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2020-06-25, 02:29 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2019
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What new words have you learned recently?
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?
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2020-06-25, 02:41 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2010
- Location
- Inside
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.Well that was awkward.
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2020-06-25, 05:10 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.I draw, and I write sometimes! Drow paladin avatar by me. They/Them
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2020-06-25, 08:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.
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2020-06-25, 03:33 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2008
- Location
- Hudson Valley, NY
- Gender
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
Shambolic : obviously disorganized or confused
I read it today and thought it meant a false symbol."We are the people our parents warned us about!" - J.Buffett
Avatar by Tannhaeuser
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2020-06-25, 04:07 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2019
- Location
- Somewhere over th rainbow
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2020-06-25, 06:30 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-06-28, 03:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2008
- Location
- Hudson Valley, NY
- Gender
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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."We are the people our parents warned us about!" - J.Buffett
Avatar by Tannhaeuser
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2020-06-30, 05:35 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2005
- Location
- Worcestershire, UK
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.
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2020-06-30, 09:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2017
- Location
- France
- Gender
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.’Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2020-06-30, 11:11 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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."
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2020-06-30, 02:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2010
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
The Curse of the House of Rookwood: Supernatural horror and family drama.
Ash Island: Personal survival horror in the vein of Silent Hill.
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2020-06-30, 03:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.Last edited by Peelee; 2020-06-30 at 03:04 PM.
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-06-30, 04:08 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2019
- Location
- Somewhere over th rainbow
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2020-06-30, 07:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2010
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.
The Curse of the House of Rookwood: Supernatural horror and family drama.
Ash Island: Personal survival horror in the vein of Silent Hill.
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2020-07-01, 05:27 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
"Wherefore". Yes as in the Romeo and Juliet play. It did not mean what I thought it did.
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2020-07-01, 10:33 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
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2020-07-01, 10:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-07-01, 05:24 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2008
- Location
- Hudson Valley, NY
- Gender
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.""We are the people our parents warned us about!" - J.Buffett
Avatar by Tannhaeuser
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2020-07-02, 09:59 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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.
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2020-07-02, 03:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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).
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2020-07-02, 05:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2019
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- Somewhere over th rainbow
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2020-07-04, 02:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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- Germany
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Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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
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2020-07-04, 09:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
"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.
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2020-07-05, 12:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2019
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2020-07-05, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2010
- Location
- California
- Gender
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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
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2020-07-05, 02:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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!I draw, and I write sometimes! Drow paladin avatar by me. They/Them
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2020-07-06, 11:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2019
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- Somewhere over th rainbow
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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2020-07-07, 03:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2017
- Location
- France
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Re: What new words have you learned recently?
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2020-07-07, 04:44 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: What new words have you learned recently?
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!
I draw, and I write sometimes! Drow paladin avatar by me. They/Them