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This will be a pretty straightforward thread: what new word have you learned recently?
Just list it here, define it, and add any other musings you wish.
The new word I learned today is sublimity
Most of us are familiar with the word sublime of course, but I did not know it could be altered slightly and used as a noun. I enjoyed that little discovery.
sublimity
noun
sub·lim·i·ty sə-ˈbli-mə-tē
plural:sublimities
1: the quality or state of being sublime
2: something sublime or exalted
Many adjectives can be used as nouns, Mike – in English, that is. In more philosophically tinged texts one may encounter "the sublime”, which is clearly the adjective "sublime" used as a noun. "Sublimity" however is a different word, derived from "sublime" of course (by adding the noun-building suffix “ity”).
In many languages there is a close relationship between the "noun" use of a word and the "adjective" use of a word. In Arabic there is for all such words no difference at all. "kabîr" is both "tall" and "tall one". (In English, it is not always as in "sublime": think of "strange" and "stranger".) The same holds for Romance languages, but in German and Dutch there is a regular suffix difference: "tall" is "groß” in German, but "tall one” can be “großer”, “große", and "großes” and that is just in the nominative.
In other languages one finds strikingly different relationships. In Japanese quite a number of adjectives also function as verbs: as if in English, "sublime" and "be/am/is/are sublime” were the same words!
To reply to your question: my new words are Russian words, because in order to fight my unconscious Russophobia, I have decided that I want to be able to at least read Russian with ease. There are a lot of them!
I love etymology and learning new (actually old but yet unlearned by me) words, so this thread is one I could certainly enjoy.
Yesterday I learned several words, or definitions, due to the power being out and having nothing better to do. The first was Mungency, which is defined as 'nose noise', and I'm looking forward to referring to someone as being 'Mungus'.
I also learned the word Elan means 'impetuous, or vivacious', and Musk comes from an old Sanskrit word meaning 'scrotum, or testicle', and I find it rather amusing how Elon Musk's name translates to vivacious testicle. It just seems to fit him somehow.
Just stumbled upon this word . I doubt i will ever use it.
sesquipedalian
/sĕs″kwĭ-pĭ-dāl′yən/
adjective
Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
Long and ponderous; polysyllabic.
That's interesting about the Japanese language. I'm sure it would give me fits. And that's pretty cool how you're studying Russian. How many languages do you speak Michel?Quote:
Posted by Michel Leclerc
I know that Engiish words can often act as adjectives and nouns:) I had just never heard of that specific word 'sublimity'.
Quote:
Posted by Valknut3301
When Mike Tyson got out of prison, it's like he was on a mission to share all the new words he'd learned while reading there. One of them was "impetuous". I remember his rant, post-fight, and it's always stayed with me:
30 seconds:
Titillated by the testicle in your post, Valknut (whale mallet?), I tried to look up mungency and mungus but.. neither of them seem to exist... Am I looking in the wrong dictionary? Are you sure you did not look them up in the dark, with the outage and all... ;-) . Supposing "mungency" would be the nose blowing sound elicited by the pungency of the scrotum, its meaning does have an air of probability about it, I must say. However. Musk’s derivation from Sanskrit is debated. For sure it is derived over Greek from Middle Persian, in which language “moshk” means musk, "harvested" from an abdominal gland of the male musk deer – which, however is not the testes. (End of titillation.)
Quote:
Posted by Jaak
Wow. That's a crazy looking word! I'll just stick with "windy" :)
Fun!Quote:
Posted by MikeQuote:
Posted by Jaak
Wow. That's a crazy looking word! I'll just stick with "windy" :)
Sesqui- means one-and-a-half is it not?
So "sesquipedalian" literally means “walking on one foot and a half“? "pedaling with one foot and a half”?
"Clumsy”, then?
Another PA member can shine a light on this?
That's nearly correct. :highfive: :) Here's the etymology:Quote:
Posted by Michel LeclercFun!Quote:
Posted by MikeWow. That's a crazy looking word! I'll just stick with "windy" :)Quote:
Posted by Jaak
Sesqui- means one-and-a-half is it not?
So "sesquipedalian" literally means “walking on one foot and a half“? "pedaling with one foot and a half”?
"Clumsy”, then?
Another PA member can shine a light on this?
17th century: from Latin sesquipedalis ‘a foot and a half long’, from sesqui- (see sesqui-) + pes, ped- ‘foot’.
:thumbsup::thumbsup:
But this is interesting: the use of the word over time.
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/ima...BJRU5ErkJggg==
https://avalonlibrary.net/Bill/sesqu..._over_time.png
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/ima...BJRU5ErkJggg==
It seems to be trying to make a comeback... I wonder why?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dict...sesquipedalianQuote:
Posted by Michel LeclercFun!Quote:
Posted by MikeQuote:
Posted by Jaak
Wow. That's a crazy looking word! I'll just stick with "windy" :)
Sesqui- means one-and-a-half is it not?
So "sesquipedalian" literally means “walking on one foot and a half“? "pedaling with one foot and a half”?
"Clumsy”, then?
Another PA member can shine a light on this?
Horace, the ancient Roman poet known for his satire, was merely being gently ironic when he cautioned young poets against using sesquipedalia verba—"words a foot and a half long"—in his book Ars poetica, a collection of maxims about writing. But in the 17th century, English literary critics decided the word sesquipedalian could be very useful for lambasting writers using unnecessarily long words. Robert Southey used it to make two jibes at once when he wrote "the verses of [16th-century English poet] Stephen Hawes are as full of barbarous sesquipedalian Latinisms, as the prose of [the 18th-century periodical] the Rambler." The Latin prefix sesqui- is used in modern English to mean "one and a half times," as in sesquicentennial (a 150th anniversary).
Hello Mike. Four fluently. Many more sesquipedalianly. It just was/is my job and vocation Mike. A man should be (very) good I one thing in his life, I was taught. When he is, he can be of use.
Actually, I feel like asking all members to reply to that question. Quite a few members may speak fascinating languages. Chat pals may discover each other. (I would be delighted, personally, whether there were PA members from the US who speak a native American or from Canada an EskAleut language, for instance.) It would be nice, revealing something personal about ourselves, without breaking pseudonymity.
What do you think? Would you welcome that Mike? In that case we could PM about what could be the best way of phrasing the question.
Quote:
Posted by Bill RyanThat's nearly correct. :highfive: :) Here's the etymology:Quote:
Posted by Michel LeclercFun!Quote:
Posted by MikeWow. That's a crazy looking word! I'll just stick with "windy" :)Quote:
Posted by Jaak
Sesqui- means one-and-a-half is it not?
So "sesquipedalian" literally means “walking on one foot and a half“? "pedaling with one foot and a half”?
"Clumsy”, then?
Another PA member can shine a light on this?
17th century: from Latin sesquipedalis ‘a foot and a half long’, from sesqui- (see sesqui-) + pes, ped- ‘foot’.
:thumbsup::thumbsup:
But this is interesting: the use of the word over time.
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/ima...BJRU5ErkJggg==
https://avalonlibrary.net/Bill/sesqu..._over_time.png
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/ima...BJRU5ErkJggg==
It seems to be trying to make a comeback... I wonder why?
It might be a funny exercise if we all made video posts trying to pronounce it:)
That's cool with me, Michel:muscle:. That sort of thing interests me too...Quote:
Posted by Michel Leclerc
Ouch! Of course!!! I should have known! Thank you Jaak. Horatius. Very funny because one-and-a-half-foot words in Latin verse would indeed have been very clumsy.Quote:
Posted by Jaak
I should have known because I have been just now writing a small essay on Horace’s Twentieth and last Letter of his First Book of Letters, the one starting with "Vertvmnvm Ianvmque, liber” in which he talks to his own book as if it were a young slave who occasionally runs away from his master’s house in order to hustle in Rome’s red-light quarter — an extraordinary text which could have been written by William Burroughs — I recommend this letter to all literature lovers here (look it up!)— it is both very daringly funny and deeply philosophical..
Great!Quote:
Posted by MikeThat's cool with me, Michel:muscle:. That sort of thing interests me too...Quote:
Posted by Michel Leclerc
I will PM you tomorrow Mike. (It is almost midnight here.)
Great thread. A word I recently stumbled upon and which I have lately used in a piece I was working on:
haecceity
n, pl -ties
(Philosophy) the property that uniquely identifies an object.
or, the 'thisness' or 'thingness' of a thing; the quality or reality of a thing.
:happythumbsup:
Great thread! It seems the language is being bastardized for lack of a better term, I'll try not to go off on an off topic tangent! I haven't learned any new words lately but what I've found interesting is learning the meaning behind common names. I didn't know that 'Tyler' more or less means a doorkeeper or doorman or something like that. I learned that from Hiram Key book of all places. Pretty neat.
I'd like to learn the origin of the word 'chunk' as in toss something away.
Para apprendiendo o estudiendo, no estudio palabras de Ingles, mas o meno solo Español.
"Mungus" is a kind of mongoose, or something like thatQuote:
Posted by Michel Leclerc
RRR
Ive not learnt any new words but if i could learn a new word it would be out of the "Voynich Manuscript"..................RRR
Not that I have learnt it recently, however, I think it deserves a mention and is quite pertinent today (or even all-ways!)
Kakistocracy (/ˌkækɪˈstɒkrəsi/ KAK-ist-OK-rə-see) is government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people.
Quote:
Posted by Strat
Ah, Strat! El idioma castellano — el idioma en lo que escribiremos esto sitio si no hubiera sido esa tormenta en la Mancha...
I just learned a new word, "steelman", or rather, a different meaning and context than I have heard before.
Mike just used it in a post and I had to look it up to understand what he meant.
short version of definition of what I've been able to find
Inversion of strawman
Making another person's argument stronger before you refute it
based on the principle of charity
I'm still looking it up, to get a better feel for the nuances of the word.
Words are fun...
I really did not know the word 'parasocial' until I watched this entertaining video from Tank The Tech.
Swifties really must be the worst kind of people.
There is one funky word in Estonian language
Jäääär
Jää - ice
äär - edge
So it means edge of ice.
It´s probably the only word on this planet that has 4 letters of same kind in a row.
Pulchritudinous
It sounds like a loathsome disease but it is not.
It is a word used to describe a person, typically and properly used in reference to a woman, of great, breathtaking and even heartbreaking beauty. Similar in some ways to debonair, which is used in reference to a man.
Great thread, Mike. Words shape our thoughts.
Here is an epic word
defenestration - throwing someone or something out of a window. (noun)
palimpsest
pal·imp·sest (păl′ĭmp-sĕst′)
n.
1. A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely scraped off or erased and often legible.
2. An object or area that has extensive evidence of or layers showing activity or use.
E.g., a stripped billboard showing a palimpsest of torn layers.
Well Jaak, I immediately thought of a word in Dutch: meeëetster, the feminine of a meeëter. If you have made a meal for three and then suddenly a neighbour arrives and will share a bite he will be a "with-eater" (meeëter), and she a "with-eatress" (meeëetster).Quote:
Posted by Jaak
But the four double dots in Estonian beat that – in beauty!
Good thread, Mike.
Although I regret the seeming lack of equipoise between how this thread has been received and how my own still-born thread Word of the Day was received, I concede that your OP is not clumsy like mine was (Feb 12, 2023).
equipoise /ē′kwə-poiz″, ĕk′wə-/
noun
Equality in distribution, as of weight, relationship, or emotional forces; equilibrium.
A counterpoise; a counterbalance.
Equality of weight or force; hence, equilibrium; a state in which the two ends or sides of a thing are balanced, and hence equal; state of being equally balanced; -- said of moral, political, or social interests or forces.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
My example is a subset of the above definition, properly called clinical equipoise. My omission of this distinction is one example of my aforementioned clumsiness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_equipoise
Quote:
Clinical equipoise, also known as the principle of equipoise, provides the ethical basis for medical research that involves assigning patients to different treatment arms of a clinical trial. The term was proposed by Benjamin Freedman in 1987 in response to "controversy in the clinical community" to define an ethical situation of “genuine uncertainty within the expert medical community… about the preferred treatment.”[1] This applies also for off-label treatments performed before or during their required clinical trials.[2][3]
Post #1/1 (so far), Word of the Day. Vid length is 51:26. Six smart medical doctors talking about ethical considerations in how regulatory decisions were made in the handling of the COVID thing. Basically, comparing observational evidence with proper randomized clinical trials, as reasons for top-down regs (the mandates).
Quote:
Posted by Johnnycomelately
I have been studying Spanish lately. There are many words that look just like their English equivalent and have the same or similar meeting. However, there are a few words called "false friends" because you think you know what they mean, but in fact, the meaning is quite different. There are two words in particular that could get one in a lot of trouble.
I am sure the confusion around these words has led to many humorous situations. So, if you don't want to be embarazada make sure you utilize a preservativo.embarazada - it is an adjective, and you would think it meant "embarrassed", but in fact it means "pregnant". The correct word for "embarrassed" is "avergonzado".
preservativo - a noun, which English speakers might mistake "preservative", but Spanish speakers use this word to mean "condom". If you want to keep your food longer, than you need to add a "conservante".
In German we also have 'Präservativ' but most often 'Kondom' is used for condom. 'Preservative' for us is Konservierungsmittel (means of conservation / preservation).Quote:
Posted by Kryztian
Yes the topic of "False Friends" is a funny and intersting one between many languages. English and German also has quite a few.
Just take this simple one that reverses the words:
Who (engl.) = Wer (ger.), but then: Where (engl.) = Wo (ger.)
This one is a common false friend:
'actually' (engl.) meaning 'in fact' = 'aktuell' (ger). meaning: 'currently, at the moment'
Another one that led to a real 'shock' for my father years ago. I received a package from abroad and sometimes they write 'gift' on it so that the customs officials will not bother to open it and let it go through. But when my father saw (he did not know English) it he was a bit anxious because ...
Gift (engl.) = poison (german)
There's so many more examples that are funny.
Same problem with Spanish where "actual" also means "current". German and Spanish would be in agreement.Quote:
Posted by Open Minded Dude
Ha! Your poor Dad. However, the consequences could be deadly if an English speaker saw a bottle marked "Gift" and thought it was a present, perhaps something to drink.Quote:
Another one that led to a real 'shock' for my father years ago. I received a package from abroad and sometimes they write 'gift' on it so that the customs officials will not bother to open it and let it go through. But when my father saw (he did not know English) it he was a bit anxious because ...
Gift (engl.) = poison (german)
I have a few German-English mishaps of my own. I worked briefly in a German corporation and was introduced to "Der Chef" (the boss). For a moment I assumed he worked in the kitchen. He then when into the one private office off our room and I remembered that "Chef" meant boss. A few weeks later I was talking to a colleague about the whole "false friends" phenomena and mentioned my temporary confusion about "Chef". Germans just prided themselves that almost all of them spoke English much, much better than any American so of course the story got around about my temporary mental faux pas. A week later the boss walked in with a chef's hat he borrowed from the company cafeteria and announced "Ich bin der Chef. Was möchten Sie zum Essen?" (I am the boss (chef). What do y'all want for lunch). Everyone in the office laughed hysterically (unbeknownst to me they heard about my "Chef" confusion story) except for me. He then proceeded to take us all out to lunch.
My father studied German in high school and forgot 99% of the little he knew, but still claimed he knew the language. My grandfather on my mother's said thought he spoke some English because when he told his WWII stories to English speakers he would preface it with "In der vohr" which meant "During the war" and then told the rest of the story in German. The two got along well and would take walks together and have conversations, but they would always get to a point where they couldn't quite understand what the other one was talking about. They would come home and tell my mother what each of them had said and she would laugh heartily because they were talking about totally different subjects. In one instance, it revolved around the word "Rat". My grandfather was talking about "Rat" and a "Ratgeber." My father correctly knew that "geber" was a "giver", and thought my grandfather was talking about someone giving away rodents. However, "Rat" is the German word for "advice" and a "Ratgeber" was giving advice or was a counselor. Eventually, they stopped having those conversations except when someone was there to translate. Too bad neither of them lived to the time when you could speak into you cell phone and it would translate.
Defenestrate ~Throw through or out of the window
Defenestrated
Defenestrates
Defenestrating
Defenestration
Defenestrations
pellucid: meaning translucently clear; easily understood; comprehensible :thumbsup:
There's also this, from a while back now :bigsmile:
(Copying from here)
Floccinaucinihilipilification
According to Wikipedia the following:
"the action or habit of estimating something as worthless."
(pron. a little like the following: flocky-nocky-nigh-hilly-pilly-fication)
sh!tgoblin:)
I don't think you'll find it in the dictionary, but I just discovered this word today. Someone used it to describe Greta Thunberg, and I thought it was just perfect.
It's a slang word, so it's got some flexibility, but I assume it means an odious and obnoxious person.
Saw the word "ineluctable" this morning in a book I am reading. It was used in context to explain the ways of the spiritual realm, and karma in particular.
I had to look it up.
ineluctable - "unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable."
As an aside, I always liked words. As a little kid, I clearly remember thinking that the word "embarrassed" made perfect sense. I mean, if you were em- bare assed in public, it totally describes the exact emotion you would have! Always wondered if others made this connection too, when they were kids? It shocked me a little and made me laugh when respectable grown-ups said they were embarrassed and I pictured them that way. haha
If we're doing slang, I'd like to add two (British) variants of the above. We Brits are world experts in creative slurs and profanity.Quote:
Posted by Mike
May I present the:
Cockwomble
and the
Wankpuffin
:happythumbsup:
When my father swore (RIP: 1902—1986; he was an Irish-Canadian), every time he would yell:Curuckabonyetta!!That's phonetic. He never wrote it down. I have no idea what it means, or where it came from. I wish I'd asked him! :ROFL: