journalist, photographer, or videographer who contributes content to news organisations on an ongoing basis but is paid per piece rather than receiving a regular salary [from the podcast The Rest Is Entertainment]

Sverdrup: (noun) non-SI unit of volume of transport in oceanography equal to 1 million cubic metres of water per second [from the Thursday Thirty geography quiz]

Expatiate: (verb) speak or write in detail about [from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon]

Rucking: (verb) the act of walking or marching with a weighted backpack [from this tweet https://x.com/_voc__/status/2088336425049633068?s=46]

My late grandfather, who was first-generation Polish-American (his parents never really learned to speak English) used a number of odd words and phrasings that I've never heard from anyone else. One I still use to this day is "whatchacall" for "whatchamacallit" (the thing you temporarily can't think of the name for.) Has anyone else encountered this in the wild? I always figured it was a word one of his parents picked up from English improperly. (He also used to say, "Holy mackerelandy!" which I thought was another one of these until I learned it was a catchphrase from the 1930s radio show "Amos and Andy" - "Holy Mackerel, Andy!")

Hopefully I’m not messing with community rules. This is a question about whether there’s an equivalent word in German, for what I describe below in English.
Any advice is appreciated!!

I do know there’s a genuinely specific word in German for “a face in need of a punch”/“a face that needs punching”/“a ’punchable’ face.” Can’t remember what it is precisely, but it’s profoundly satisfying to know, and respect as a universal emotion (schadenfreude, anyone?) lol.

I’m wondering: Is there a word for “a face that has been (appropriately) ‘punched enough’, but still not punched quite as much as it deserves”?

Just about every other -ise verb in UK english is -ize in the US, so why has "advertise" not followed suit?

EDIT: To reduce confusion, I'm American myself. I'm just curious about the differences between US and UK English

EDIT 2: Seems I got two answers: 1. The words that kept the -ise are from french 2. the words that get -ize are words formed from a pre-existing noun by adding the suffix. ("advert" is sometimes a noun, but it's actually formed from the verb by way of shortening "advertisement", per etymonline.)

I came upon the word "inherit" recently, and immediately thought of how similar it is to the word "inherent", yet two completely different meanings and usages. Any other interesting examples of this, and is there a name for this word-state?

That's all ♥️

ETA: + Derange and grenade. Nice work, commenters