What's the Oddest Word You've Seen Today?

[Palanan]

For me, it was "unenfeoffed." The meaning was obvious from context, but I've never seen the word before and it threw me just from the unfamiliarity. Maybe I don't read enough professional-grade medieval history.

So, what other strange words are people coming across?

[Traab]

Tatterdemalion. Specifically, a disreputable tatterdemalion. The awesomest insult of all time because it confuses the hell out of like, 99% of the english speaking world. When i first came across that line I didnt even own a computer it was so long ago, and my dictionary didnt have it listed. It took me MONTHS to find its meaning. (mainly involved with the fact that school was out for summer and I didnt think to go to the city library to read THEIR huge ass dictionary instead.) The other fun word is verisimilitude. I like that word because it is honestly a confusing one to properly define and give examples of, like irony.

[Starwulf]

Cataglottism. It's a word that means french kissing basically, or "kissing with tongues"

[Astral Avenger]

Infarction: Came up in what is a fairly normal conversation with my sister. I suppose thats what happens when two biology people have kids that are an EMT and a WFR. (Wilderness First Responder)

Edit: Dinner conversations when we have guests over can get awkward, people seem to not like talking about traumatic injuries over dinner outside of my family. People are weird.

[Balain]

Automata: plural form of automaton.

Not that abnormal, but doesn't come up in everyday conversations.

[Maelstrom]

For me, it was "unenfeoffed." The meaning was obvious from context, but I've never seen the word before and it threw me just from the unfamiliarity. Maybe I don't read enough professional-grade medieval history.

So, what other strange words are people coming across?

Just out of curiosity, would it not be "disenfeoffed"?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Maelstrom
Just out of curiosity, would it not be "disenfeoffed"?

Not in the sense the author was using it, to specify feudal lords who had not been granted a fiefdom. (The book is actually about Japanese early feudal history, so there's been some leeway in translation from the original terms.)

By contrast, "disenfeoffed" would imply that someone had originally possessed a fiefdom and had it taken away. "Unenfeoffed," at least as used in the book I'm reading, simply designates the lack of a particular landed status, without regard to whether the individual had that status before.

[Rawhide]

Jack Winter, Shouts & Murmurs, "How I Met My Wife", The New Yorker, July 25, 1994, p. 82

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to rush it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings. Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory char- acter who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1994/07/25/1994_07_25_082_TNY_CARDS_000367745

[Morgarion]

Just out of curiosity, would it not be "disenfeoffed"?

It was actually at this point right here that I suddenly realized what it means to be 'enfeoffed'. Funny.

[noparlpf]

Today I had to look up "purulent" (consisting of, containing, or discharging pus) and "pudenda" (external genitalia, especially female), and "logolepsy", which I suppose if I weren't sick I should have figured out myself because I know a lot of the Latin and Greek roots.

[INDYSTAR188]

I work at a medical center as an Informatics/Human-Computer Interaction specialist and today I was going through clinical listings and came across the term ophthalmology. I was under the impression that all eye-related medicine fell under optometry but I was wrong, *shrugs* today I learned....

[Velaryon]

Infarction: Came up in what is a fairly normal conversation with my sister. I suppose thats what happens when two biology people have kids that are an EMT and a WFR. (Wilderness First Responder)

Edit: Dinner conversations when we have guests over can get awkward, people seem to not like talking about traumatic injuries over dinner outside of my family. People are weird.

I have encountered "infarction" but never seen it in a proper context before, so I always thought it was a misspelling of "infraction." Thanks for setting me straight on that one.

I haven't got any new words to add to this thread at the moment. The only odd words I've come across today are in this thread, which probably doesn't count.

[Fiery Diamond]

Jack Winter, Shouts & Murmurs, "How I Met My Wife", The New Yorker, July 25, 1994, p. 82

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to rush it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings. Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory char- acter who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1994/07/25/1994_07_25_082_TNY_CARDS_000367745

Are those even all actually words? Firefox doesn't think so, and I have my sincere doubts. It's mildly amusing, but it would be funnier if it were actually correct rather than just attempts to invert/reverse meaning by leaving off prefixes and reversing the phrasing of set phrases.

[Rawhide]

Are those even all actually words? Firefox doesn't think so, and I have my sincere doubts. It's mildly amusing, but it would be funnier if it were actually correct rather than just attempts to invert/reverse meaning by leaving off prefixes and reversing the phrasing of set phrases.

No, most of them are not true words. It's a play on unpaired words (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word).

[Feytalist]

That reminds me of some linguistics terms...


quadrilabial click
bilabial trill


Cookies to those who get these without looking them up.

I live in a country whose official languages contain at least 11 different clicks. So yeah, I know what they are :smallwink:

[Brother Oni]

Backpfeifengesicht which apparently is German for 'a face that cries out for a fist in it'.

Trust the Germans to come up with such a specific word for pain. :smalltongue:

[Chilingsworth]

Infarction: Came up in what is a fairly normal conversation with my sister. I suppose thats what happens when two biology people have kids that are an EMT and a WFR. (Wilderness First Responder)

Edit: Dinner conversations when we have guests over can get awkward, people seem to not like talking about traumatic injuries over dinner outside of my family. People are weird.

Heh, I used to enjoy watching Dr G. It happened to be on when we usually ate dinner. So, yeah I watched a show about a medical examiner while eating on a regular basis. :smallbiggrin:

[noparlpf]

Infarction: Came up in what is a fairly normal conversation with my sister. I suppose thats what happens when two biology people have kids that are an EMT and a WFR. (Wilderness First Responder)

Edit: Dinner conversations when we have guests over can get awkward, people seem to not like talking about traumatic injuries over dinner outside of my family. People are weird.

Dinner with a table of Bio majors is fun. Dinner with normal people is boring.

[Traab]

My favourite German word is fliegundekinderschiesse.

Cant quite translate that as I dont speak german, I think I caught the last part though, which makes me think it probably shouldnt be translated unless im way off. :smallbiggrin:

[Brother Oni]

Cant quite translate that as I dont speak german, I think I caught the last part though, which makes me think it probably shouldnt be translated unless im way off. :smallbiggrin:

My GCSE German thinks it's "Flying Child [crap]", or "Fly and Child [crap]".

I'm thinking the former but I'm unfamiliar with the 'unde' part.

The real question is, what's flying - the child or the crap? :smalltongue:

Edit: Some digging around suggests it's spelt Fliegende, which indicates the first meaning.

[Killer Angel]

No, most of them are not true words. It's a play on unpaired words (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word).

A brilliant play, I must say...

My word is italian, and is "cuoiaio". Which means, more or less, "Person who sells leather tanning"... but the uninterrupted sequence of vocals in the word, is amazing.

[Brother Oni]

My word is italian, and is "cuoiaio". Which means, more or less, "Person who sells leather tanning"... but the uninterrupted sequence of vocals in the word, is amazing.

So kind of like the Australian accent then (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enIlx5gEO9M)? :smalltongue:

[The Rose Dragon]

My GCSE German thinks it's "Flying Child [crap]", or "Fly and Child [crap]".

Schießen. The word for crap has an ei sound, not an ie sound. Schießen means "to shoot" or "to kick".

[Goosefeather]

I think it is actually supposed to be 'Kinderscheiße', rather than 'Kinderschieße', judging by the Google results for each.

[Astral Avenger]

Heh, I used to enjoy watching Dr G. It happened to be on when we usually ate dinner. So, yeah I watched a show about a medical examiner while eating on a regular basis. :smallbiggrin:

About day 2 of my WFR training, we were practicing diagnosing &treating head trauma. The people who run the course are very good makeup artists, so about 1/3 of us had huge contusions and a ton of still dripping, fake blood on our heads & faces at lunch.
The day we did massive chest wall trauma we had BBQ Ribs for dinner. That led to conversations about the relative thickness of human ribs and cow and pig ribs.
One of the best parts of the course was that the instructors told us that every time they taught the course before, a bystander would end up calling the cops/ambulance because the fake blood & injury makeup was so realistic. We broke that tradition, largely because the course was at a camp where everyone who wasn't in the course was already either WFR or WEMT and they knew that the course was happening.

Edit: On topic, what does fliegundekinderschiesse mean exactly, google translate is failing me?

[noparlpf]

Edit: On topic, what does fliegundekinderschiesse mean exactly, google translate is failing me?

It literally means "flying child ****". It's misspelled there. It's supposed to be "fliegende" (as somebody said) and "scheisse" (as somebody said).
(I forgot the Alt code for the 'ss' letter.)

[Eldan]

It's also two words. Fliegende is an adjective, you don't just add those to the nouns.

[warty goblin]

Today brought no verbage more arcane than quasilikelihood.

[MikelaC1]

Hydroxypropylmethylcellulose. Yes, its all one word, and its an ingredient in moisturizing drops for contact lenses.

[noparlpf]

Hydroxypropylmethylcellulose. Yes, it's all one word, and it's an ingredient in moisturizing drops for contact lenses.

Once you're in your last year of a biochem degree, words like that sound totally normal.

[KacyCrawford]

Batrachophagous- One who eats frogs.

[Serpentine]

I mentioned to someone I'm in a project group with about pogonology and pogonophobia, and then next thing our exhibition was all about hair.

Also that flying poopy kid thing just keeps reminding me of Fligender Zircus (sp?).

[Macha]

Hydroxypropylmethylcellulose. Yes, its all one word, and its an ingredient in moisturizing drops for contact lenses.

Holy chemistry batman. Erinaceous: Looks like a hedgehog.

My wut. All of it when I hear the word "erinaceous".

[Scarlet Knight]

Jack Winter, Shouts & Murmurs, "How I Met My Wife", The New Yorker, July 25, 1994, p. 82
*snip*
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1994/07/25/1994_07_25_082_TNY_CARDS_000367745

I enjoyed that; thank you for sharing!

[Eldan]

Today brought no verbage more arcane than quasilikelihood.

Could you give some context on that? Because I'm really struggling with this one.

[warty goblin]

Could you give some context on that? Because I'm really struggling with this one.
I should have said pseudolikelihood. Quasilikelihood can be something else apparently, though I've also seen the term used for pseudolikelihood. Pseudolikelihood is a way to coax generalized least squares into estimating an additive error model with unknown parameters in the variance function that don't depend on the mean by making a temporary distributional assumption for the errors to estimate those parameters using maximum likelihood. This generally requires two levels of iterative numerical estimation, and so far as I can tell, nobody really cares about it anyway. Although in some circumstances you can probably use it to avoid calculating second derivatives.

[Eldariel]

That reminds me of some linguistics terms...


quadrilabial click
bilabial trill


Cookies to those who get these without looking them up.

I guess it's cheating if I'm a linguist? :smalltongue:

[Killer Angel]

So kind of like the Australian accent then (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enIlx5gEO9M)? :smalltongue:

Yeah, we're near. :smallwink:
mmm... does this mean that i could learn to speak like a real aussie? :smallbiggrin:

[thubby]

Hydroxypropylmethylcellulose. Yes, its all one word, and its an ingredient in moisturizing drops for contact lenses.

chemical names are compound words, not proper words unto themselves!:smallmad:

philatelist is always one that sounds alien no matter how many times i hear it

[The Rose Dragon]

chemical names are compound words, not proper words unto themselves!:smallmad:

Yet another reason English is linguistically weird: it doesn't consider compound words to be words.

[Dumbledore lives]

Comedienne. Apparently it means a female comedian, though it's fallen out of favor for some reason. Could be it doesn't make any damn sense but you know whatever. Thing was, I saw it while reading about a British thing so thought for maybe a moment that it was just the English way of spelling it. Considering cheque, nothing is impossible. I was wrong though, works in any dialect, just a silly, silly word.

[Eldan]

Pretty much every other language I know does that. At least the European ones. You get separate words for Male and Female professionals. English has taken some from French, it seems. Comedienne (comédienne) is one. D&D players would know Sorceress (though the French version is Sorcier/Sorcière, interestingly). Waitress, actress, princess, etc. It's a French suffix.

[Brother Oni]

I guess it's cheating if I'm a linguist? :smalltongue:

Depends on whether you're a cunning one or not. :smalltongue:


Yet another reason English is linguistically weird: it doesn't consider compound words to be words.

To be fair, systematic chemical names are more proper nouns constructed out of components, rather than proper compound words.


Pretty much every other language I know does that. At least the European ones. You get separate words for Male and Female professionals.

Some female variants have fallen out of favour due to political correctness. For example, you don't see 'athletess' (a female athlete) any more and various acting awards are starting to be renamed from 'best actor' and 'best actress' to 'best male actor' and 'best female actor'.

[Maelstrom]

Comedienne. Apparently it means a female comedian, though it's fallen out of favor for some reason. Could be it doesn't make any damn sense but you know whatever. Thing was, I saw it while reading about a British thing so thought for maybe a moment that it was just the English way of spelling it. Considering cheque, nothing is impossible. I was wrong though, works in any dialect, just a silly, silly word.

Actually, it means 'actress' ;)



Depends on whether you're a cunning one or not. :smalltongue:

:smallwink:



Some female variants have fallen out of favour due to political correctness. For example, you don't see 'athletess' (a female athlete) any more and various acting awards are starting to be renamed from 'best actor' and 'best actress' to 'best male actor' and 'best female actor'.

This just makes no sense to me. I know 'why' it's done...just not the reason 'Why'. It does open up the door for more "classes" of best <type> <role> etc, but I still object (on a romantic level, more than anything, I suppose) to the systematic disassemblage of languages just because someone may take objection (and this is using words the way they are defined linguistically, not pejoratively -- that I can understand)

[Eldan]

Just be happy that you don't speak German, then. We don't even have proper gender-neutral words. Not for anything, really. In German, you'd have Schauspieler (male actor), Schauspielerin (female actor). And there's been at least a hundred years of angry back and forth over how official texts and so on should be written. How do you address a group of acting people? "Schauspieler" is the plural form of the male, so that's sexist. "Schauspielerinnen und Schauspieler" is the preferred thing, but then you get people debating whether males or females should be named first. "SchauspielerInnen" is used, but it's an ugly construction and no one likes it. And so on.

And then you get the really weird ones. If you can't say "Kellner" or "Kellnerin" to a waiter anymore, then you have to turn to "Servicepersonal". Service personnel. And no one likes that either.

Then even worse, the one I know for my mother, who is one: Nurses.

Male nurse: "Krankenpfleger". Female nurse: "Krankenschwester". It has the word "Sister" in it, because they used to be mostly nuns. Can't say that anymore. No one uses "Pflegerinnen". So you get "Pflegende". Difficult to translate into English, but "Nursing Ones", probably. Also not a good word, really.

Can of worms.


Anyway, rant over. Interesting words.

Primogeniture. I knew the concept, but not the word.

[Brother Oni]

...and this is using words the way they are defined linguistically, not pejoratively -- that I can understand

The problem is, that many of the female versions have been used pejoratively with the intent (implied or explicit) that the female version is inferior in some way to the male version.

Edit: Sorry, I don't think I can go into detail without tripping over the 'no politics' rule. I'll suggest that you ponder over the disappearance of the word 'doctoress' and look up 'women in medicine' in wikipedia to get an idea of the issues women had.

[thubby]

Yet another reason English is linguistically weird: it doesn't consider compound words to be words.

the very definition of "word" precludes compound words from being actual words because they are composed OF words. they can't be the smallest unit of semantic content.

chemicals in particular are literally just listing the atoms and molecules within them.

if you DO regard compound words as actual words, then you get silliness like "eskimos have 1000 words for snow"

[Ashtagon]

if you DO regard compound words as actual words, then you get silliness like "eskimos have 1000 words for snow"

Actually, you don't. Not even then. Eskimo actually has about a dozen words for snow, if you could the various modifiers that differentiate between "snow over here" and "snow over there" and similar nonsense. There are only two actual root words that translate to what in English would be termed "snow".

http://alt-usage-english.org/ucle/ucle9.html

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by The Rose Dragon
Yet another reason English is linguistically weird: it doesn't consider compound words to be words.

Portmanteau, the archetypal compound word, looks like a real word to me.


Originally Posted by Eldan
You get separate words for Male and Female professionals.

Actor and actress used to follow that approach, until it was apparently decided that actress was somehow not as good as actor. (Don't ask me, it was Whoopi Goldberg who said it.)


Originally Posted by Brother Oni
Some female variants have fallen out of favour due to political correctness.

...and that would be why. For details, ask Whoopi.

[Morgarion]

Actually, you don't. Not even then. Eskimo actually has about a dozen words for snow, if you could the various modifiers that differentiate between "snow over here" and "snow over there" and similar nonsense. There are only two actual root words that translate to what in English would be termed "snow".

http://alt-usage-english.org/ucle/ucle9.html

The old line about Eskimo words for snow is pretty much wrong. If you want an (overlong, slightly technical) explanation, check it out.

To begin with, there is no language called Eskimo. I believe the language most people are referring to when they repeat this nonsense is Inuktitut, but I'm not really well-versed in Indigenous American languages. I do know, however, that these languages are generally very highly agglutinative. This means that their 'words' are composed of more morphemes than, say, English words contain. A morpheme is the smallest possible unit of meaning; the word 'dogs' is composed of two morphemes, 'dog-' and '-s'. English is thus more of an isolating language.

Anyway, in this 'Eskimo' language, a whole English sentence worth of meaning can be fit into a single 'word'. So, if you want to be technically right but also way off base, the number of 'Eskimo' words for snow is equal to the number of possible sentences that can include a morpheme that means 'snow'.



Here's a really, really good linguist's explanation:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.html

EDIT: Also, I think compound words are, at the level of syntax in English grammar, full words. There might be a theory that can account for them in some other way, but I'm not familiar with it and It seems like it would be so complicated as to be the unlikely solution.

Like I mentioned in the spoiler above, a word isn't necessarily the smallest unit of meaning, so there's no reason a compound word can't be a word. English compounds tend to have meanings that are not just combinations of the words that comprise them, anyways.

[The Rose Dragon]

the very definition of "word" precludes compound words from being actual words because they are composed OF words. they can't be the smallest unit of semantic content.

They can when etymologically, they derive from more than one word, but their semantics or their phonemes are distinct from the words that make them up. My native language uses them quite often to make up entirely new concepts (such as the word for computer, which comes from the words for information and counting).

[thubby]

They can when etymologically, they derive from more than one word, but their semantics or their phonemes are distinct from the words that make them up. My native language uses them quite often to make up entirely new concepts (such as the word for computer, which comes from the words for information and counting).

that's true, but the word for computer just isn't a compound word anymore. you can't break it down without changing its semantics.

chemical names don't do that. a chemical name is a list of the compounds found within it. the semantic meaning is the sum of its parts in the same way a sentence is.

[The Rose Dragon]

that's true, but the word for computer just isn't a compound word anymore. you can't break it down without changing its semantics.

It is just a compound word, since it isn't a basic morpheme used as a word. It cannot possibly be anything other than a compound word, in terms of the language's linguistics (there are also words formed through agglutination, but that's something else entirely).

[Goosefeather]

the very definition of "word" precludes compound words from being actual words because they are composed OF words. they can't be the smallest unit of semantic content.


By that logic, 'footprint', 'passport', 'rattlesnake', 'moonlight' and 'sunflower' aren't words. Your definition of 'word' seems somewhat flawed.

[noparlpf]

I'm pretty sure a compound word is a kind of a word. The phrase is "word" with a modifier attached. So it's a kind of word.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by The Rose Dragon
My native language uses them quite often to make up entirely new concepts (such as the word for computer, which comes from the words for information and counting).

Hmm. I'm tempted to guess Icelandic, but that's partly because I really like Icelandic.


Originally Posted by noparlpf
I'm pretty sure a compound word is a kind of a word. The phrase is "word" with a modifier attached. So it's a kind of word.

It's a wordkind.

:smalltongue:

[Ashtagon]

Hmm. I'm tempted to guess Icelandic, but that's partly because I really like Icelandic.

It's a wordkind.

:smalltongue:

Linguist: The Unwording. An RPG where you lay a language specialist of some description (eg. polyglot, semanticist, etymologist, swadesh user) trying to talk your way into and out of trouble.

[Serpentine]

Actually, you don't. Not even then. Eskimo actually has about a dozen words for snow, if you could the various modifiers that differentiate between "snow over here" and "snow over there" and similar nonsense. There are only two actual root words that translate to what in English would be termed "snow".

http://alt-usage-english.org/ucle/ucle9.htmlPlus English has lots of words for snow anyway: "slush", "slurry", "blizzard", "flurry", "powder", "flake", "graupel", "sleet", "firn"... I got the impression that the "thousand Eskimo words for snow" ended up being something along these lines.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon
An RPG where you lay a language specialist....

I think you meant "play," although the other way could work too. Either way the concept sounds fun.

:smalltongue:

[The Rose Dragon]

I think you meant "play," although the other way could work too. Either way the concept sounds fun.

:smalltongue:

Linguists make great lays! Especially cunning ones.

[Ashtagon]

I think you meant "play," although the other way could work too. Either way the concept sounds fun.

:smalltongue:

Would it be inappropriate to pretend the typos were intentional?

[Goosefeather]

I'm pretty sure a compound word is a kind of a word. The phrase is "word" with a modifier attached. So it's a kind of word.

Ah, but a white horse is not a horse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_a_white_horse_is_not_a_horse) :smalltongue:



Plus English has lots of words for snow anyway: "slush", "slurry", "blizzard", "flurry", "powder", "flake", "graupel", "sleet", "firn"... I got the impression that the "thousand Eskimo words for snow" ended up being something along these lines.

It's mainly to do with the fact that Inuit and Yupik languages are polysynthetic, and thus don't form words in the same way that English does - for example, tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtuq is a Yupik 'word' meaning "he had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer."



Linguists make great lays! Especially cunning ones.

In my experience, the more cunning the linguist, the better their knowledge of many different tongues.

[The Rose Dragon]

It's mainly to do with the fact that Inuit and Yupik languages are polysynthetic, and thus don't form words in the same way that English does - for example, tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtuq is a Yupik 'word' meaning "he had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer."

Reminds me of "Çekoslavakyalılaştırabildiklerimizdenmişsinizcesin e", which roughly means "as if you were one of those people whom we have successfully made into Czechoslovakian".

EDIT: The word is so long, the boards puts a space in it at the end. That is long.

[Brother Oni]

Would it be inappropriate to pretend the typos were intentional?

It depends. Are you likely to meet Eldariel any time soon? :smalltongue:

[Eldariel]

Based on this thread, I now suspect I am actually a part of an adult RPG.

[Mobats]

Someone used Lubitorium today. It means service station. I had to ask.

[Doomboy911]

tibbit. Such a weird word I need to look it up.

[noparlpf]

tibbit. Such a weird word I need to look it up.

Aren't those the cat people from Dragon Magazine? :smallconfused:

[Rawhide]

Oooh, oooh, I know. Kibitzing!

[Killer Angel]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo (http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Bu ffalo_buffalo)

(I know it's not a single word, but c'mon!)

[Goosefeather]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo (http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Bu ffalo_buffalo)

(I know it's not a single word, but c'mon!)

If Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, what Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo the Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo don't buffalo?


In other news, I'm experiencing semantic satiation with the word 'buffalo'...

[Astral Avenger]

Not necessarily any individual words, but heard this at the climbing wall today:

Yea, I just haven't managed to heel the sloper of that ten to get that dyno yet.
For those that aren't familiar with climbing jargon, to heel something is to perform a successful heel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_climbing_terms#heelhook) hook (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxGpiR0KCms) on it, slopers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_hold#Slopers) are grips that never have a surface that slopes away from the wall, ten refers to a 5.10 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_(climbing)#Technical_difficulty) route (very hard for a beginner, but not to terrible for an experienced climber) and a dyno is a big dynamic movement where typically both feet leave the wall (more or less jumping).

[Laurellien]

Moss-covered three-handled family gredunza.

A weird blend of Dr. Seuss and professional wrestling...

[Irenaeus]

In English?

Floccinaucinihilipilification.