Comments by burntsox

  • 03.06.09. Not an ad - I just really want to see this flick!

    February 27, 2009

  • Your friends don't know "friar"?! Take them to "Men in Tights," for God's sake.

    February 27, 2009

  • I impressed my wife -- hard to do -- by dropping this word appropriately (appositely?) into conversation. Thanks, Wordies!

    October 26, 2008

  • An NPR commentator accented the second syllable, as if she were saying lethargic. I'd accept this from mere mortals.... but from NPR?

    October 26, 2008

  • Read in all caps, an urban dictionary acronym for Somebody Else's Problem.

    July 23, 2008

  • Roget's says it's a synonym for rancidity. But to my ear it sounds more oily.

    June 25, 2008

  • it is aprovechar, which means to take advantage of an opportunity

    June 25, 2008

  • Don't spread it too widely or it will be in tall, grande and venti before you can say ....

    June 24, 2008

  • Is it even fair to put this on Wordie?

    June 5, 2008

  • No. 2 (quixotic) isn't so uplifting either. Haters of the S-word are placing all our hopes on serendipity, which is fitting ... but if there were any justice, loquacious would top the site. I'm off to do my part!

    June 5, 2008

  • Yet another word I've lived without having to pronounce. The accent is NOT on the second syllable.

    The Latin Stibium, origin of its chemcial symbol Sb, is easier to say.

    June 5, 2008

  • NPR jarred me this morning using ignominy in a report. I had assumed the stress was on the second syllable, but the preferred pronunciation stresses the first.

    April 9, 2008

  • I finally resolved how to say row. When it's a dispute, it rhymes with how. When it moves a boat, it's has a long 'O.'

    March 31, 2008

  • A law professor used this in a lecture today. I didn't know what it meant then, but I'm now fairly sure she wasn't using it correctly.

    March 26, 2008

  • How would you mis-pronounce deter?

    March 25, 2008

  • read this in a story about artificially inseminating the pandas in Washington's National Zoo.

    March 20, 2008

  • Every year I say I'm going to take off from work to watch the first two days of the USA intercollegiate basketball tournament, known as March Madness. Maybe I will next year...

    March 20, 2008

  • Agent 86: everyone's favorite secret agent man.

    March 19, 2008

  • My wife came across this word while reading and asked me what it meant. I explained that it was a small rodent that was cultivate for its fur, like a sable. It fit the context, and life went on.

    March 19, 2008

  • This has a strangely sexual connotation - if someone offered to gild my lilly, I would at least want dinner first.

    March 19, 2008

  • Saying ask as "axe" would be a deal-breaker for me. Check, please!

    March 19, 2008

  • Maybe it's a Boston thing in the USA, but my wife's family says "head-uck" (neither syllable accented). I find it quaint, and no, it doesn't give me

    March 16, 2008

  • ::kneeling:: i'm not worthy

    March 16, 2008

  • excellent ... and like fairies, a vasectomy reversal doesn't really exist.

    March 16, 2008

  • http://snipurl.com/connoquenessing

    March 16, 2008

  • There are a lot of similar lists on Wordie. Just search lists for "prounounce."

    March 16, 2008

  • Vasectomy is divided between the 'a' and the 's.' It's painful just to think about.

    March 16, 2008

  • Most of the USA says aunt like ant. I fit the small regional demographic that rhymes it with "want." And I do.

    March 14, 2008

  • I don't know how to pronounce clitoris. Seinfeld suggests it rhymes with "Dolores."

    March 14, 2008

  • I cannot readily recognize voices over the phone, even my wife, co-workers, or mother. Please say who you are when you call!

    March 13, 2008

  • (′f�?n·ag′n�?·zhə) (psychology) A disturbance in the recognition of familiar voices in which the affected individual has good comprehension of what is spoken, but the speaker cannot be identified. dictionary.com

    March 13, 2008

  • People at work just started using this to mean they they have earthly idea what they're talking about.

    March 13, 2008

  • I had no idea palm, or calm for that matter, were pronounced without voicing the "l." Yet that is quite established in some parts of the Unitd States.

    March 13, 2008

  • My wife insists on pronouncing the "t" in often. This drives me crazy, but it's perfectly fine and accepted, though Bryan Garner disapproves.

    March 13, 2008

  • Chris Doyle is also a regular loser on the Style Invitational, the Washington Post's weekly humor contest that has a vendetta against me personally not that I'm bitter.

    January 24, 2008

  • ... to be confused with Kwanzaa, the African-American holiday.

    December 22, 2007

  • there is a great spanish verb that combined an English idiom of three or four words into one. it's not pertenecer, but it's kind of like that. does someone know what i'm talking about?

    December 22, 2007

  • i was giving an interview and the reporter asked whether a service would be available at her local prothonotary (she was in Pennsylvania, USA). i was so tickled that i repeated the word at least five times during our chat.

    n. - The principal clerk in certain courts of law.

    December 22, 2007

  • An Australian friend giggled when this came up in a conversation. Apparently it's slang for cunnilingus there, but I never found out why she was giggling! ;)

    December 21, 2007

  • In a wordie sense, consider:

    1. Arranging words or clauses in a sequence of increasing force. In this sense, auxesis is comparable to climax and has sometimes been called incrementum.

    2. A figure of speech in which something is referred to in terms disproportionately large (a kind of exaggeration or hyperbole).

    3. Amplification in general.

    http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/A/auxesis.htm

    December 20, 2007

  • Thank you for auxesis - that's why I come to wordie!

    And, Groucho, my other ear is tone deaf to all cultures!

    December 20, 2007

  • lol - I'd say "solicitor" and "barrister" BOTH sound pretentious to my American ear!

    December 18, 2007

  • I think "attorney" is somewhat pretentious, as compared to "lawyer." There is a difference: a lawyer is one who practices law, while an attorney is one who represents someone.

    But it bugs me when people opt for the more hoity-toity. "Attorney" vs. "lawyer." "I" instead of "me."

    "Physician" over "doctor" (though on that one the words are truly indistinguishable and, if anything, physican is more precise in the medical field).

    December 18, 2007

  • a team stick sport played in the Scottish highlands. Found it on the 'Net while searching for the non-word "lozenger."

    November 3, 2007

  • this was on AWAD last week!

    November 2, 2007

  • i love my iPod, but my wife won't use the nano i gave her for mother's day.

    October 25, 2007

  • i see this word all over the place!

    October 25, 2007

  • Pb = lead - plumbum

    Ag = silver - argentum

    Na = sodium - natrium

    Hg = mercury - hydrargyrum

    K = potassium - kalium

    Sb = antimony - stibium

    W = tungsten - wolfram (German)

    October 10, 2007

  • oh - i get it. then a socialist is someone who includes too many addressees in email and always sends Reply All.

    October 10, 2007

  • sorry - two errors in a very short space. Thomas A. SWIFT, and the company uses "tase" as the verb.

    October 8, 2007

  • all true, but the etymology suggests otherwise. TASER was the original form, so all bets are off.

    October 8, 2007

  • I don't wanna go all mainstream on you, but Grammar Girl had a recent segment on the verb TAZE. She contacted the manufacturer, who suggested the comparny preferred the verb TASER, not TASE or TAZE.

    And the acronym - Thomas A Smith (?) Electronic Rifle - is simply amazing.

    October 8, 2007

  • someone at work used this word in a conversation and brought the room to a silent pause.

    is there a word for that dangerous word that you've only seen in print but, because you've never heard it aloud, aren't sure how to pronounce? my work colleague nailed it, but i'm just saying.

    October 6, 2007

  • having all four toes fully webbed

    October 6, 2007

  • in 2007 the Washington Post stopped printing daily racing reports. they're still available on line, but these names will never jump from print again. a scratch for society.

    October 6, 2007

  • eric c. hated calling a fraternity a "frat": what would you call a country, then?

    October 6, 2007

  • so very outdated ...

    October 6, 2007

  • there is something inappropriately sexual about this. then again, i have gone on a date wearing an eyepatch.

    October 6, 2007

  • I will start a sentence with this word pretty much anytime I feel like it.

    October 6, 2007

  • Ruidoso is a great ski town in New Mexico. It is home to a Native American casino called the Inn of the Mountain Gods. That, my friends, is worth the price of admission.

    October 6, 2007

  • so what do you do with a contranym - do you use it smugly, knowing that you're right, or to you avoid for fear that no matter what you do you'll always be wrong.

    October 6, 2007

  • entirely uncalled for, chained_bear! :)

    I think you're stretching your list a bit far....

    October 6, 2007

  • context, please?

    October 5, 2007

  • If he administers the med school boards, he becomes Proctor Proctor. Even worse, if he gives a rectal exam, he's Protologist Proctor.

    October 5, 2007

  • ok. now that's funny.

    I've put it back where it belongs now - in essence, I've gotten my ass back in gear.

    October 5, 2007

  • well, that's really embarrassing. I guess it's been a while since I looked it up on the dictionary .... :(

    October 5, 2007

  • It's not a real dictionary ... and certainly not worth taking out of the bookstore ... if it doesn't have a listing for "callipygian."

    The word isn't so obscure, yet dictionaries that don't have something at this level aren't very interesting.

    October 5, 2007

  • could this be an adjective, describing things to do with deflowering? "Ralph gave Jessica a depudicate massage before propositioning her."

    October 5, 2007

  • My threshhold for choosing a dictionary.

    October 5, 2007