What new words have you learned recently?

[understatement]

I was reading through several articles and stumbled upon these eggs:

gamut -- "the complete range of something"

anodyne -- "inoffensive, often deliberately so"

irrupt -- "enter forcibly or suddenly"

What new words have you learned recently?

[thirsting]

Sartorial - "relating to tailoring, clothes, or style of dress"
Sardonic - "disdainfully or skeptically humorous"

I've long thought those two are philosophy terms, maybe something to do with Sartre, but no, neither are.

[deltamire]

I did a bit of research for a story I'm hacking my way through, and came across these three fun ones:

Katabasis - a descent into the underworld, or pretty much any descent. Sometimes used for going from inland to the coast, which is shockingly mundane for such a word.
Anastasis - a recovery, usually from illness. Also has religious connotations, specifically Christianity (it's often used in reference to when jesus did his resurrection shtick).
Psycopomp - in mythology, a term to refer to a guide for recently deceased souls. Think Charon the Ferryman, but pretty much any polytheistic religion has one or more, if they've got a concept of the afterlife.

Similar to thirsting's first word, there's also haberdashery - anything fiddly and small used in sewing, like buttons, ribbons and thread.

[Willie the Duck]

Humulus -- the plant that I always knew as Hops (notable in inclusion in beer). Apparently 'hops' is just the female seed cones of the Humulus plant.

[Scarlet Knight]

Shambolic : obviously disorganized or confused

I read it today and thought it meant a false symbol.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Tautology-Two words that mean the same thing put beside each other consecutively.

[Peelee]

I learned it some 20-odd years ago now, but I love sharing it, so it's new to y'all (probably).

Anastrophe. Pronounced like it's a Greek name, similar to "apostrophe". Anastrophe is the inversion of standard sentence syntax. It is archaic, and largely not used anymore, and yet virtually everyone is familiar with anastrophe, if not by name. People usually refer to it as "Yoda-speak".

Example of anastrophe this is.

[Scarlet Knight]

This was in today's paper & I had to look it up:

solipsism : the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Interpolation
- like extrapolation, but working out a result between known values in a trend, whereas extrapolation is working out a result beyond the known values.

So if I have a sequence of x = 2y, 2x = 4y, 4x = 8y, then I can extrapolate that 5x = 10y, and I can interpolate that 3x = 6y.

[Fyraltari]

Tautology-Two words that mean the same thing put beside each other consecutively.

That’s a pleonasm actually. A tautology is a statement that bears no new information or a logical construct that is always true regardless of the truth of its hypothesis.

Example: ‘All red ants are red’, every single math theorem ever, ‘my older brother was born before I was’, etc.

In French, these are sometimes called ‘Lapalissades’ because the gravestone of General Lapalisse reads ‘were he not dead, he would still be alive.’
Except that’s just an issue with the font of spacing which makes ‘envié’ look like ‘en vie’. It’s supposed to read ‘were he not dead, he would still be envied.’

[Imbalance]

withstandability
It's less a word than industry jargon that has to do with parameters for how much damage a piece of equipment can take when something like a bad arc flash occurs. It's hard to find a book definition, but most people who use it know what it means. It shows up in a lot of building electrical specifications, and refers to standards set by UL. It's the kind of thing you can calculate using code-compliant ratings, but can't really measure other than to see that, after a fault, "yeah, it held up." I had long understood the concept, had probably seen it in hundreds of specs and glossed over it, but until a conference call in May I had never heard it said, and was immediately compelled to look it up:

"The ability of electrical apparatus to withstand the effects of specified electrical fault current conditons without exceeding specified damage criteria."

[Xuc Xac]

I learned it some 20-odd years ago now, but I love sharing it, so it's new to y'all (probably).

Anastrophe. Pronounced like it's a Greek name, similar to "apostrophe". Anastrophe is the inversion of standard sentence syntax. It is archaic, and largely not used anymore, and yet virtually everyone is familiar with anastrophe, if not by name. People usually refer to it as "Yoda-speak".

Example of anastrophe this is.

"It's used all the time in writing," he said. "In fact, it's used so often that you don't even notice it," continued the forum poster.

[Peelee]

"It's used all the time in writing," he said. "In fact, it's used so often that you don't even notice it," continued the forum poster.

The definition of "anastrophe" is specifically the inversion of standard sentence syntax, or normal order of clauses. Your statements are, by definition, not examples of anastrophe, since they are used all the time, so often that you don't even notice it.

Anastrophe is the ultimate hipster philosophy - as soon as it becomes normal, it's no longer a form of anastrophe.

[Wizard_Lizard]

That’s a pleonasm actually. A tautology is a statement that bears no new information or a logical construct that is always true regardless of the truth of its hypothesis.

Example: ‘All red ants are red’, every single math theorem ever, ‘my older brother was born before I was’, etc.

In French, these are sometimes called ‘Lapalissades’ because the gravestone of General Lapalisse reads ‘were he not dead, he would still be alive.’
Except that’s just an issue with the font of spacing which makes ‘envié’ look like ‘en vie’. It’s supposed to read ‘were he not dead, he would still be envied.’

So today I learned a new word, Pleonasm.

[Xuc Xac]

The definition of "anastrophe" is specifically the inversion of standard sentence syntax, or normal order of clauses. Your statements are, by definition, not examples of anastrophe, since they are used all the time, so often that you don't even notice it.

They're used all the time but they aren't the normal word order, which is SVO for English. The point of anastrophe is to draw attention to the displaced words. In the case of written dialogue, anastrophe is used to emphasize the quoted words. The "he said" and "said the old woman" and so on can usually be understood from context anyway and are rarely as important as the dialogue itself.

[snowblizz]

"Wherefore". Yes as in the Romeo and Juliet play. It did not mean what I thought it did.

[Willie the Duck]

In French, these are sometimes called ‘Lapalissades’ because the gravestone of General Lapalisse reads ‘were he not dead, he would still be alive.’
Except that’s just an issue with the font of spacing which makes ‘envié’ look like ‘en vie’. It’s supposed to read ‘were he not dead, he would still be envied.’

Whoever did that should kern in hell.

That's another good one -- Kern -- "adjust the spacing between (letters or characters) in a piece of text to be printed"

[Peelee]

They're used all the time but they aren't the normal word order

You can say that, but it doesn't make it true. You are classifying "normal word order" at an arbitrary point, and claiming there can be only one normal word order, neither of which holds much water.

[Scarlet Knight]

In all my years in health care , I learn a new term : oligosymptomatic : having few or minor symptoms

I have heard of asymptomatic: no symptoms, and pre-symptomatic : the time of incubation when a patient has no symptoms just prior to displaying them.

But oligosymptomatic is to be used when the patient has symptoms so mild theat he reports as asymptomatic . Example: "Well yeah I was tired but I wasn't sick; I just got off a plane and everyone's tired after flying."

[Willie the Duck]

In all my years in health care , I learn a new term : oligosymptomatic : having few or minor symptoms

I like that one, it, along with idiopathic (relating to or denoting any disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown) and heteroskedasticity (the state of having standard errors which are non-constant over a range), were some of the fun new words of grad school.

[Vinyadan]

Discombobulate and inveigh. I had no idea they existed in English. One means to confuse, the other to rail against someone or something (related to invective).

[Wizard_Lizard]

Discombobulate and inveigh. I had no idea they existed in English. One means to confuse, the other to rail against someone or something (related to invective).

Did the word discombobulate discombobulate you?

[Berenger]

Kenning - a combination of words used as a metaphor for another word or person (e.g. winter's blanket = snow, giant slayer = Thor).

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/...f-kenning.html

[The Fury]

"Acrimony." It means "Fury." I was thinking of an alternate universe where there was another, cooler, smarter forum user that's annoyingly similar to me. So I guess "The Acrimony" would be their username.

[el minster]

"Wherefore". Yes as in the Romeo and Juliet play. It did not mean what I thought it did.

Wherefore means why I believe I learned this from Romeo and Juliet

[Sermil]

A recent article about the Harley Quinn show described a character as himbo, which is the male equivalent of a bimbo -- a male who is good looking, sexual attrative, but kinda dumb.

So basically

[deltamire]

A recent article about the Harley Quinn show described a character as himbo, which is the male equivalent of a bimbo -- a male who is good looking, sexual attrative, but kinda dumb.

So basically

A weird aspect of language change that comes from movement from social circles to social circles is the definition of the humble himbo; as far as I know, one of the main original facets of the himbo is that they're generally not romantically domineering, or, specifically, generally respect women. A guy who wasn't all that intelligent, built like a brick ****house, and generally a very nice, kind person to be around. I know Ragnarok's Thor was thrown around as the pioneering example of it, if you want to get stereotypical about his character.

. . . So, yeah, Elan is a pretty good example of a himbo, ignoring the whole 'jacked' part. Though I still stand that he's a manic pixie dream boy, damn it!

[Wizard_Lizard]

A weird aspect of language change that comes from movement from social circles to social circles is the definition of the humble himbo; as far as I know, one of the main original facets of the himbo is that they're generally not romantically domineering, or, specifically, generally respect women. A guy who wasn't all that intelligent, built like a brick ****house, and generally a very nice, kind person to be around. I know Ragnarok's Thor was thrown around as the pioneering example of it, if you want to get stereotypical about his character.

. . . So, yeah, Elan is a pretty good example of a himbo, ignoring the whole 'jacked' part. Though I still stand that he's a manic pixie dream boy, damn it!

Nah, Elan is clearly a genius mastermind, manipulating events behind the scenes under the guise of a witless buffoon!

[Fyraltari]

. . . So, yeah, Elan is a pretty good example of a himbo, ignoring the whole 'jacked' part. Though I still stand that he's a manic pixie dream boy, damn it!

Elan, as a Dashing Swordsman, is a stereotypical action hero, therefore I posit to you that he is Tom Cruise-levels of jacked, which is nothing to sneer at.

[deltamire]

Elan, as a Dashing Swordsman, is a stereotypical action hero, therefore I posit to you that he is Tom Cruise-levels of jacked, which is nothing to sneer at.

Most of the action Elan does is one of a high dexterity hero - doesn't have much upper body strength compared to, say, Durkon or Roy (the class and level geekery thread says his strength is 10-11, which is nothing to be sniffed at but would be considered normal for the sort of skills a general adventurer would need), mostly relies on dex based weapons, such as the rapier, and has a tendency to somersault and flip about. While OOTS has a lot of . . . Blending of fighting styles (compare Roy's relatively mobile skilled fighting to the two other strength-based fighters, Thog or Tarquin's axework, which is more focused on brute, very effective force) I think it's safe to say that Elan is more of an Inigo Montoya character, though perhaps without the intent on avenging his father. However, if the narrative calls for it, you can bet your bottom dollar he'll go through a training montage and come out swole!