perambulation is a good one. My morning walk isn't quite grand enough to be called a 'constitutional'; nor scenic and leisurely enough to be called a 'stroll'; nor yet social enough to be called a 'promenade'; 'perambulation' is just the ticket.
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I thought the morning constitutional was taking a shit.
And what a lovely paragraph about it. Thank you.
Interrobang.
It's this thing: ‽
More people should use the symbol because it looks cool and has a badass name, so for that you need to know what it's called.
Who's with me‽
Interrobang sounds like something from a porno about police work.
“Did you question the suspect?”
“Yeah, Chief, we interrobanged him and got the info.”
Hey, it's me, your suspect. I've got more info, step it up with the interrobanging, will ya?
While I like the concept, I can't help but prefer '!?' or '?!'. There's more granularity of meaning, and I think it just looks nicer having two or more separate characters.
Only if you agree to stop calling them Hashtags and use their more-correct name of Octothorpes
Petrichor: The smell of rain on dry ground. One of those things everybody knows about but lacks a word for.
Overmorrow refers to the day after tomorrow
Figured the other way around might be as obscure...
nudiustertian: relating to the day before yesterday
Yikes
To add to that, "ereyesterday" is the noun version for the day before yesterday.
I actually dislike that term a lot.
It's like spunkgargleweewee. It seems immature and makes me feel more dismissive towards the argument. Maybe that also has to do with it being a catch all term and people seem less willing to give specific examples of how things are declining in quality.
Sonder (noun): the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles: In a state of sonder, each of us is at once a hero, a supporting cast member, and an extra in overlapping stories.
dictionary.com
This one always makes me smile, because it's from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It's just some guy's blog in which he comes up with new words to express experiences and emotions that are difficult to describe, and that specific one has thoroughly broken containment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widdershins
Just because it sounds cool.
"Thrice" is a somewhat obscure word that otherwise fits.
"Adventitious" is a good one. It means "non-inherent" or "acquired" (as opposed to inherent.)
Avuncular - of or having the qualities of an uncle.
“His avuncular joke was both lazy and sexist”
Widdershins. It means counter to the sun's direction , and was seen as inauspicious. Counter-clockwise, before clocks.
Gormless - Lacking initiative, foolish
Copacetic - correct, orderly, good
- Paramour
It sounds fancy, but means a casual lover. A fuck buddy. A friend with benefits. Though it can also carry the implication of being an out-of-wedlock lover, as it dates back to a time where having a fuck buddy was almost certainly a sign of married infidelity.
- Kith
Means one's friends and other people they are close to that aren't family. Often paired with "kin". Kith and kin. Friends and family.
Borborygmus I use often enough, but it's not widely known. It's the gurgling sound produced by the movement of gas through your intestines.
Limaceous I almost never use, but I enjoy it anyway. It means characteristic of or pertaining to slugs.
And lastly, tawdry is one of my favorites meaning showy but cheap and poor quality.
Not a word, but there's a specific phrase uttered when you casually pass by someone working, stop for a chat, and then genuinely wish them well with their work as you leave.
This phrase does not exist in English:
- "Break a leg" is close, but more reserved for some grand performance
Nor does it exist in German:
- "Viel Spass/Glück" (Have fun, Good Luck) is also close, but has an element of sarcasm and/or success through chance.
- (Edit) "Frohes Schaffen" (Happy 'getting it done') is pretty spot on.
In Turkish, you just say "Kolay Gelsin", meaning "May the work come easy so that you finish sooner".
Its such a useful unjudgemental phrase, easily uttered, that I've seen nowhere else. Maybe other languages have it too.
Shemomedjamo - Georgian word meaning to eat past the point of fullness because it tastes so good or as I heard it, "I accidentally ate the whole thing."
Grok
It means to know or understand, like "yeah man I can grok that."
Being pedantic, but it's beyond that.
To grok is to know or understand so completely, it becomes a part of yourself. To know something fully. You can understand the concepts of astrophysics, but you might not grok the concept.
Specifically, it refers to a deep understanding.
[A critic] notes that [the coiner's] first intensional definition is simply "to drink", but that this is only a metaphor "much as English 'I see' often means the same as 'I understand'". (from Wikipedia)
When you claim to "grok" some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For example, to say that you "know" Lisp is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary – but to say you "grok" Lisp is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming. Contrast zen, which is a similar supernatural understanding experienced as a single brief flash. (The Jargon File; also quoted on Wikipedia)
Indubitably!
It means most certainly, beyond questioning.
And it's fun to say!
Sesquipedalian: A user of big words
I like that saying sesquipedalian makes you sesquipedalian.
I've got six of them:
- Tittynope: "A small amount left over; a modicum."
- Cacography: "bad handwriting or spelling."
- Epeolatry: "the worship of words."
- Kakistocracy: "a state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens."
- Oikophilia: "love of home"
- Tenebrous: "dark; shadowy or obscure"
Brobdingnagian.
It's a very big word that means very big.
It comes from Gulliver's travels. The Brobdingnagians are giants, 12 times the height of humans. The word isn't limited to that scale, but it's definitely for things that are unusually large compared to us.
It's the literal opposite of Lilliputian, which is from the better known race from "Travels" that are 1/12 our size.
It's my absolute favorite word. Not just because it's a literary reference but it's fun to say. Brob ding nag ian. It just burbles off the tongue like a drunken stream stumbling among the rocks of its bed. And, it's a big word that means big, which is just fun wordplay. Like the phobia of big words, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which was inevitable as soon as the idea of a phobia of big words was conceived.
It's German but 'Rucksackriemenquerverbindungsträger', the thing between the straps of a backpack that you can connect to lighten the load on your shoulders.
I made the word up but I use it pretty often.
Duodenum.
Doo-odd-in-umm.
The duodenum is the first section of the small intestine in most higher vertebrates, including mammals
ereyesterday is the day before yesterday. as a german i am used to refer to two days in the past and future without useing weekdays.
overmorgen, in Dutch. I heard this 'overmorrow' word a couple times as a response in that they wish it did exist
I have a double whammy: Nonplussed.
Bewildered; unsure how to respond or act. Double whammy because it does not mean not-plussed like many people seem to think.
Meant to say in my Nero Wolfe comment - there's a Lemmy community for interesting words at [email protected] - it's not very busy, but still.
Obstreperous - noisy or difficult to control (as in "the boy is cocky and obstreperous")
Defenestration. Throwing someone out of a window. Example the defenestration of prague
An ultracrepidarian—from ultra- ("beyond") and crepidarian ("things related to shoes")—is a person considered to have ignored this advice and to be offering opinions they know nothing about.
The word is derived from a longer Latin phrase and refers to a story from Pliny the Elder
The phrase is recorded in Book 35 of Pliny the Elder's Natural History as ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret[1] ("Let the cobbler not judge beyond the crepida") and ascribed to the Greek painter Apelles of Kos. Supposedly, Apelles would put new paintings on public display and hide behind them to hear and act on their reception.[2] On one occasion, a shoemaker (Latin sutor) noted that one of the crepides[a] in a painting had the wrong number of straps and was so delighted when he found the error corrected the next day that he started in on criticizing the legs.[2] Indignant, Apelles came from his hiding place and admonished him to confine his opinions to the shoes.[2] Pliny then states that since that time it had become proverbial.[2]