this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

Rules

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  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
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    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
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If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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It's bullshit that the opposite of "impeachable" is "unimpeachable" instead of "peachable"

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[–] the_stat_man 20 points 10 months ago (4 children)

These are called orphaned negatives and English has loads of them. A great article about them is here: https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2021/03/17/a-gruntled-look-at-orphan-negatives/

As a slight tangent, a similar peculiarity in English (which I don't know of a name for) is where you can use the opposite words for similar actions, e.g. you can chop a tree down and then chop it up.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Reminds me of folding cardboard boxes. If you are taking a flat piece and make a box of it, are you folding a box or unfolding the cardboard. Or both. And when you do the reverse, you do the same, do you not?

[–] kurtrude 6 points 10 months ago

Not exactly the same, but that also reminds me of autoantonyms or Janus words. The word dust can be used to describe adding dust or removing dust, for example.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Great link! I love the little story in there.

I actually use "shevelled" alongside many other words which to my mind "should logically exist" - for example, at the weekend I dismantled and then remantled a wall in my garden.

[–] the_stat_man 3 points 10 months ago

Good one, and you now have a mantled wall!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Contronyms is another great one. English is so tuitive.