Comments by ry

Show previous 200 comments...

  • see quisling!

    January 14, 2021

  • see comment at Respair

    January 7, 2021

  • see xenoglossy

    January 7, 2021

  • Hi! You might want to add your comments to the pages sanative and respair, and (possibly) psellismophiliac nebulophily. Word urls are case sensitive on Wordnik.

    January 6, 2021

  • see also oh-well-what-the-hell

    January 6, 2021

  • this list and my list unenthusiastic-interjections are substantially parallel conceptually but have very little crossover in content. Amazing

    January 6, 2021

  • Oh have I got a list for you: thresholds

    January 5, 2021

  • this is also a Good List

    January 5, 2021

  • but it seems that zuzu is entirely undefined

    January 5, 2021

  • as a note, vandemonian is here on Wordnik as an uncapitalized word, in the Century

    January 5, 2021

  • toponymy

    January 5, 2021

  • Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

    January 5, 2021

  • "ko" is not "short for coating"

    January 4, 2021

  • sanative

    January 4, 2021

  • see comment on polychronicon

    December 19, 2020

  • embrangulée

    December 19, 2020

  • yes tits can be round, but also pointy

    December 14, 2020

  • variant spelling of mishegoss

    December 14, 2020

  • numb-eel, apparently, courtesy Aphra Behn. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23179031/

    December 14, 2020

  • this is a Good List

    December 14, 2020

  • I need to make a list of terms related to this. Off the top of my head asshat, asshattery, brainus, careculo, intrarectalcranialitis, rectocranial inversion...

    December 14, 2020

  • the exemplar of a borb

    December 14, 2020

  • a borb is a round or round-presenting (as with ruffed feathers) birb. Often applied to small passerine birbs such as the (exemplary) bearded tit, any of various kinglets or bullfinches.

    For some reason New Zealand boasts a plethora of medium-sized borbs, including the kiwi, the weka and takahe.

    Possibly from a melding of birb+orb

    see also comments at borbs

    December 14, 2020

  • my understanding is that it's not a matter of size but of roundness. A borb is a round birb. They can be very small, such as bullfinches

    December 14, 2020

  • Hi, thanks for some quite enjoyable nonsense.

    December 7, 2020

  • there was a neat word list someone made that relates to this word: noesis

    December 4, 2020

  • this is like a skit where someone is making fun of lexicographers

    December 4, 2020

  • There seem to be alternative interpretations. I think the Wiktionary one cited on this page is not in fact commonly accepted. Wikipedia agrees with Etymonline.

    Important note: Etymonline is entirely the project of a single very prolific old guy.

    December 4, 2020

  • see lulz

    December 2, 2020

  • from Wikipedia:

    Hepatizon (Greek etymology: ἧπαρ, English translation: "liver"), also known as black Corinthian bronze, was a highly valuable metal alloy in classical antiquity. It is thought to be an alloy of copper with the addition of a small proportion of gold and silver (perhaps as little as 8% of each), mixed and treated to produce a material with a dark purplish patina, similar to the colour of liver. It is referred to in various ancient texts, but few known examples of hepatizon exist today.

    cf. orichalcum/orichalc

    November 23, 2020

  • a supposed condition similar to photic sneezing, where exposure to loud noises invokes a sneeze response. Can't find any references at all to this in medical literature online, so it may be completely made-up. Not sure where I heard it.

    November 23, 2020

  • English (romaji) transcription of からす, a crow or raven.

    November 23, 2020

  • From Latin, a decree or ordinance. Also a formal collection of decisions and judgments in canon law.

    November 23, 2020

  • A German cognate of onomatopoeia in the sense of an onomatopoeic word (that is, not the sense of onomatopoeia as a linguistic process or practice.)

    November 23, 2020

  • A linguistic term. From Wikipedia:

    Difrasismo is a term derived from Spanish that is used in the study of certain Mesoamerican languages, to describe a particular grammatical construction in which two separate words are paired together to form a single metaphoric unit. This semantic and stylistic device was commonly employed throughout Mesoamerica, and features notably in historical works of Mesoamerican literature, in languages such as Classical Nahuatl and Classic Maya....

    For example, in Nahuatl the expression "cuitlapilli ahtlapalli" or "in cuitlapilli in ahtlapalli", literally "the tail, the wing", is used in a metaphoric sense to mean "the people" or "the common folk".

    cf. kenning in Norse languages.

    also cf. the metaphor-language of the Tamarians in the iconic Star Trek: the Next Generation episode Darmok.

    November 23, 2020

  • The large, rotating cutting wheel mounted at the head of a modern TBM (tunnel boring machine). Often cutter head.

    November 23, 2020

  • an "ambihelical hexnut" is an "impossible figure" optical illusion, conceptually somewhat similar to the more well-known Penrose triangle.

    https://mathworld.wolfram.com/AmbihelicalHexnut.html

    November 23, 2020

  • A philosophy term referring to something that is abstract, or exists abstractly. Distinguished from concretum.

    this is another word where I can find the definition at Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abstractum), but it doesn't appear here on Wordnik. cc erinmckean

    November 23, 2020

  • lol this list hasn't been updated in a while, but Poictesme could be added.

    Also Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

    November 23, 2020

  • Poictesme ("pwa-TEM") is a fictional country in which the fantasy works of James Branch Cabell, collectively known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel, are set.

    Someone has a list of fictional countries around here somewhere...

    November 23, 2020

  • Just FYI, wordnik is case sensitive, and for many loanwords the English form does not preserve the original language's diacritics. So you can find the main entry of the above word at litterateur

    November 23, 2020

  • don't see the Twitter citation. Does it have something to do with ridonkulous?

    November 23, 2020

  • I think language is our superpower and denial our tragic flaw. Along with apophenia probably.

    November 22, 2020

  • a very useful term, then.

    November 9, 2020

  • French, "devil's noise"; modernly called venous hum. Segen's Medical dictionary has

    A retired French medical lexical import for a “hellacious noise” (diable—devil), which is heard by auscultation; it is covered by “venous hum” in the working medical parlance.

    November 2, 2020

  • a small, electrically powered multi-rotor helicopter, designed for use as an air taxi.

    The private company Volocopter GmbH seems to have originated the term and immediately had its trademark diluted, in the early 2010s.

    October 26, 2020

  • I like this one

    October 26, 2020

  • coined word for bullshit, used on the TV show Battlestar Galactica

    also rendered feldercarb

    October 23, 2020

  • felgercarb was correct on the show, but feldercarb is more frequently used in popular culture. It has at least 2x the Google search results. Probably because it is easier to say for most English speakers.

    October 23, 2020

  • combining form referring to the eyelids. Defined at blepharo– with an en-dash for some reason.

    October 22, 2020

  • author China Mieville kind of ruined this word, for me personally, when he used it 3 or 4 times in a single novel, in contexts where interrupt, intrude, or cut in would have worked just as well.

    October 22, 2020

  • this is very cyberpunk

    October 22, 2020

  • why are they mostly A's and B's?

    October 22, 2020

  • slang term of inchoate and amorphous definition, but primarily used to refer to throwing or discarding something forcefully, and as a general interjection when doing so. 

    Originated with the dance thing popularized on Vine and Youtube, but at this date no longer commonly refers to it.

    October 22, 2020

  • facetious past participle form of the slang term yeet

    October 22, 2020

  • also a slang clipping of suspicious. "Acting sus" is a common usage.

    currently seeing a spike in use, stemming from its use as shorthand in the popular video game Among Us.

    The word also appears in various other languages, notably in Spanish as plural possessive determiner

    October 22, 2020

  • see also comments at nerd path

    October 20, 2020

  • see comments at DIFI

    October 20, 2020

  • Fun to note that in Northern California, where Senator Feinstein has been a political fixture for decades, this usage has been around in local media for several of them.

    https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Hotline/3OktAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=difi

    making me nostalgic for the political rows of the 90s...a more innocent time

    October 20, 2020

  • sea-king

    October 20, 2020

  • "A fugitive color is a pigment that, when exposed to certain environmental conditions such as sunlight, humidity, temperature or even pollution, is less permanent."

    Coloring matter used in art that is not intended to last long.

    Not to be confused with disappearing ink.

    October 9, 2020

  • Dog Solution is another important resource

    October 6, 2020

  • ewww

    October 6, 2020

  • is it a contraction of "yes sir I am"?

    October 6, 2020

  • a person or entity purported to try to, or wish to, stop people from having fun, often by attempting to end an activity such as a party or game.

    October 6, 2020

  • often also called desire paths, a term from urban planning and civil engineering

    October 2, 2020

  • apocalypt

    October 1, 2020

  • it's a different meter, but double-dactyls is a similar list you might get a kick out of.

    September 25, 2020

  • this word is the root of euryphage, eurypterid, aneurysm, Eurydice and probably Europe.

    and it comes from the PIE root *wer- / *ur, ‘to stretch, to extend,

    wide, broad, extended, large’

    September 21, 2020

  • I'd be interested in seeing the list of metaphors, with our without the graphic. Perhaps you could add them to this site using the list function here. I made a similar list for weather-related idioms and phrases, weather-idioms, as an example.

    September 21, 2020

  • see kissing muscle (& oscularis)

    September 21, 2020

  • a rare layman's term for the orbicularis oris sphincter muscle complex that surrounds the human mouth.

    Mentioned in here, an old and archived BBC Science page.

    Also found (with a hyphen) in the Century's definition of oscularis, an obsolete term for the same.

    September 21, 2020

  • minimalize is definitely a word. I think the only salient error here is kit's misspelling of 'minimilize'

    September 21, 2020

  • "soidisant" is usually hyphenated, see soi-disant

    September 11, 2020

  • this is a great list!

    September 11, 2020

  • The first person one encounters, either after leaving one's home or (sometimes) outside one's home, especially on New Year's Day. A term and tradition from the Isle of Man. Term from Manx

    September 9, 2020

  • I'm not saying it's carved in stone, but if you were to ask the person who used it as such, they'd tell you they meant "I fuck with you", which simply means "I choose to associate or deal with you". It's true that "fucking want" could "fit" there semantically, but that's not what is meant *by those who are using the abbreviation on twitter or elsewhere.* 

    September 4, 2020

  • probably backformation from gongoozler, q.v.

    September 4, 2020

  • found in the glossary of Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable Rivers of England and Wales, 1904, definition given:

    an idle and inquisitive person who stands staring for prolonged periods at anything out of the common. This word is believed to have its origin in the Lake District of England.

    September 4, 2020

  • To be markedly affected by bad news, or to be knocked out or otherwise damaged by a hard blow. From cricket (the sport). See hit someone for six.

    September 3, 2020

  • nobody uses fw meaning "fucking want". It only means "fuck with."

    https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=FW

    September 3, 2020

  • I think your 2017 comment is more correct :D

    August 26, 2020

  • fw is usually understood to be short for "f** with", usually in the sense of "have anything to do with" but sometimes in the sense of "to affront".

    August 26, 2020

  • merese, hastivethallophori

    August 25, 2020

  • SWEET

    August 18, 2020

  • this word is definitely not original with the movie Juno. A Google Books search finds examples as early as 1993.

    July 27, 2020

  • A word i dislike a lot.

    July 27, 2020

  • Cool obscure technology word. The only definition I found was in the engagingly old-school Bob Jensen's Technology Glossary.

    The combination of "cryptographic" security encryption with "envelopes" of domain. Cryptolopes enable publishers on the WWW to securely distribute content with copyright protections and security over payments for copyrighted material usage.

    July 6, 2020

  • I posit that it's an artifact of OCR (optical character recognition) and it's just supposed to be the word terms. I got fitty cents on it.

    July 6, 2020

  • nostalgia for a past that one has not subjectively experienced.

    trendy coined word from the so-called "Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows"

    July 6, 2020

  • fuckall mate whats up with you

    June 30, 2020

  • In IT and software development, the scream test is when you don't know if something (a file, server, a product or service) is still being used so you take it away and see if anybody screams.

    In politics, the scream test is whether outcry or complaint from a particular group or entity is induced by the discussion, proposition, or enaction of some legal measure.

    June 30, 2020

  • Wiktionary has: Flop sweat 1. (slang) Sweat due to nervousness, especially fear of failure.

    June 30, 2020

  • amazingly specific

    June 30, 2020

  • it's possible that your sponsorship expired. I think they're for a term of 1 year.

    Also, Wordnik is case-sensitive. I notice that erleichda is adopted, but not Erleichda

    June 30, 2020

  • see comment at tub hat.

    cf. cowboy coffee

    June 30, 2020

  • see bomfog

    June 30, 2020

  • Platitudinous political rhetoric or obfuscation. (From "brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God," closing line of a radio speech by John D. Rockefeller Jr., on July 8, 1941; later used as a slogan by Nelson Rockefeller.)

    June 30, 2020

  • this is quite fun but including the Century Dictionary entries for Middle English and Scots dialect forms seems a teensy bit unfair ;)

    April 23, 2020

  • this is fantastic. nould:nill::should:shall::would:will

    April 14, 2020

  • I don't know why that would be needed, parolee is already ungendered

    April 10, 2020

  • I first misread the word and assumed it would be some allusion to enforcement of social distancing thru violence—fistancing

    April 2, 2020

  • Seeing this in real estate and architecture contexts to describe homes or buildings of exquisite, compactly intricate design

    April 1, 2020

  • journalists writing about pandemic are frustrated with not having enough alternatives for the word "amid" (or amidst)

    https://www.prdaily.com/during-the-covid-19-pandemic-buzzwords-are-getting-a-workout/

    As of writing this comment, each and every one of the Twitter citations at right refer to COVID-19 and use this word.

    unprecedented

    March 26, 2020

  • you might like anagram-poetry

    March 25, 2020

  • Hello fellow wordnik, just wanted to respond to your comment at Bebung—it may be that you can find what you're looking for at this page: bebung (not lowercase)

    March 25, 2020

  • hi reverseemf—Wordnik is case-sensitive. As suggested in the link under the Definitions heading, you can find some an entry at bebung.

    March 25, 2020

  • Twitter cites on this page are a litany—seems many businesses and installations have one of these right now.

    March 25, 2020

  • anyone else want to pretend this is all it means?

    March 25, 2020

  • I submit that "huggon" is the postulated elementary particle that establishes the force of a hug.

    appears that it also means something in Cebuano as well.

    March 24, 2020

  • got this from Random word link, & before I read the definition I was hoping for the postulated elementary particle that establishes the force of a hug.

    March 24, 2020

  • Also in non-apocalyptic times, often refers to gear required for job safety in construction and engineering: hi-vis vests and jackets in fluorescent colors, hard hats, safety glasses, boots, gloves, pads, hearing protection devices, etc.

    March 24, 2020

  • I feel personally attacked 😆

    March 23, 2020

  • https://i.imgur.com/oNObxMf.mp4

    March 9, 2020

  • time for a new fence?

    March 7, 2020

  • "rotational ambigrams" like this are all over the place but there are very very few "natural ambigrams" like poddollopsuns. Most ambigrams require some artistic trickery of lettering

    March 3, 2020

  • natalie_portmanteaux I hate to play the part of prescriptivist fun police, but you might rephrase or include a disclaimer in your portmanteau comments to show they're gag etymologies...none of the recent commented words are really portmanteaux.

    February 29, 2020

  • that's not a real etymology of artichoke...

    February 29, 2020

  • That sounds amazing. I wonder if Amish youths could try it in rumspringa

    February 26, 2020

  • in usage, the generic epithet in binomial nomenclature (ie., the first term, the genus name) should be always capitalized including when referring to a genus without regard to a particular species

    February 24, 2020

  • These kinds of edge cases in well-formedness are always a kick.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences

    February 21, 2020

  • why...

    February 13, 2020

  • see comment at Plasticky

    February 13, 2020

  • Hi! you can usually find definitions for words by searching for the non-capitalized form (unless it is actually a proper name/noun). If you look at plasticky, you will find an existing definition there.

    February 13, 2020

  • the phrase vesicle uncoating in neurons just welded itself to the inside of my skull

    February 11, 2020

  • does your pink smoke machine have a lot of buttons that perform a mad panoply of functions?

    February 4, 2020

  • generally accepted as the opposite of embiggen

    February 4, 2020

  • I like that.

    I thought that there must be a Latin combining form that describes spasm or seizure, but all I found were more Greek forms: -lepsy and -plexy/-plegia. Darn

    January 31, 2020

  • this shit is a great anagram poem. It evokes a whole scene. "This shit" is those circumstances under which some long-suffering toiler—who's seen this oh so many times before—speaks the phrase, in a sour epithet of resignation to its particular and carking burdens.

    January 28, 2020

  • royale with cheese?

    January 27, 2020

  • Sounds dope. What is a lodging society?

    also how does Polish pronounce this? Is it kind of a rhyme with "mention"? stɛt͡ʃɪn?

    January 27, 2020

  • I think a lot of these pairs ended up on the anagram-poetry list.

    January 23, 2020

  • can Wordnik refresh Wiktionary sources? Over there they have an entry for this word as "Incorrect doctrine or opinions."

    January 23, 2020

  • Phrontistery and Logolepsy both say this refers to horse meat/horseflesh. In French it is an adjective meaning equine.

    January 23, 2020

  • see comment at Sonderweg

    January 23, 2020

  • German, "special path". A theory in German historiography, a variously described supposed "special" path taken by Germany historically prior to 1945 (opposed to e.g. the democratic path of Western Europe and the autocracy of Eastern Europe), considered as a cause of latter German political structures and outcomes.

    January 23, 2020

  • Wikipedia says:

    Cintāmaṇi (Sanskrit), also spelled as Chintamani (or the Chintamani Stone), is a wish-fulfilling jewel within both Hindu and Buddhist traditions, said by some to be the equivalent of the philosopher's stone in Western alchemy.

    January 23, 2020

  • A miner or person who does tutwork

    January 23, 2020

  • Collins dictionary says this is a dialectical term in mining, referring to work for which payment is made at a fixed rate per increment of land/area.

    January 23, 2020

  • A phonetic spelling of the Japanese word for panties, used in various otaku and weeaboo subcultures.

    January 23, 2020

  • antiquated alternate transliteration for Songhai

    January 23, 2020

  • Name from the Hellenistic period for the Khorasan (q.v.) region of Western Asia.

    January 23, 2020

  • Pre-2004 this was a province of northeastern Iran, since dissolved into several smaller provinces, but in antiquity (from 6th century BCE) Khorasan referred to a much larger area comprising the east and north-east of the Persian Empire, its area today also including parts of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

    January 23, 2020

  • compare speed bump, speed hump

    January 23, 2020

  • oh I don't know about that. If anything, its more hackneyed usage is as a colloquial hyperbolic reference to a period of expression of anger, with no real violence implied (see Twitter cites). While yes rampage is probably the frontrunner for instances of actual mass violence, nearly as often we see bloodbath, spree, massacre, slaughter, jag and others.

    January 23, 2020

  • feliciajeansteele, you sort of just did. I think the only way to actually do that would be to upload the image to Flickr yourself and tag it with the relevant term(s). But I have no idea how often Wordnik refreshes from the Flickr API

    January 21, 2020

  • it refers to being tricked, fooled, falling victim to some form of bait-and-switch. Derived from something involving a particular emoji (also called "jebaited") on the Twitch game-streaming site.

    January 21, 2020

  • MBARI = Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

    January 17, 2020

  • scateo/scatere in Latin is to "bubble, gush, spring forth" so it probably refers to springs in the hydrologic sense

    January 16, 2020

  • see Exocet

    January 15, 2020

  • It turns out the more usual spelling is ampassy for this usage.

    January 15, 2020

  • see comment at juco

    January 15, 2020

  • A colloquial contraction of junior college used primarily in sports-related contexts.

    January 15, 2020

  • There's mustelids but it seems to be only mustelids. Not mustelid-related terminology

    January 15, 2020

  • okay what

    January 14, 2020

  • I kind of agree, but I can't think of any alternative other than minipenis, only questionably an improvement.

    January 14, 2020

  • NASA has a really amazing satellite photo of this phenomenon:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasacommons/31289967363/

    January 9, 2020

  • This way of reciting the alphabet is wholly unfamiliar. I wonder where it is from.

    January 2, 2020

  • something weird going on here

    January 2, 2020

  • Three clicks on the random word link gave me this just now! Shana tova and HNY, everyone (Hebrew's Nice, Yeah)

    January 1, 2020

  • OCR errors arc my favorlte

    January 1, 2020

  • cursed crowfoot would go nicely with the last few terms added here.

    December 30, 2019

  • "turned digit three," used in modern duodecimal notation to represent the single-digit numeral 11.

    December 30, 2019

  • I like this more than acquisition or procurement

    December 30, 2019

  • I think sightline is the more frequent usage, which see.

    December 30, 2019

  • they may be interchangeable in one direction, at least: in the current twitter cites, a person claims to have made mashed potatoes with a muddler

    December 24, 2019

  • that does sound detrimental

    December 23, 2019

  • I have to hazard that this word is a frontrunner for the most highly-specific anatomical term in English.

    December 20, 2019

  • other examples of this type of list: 

    noble-mythical-words

    fairy-words

    illuminated-manuscript

    Treeseed's "faery dust" lists, found here

    December 20, 2019

  • a portmanteau of logo and portfolio that has come into vogue among graphic design service providers.

    Personally it's both annoying and interesting to come across a neologism that reads like a storied old loanword.

    December 20, 2019

  • who are these intermittent users who post a single non-sequitur and do nothing else afterward? Are you bots? I'm keeping a list.

    December 20, 2019

  • fake-words-meant-to-be-amusing is similar to this.

    December 20, 2019

  • (obsolete) a female sweetheart. An eponym/pojmanym (via Shakespeare) From the Latin feminine given name Dulcibella, from dulcis, sweet and bellus, beautiful.

    December 19, 2019

  • The goat-weed butterfly, anaea andria

    December 19, 2019

  • glitch here, the etymology appears but not the definition. Rix-baron was a title for a baron of the German Empire (ca 1870s - 1918).

    December 19, 2019

  • (obsolete) a rascal, scamp, rogue. In French it means something like "naughty" or "naughty child"

    Fun citations above.

    December 19, 2019

  • see comment at embateria

    December 19, 2019

  • Of, pertaining to, resembling, or affected by agrammatism

    December 19, 2019

  • A military song in ancient Sparta. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus sometime in the 7th century BCE authored work(s) called "Embateria or Songs of the Battle-Charge which are also called Enoplia or Songs-under-Arms." Francis Gouldman's 1664 A Copious Dictionary in Three Parts defines embateria as "Certain songs to which armed men were wont to dance."

    December 19, 2019

  • I can't find this defined anywhere, but some googling is showing indications that it is rarely, and perhaps mistakenly, used as a synonym for everyday or commonplace.

    December 19, 2019

  • plural form of holoury; sexual exploits

    December 19, 2019

  • (archaic) fornication, debauchery. Mentioned in Erin McKean's 2006 Totally Weird and Wonderful Words alongside scortation and houghmagandy.

    cf. holour

    December 19, 2019

  • Drunk. Cited by Ben Franklin in ‘The Drinkers Dictionary,’ a column in the 6 January 1737 edition of his newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette, giving 228 different phrases for being drunk.

    https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-02-02-0029

    December 19, 2019

  • According to Joseph P. Shipley's 1955 Dictionary of Early English, this describes "a propensity to break wind."

    December 19, 2019

  • Of or involving pernoctation; taking place throughout the span of a night.

    December 19, 2019

  • In Russian culture and politics, this refers to "compromising information"—damaging information about a public or commercial figure, used for negative publicity, or for blackmail. A shortening of a Russian phrase, (romanized as) komprometiruyushchy material.

    December 19, 2019

  • of or concerning hyle. see also hyletics.

    December 19, 2019

  • no unless surely

    December 17, 2019

  • Thank you, please check out our latest collection of funny wifi names

    December 5, 2019

  • an "asynchronous, symmetrically anonymized, moderated open-cry repute auction"

    December 3, 2019

  • blech

    December 3, 2019

  • blech

    December 2, 2019

  • I don't know...my grandma was known for decisively crushing all comers in Scrabble. One time I tied with her and it was one of the proudest moments of my adolescence

    November 27, 2019

  • I just re-read that book. I always thought the word was standard English, but oddly there's no entry on this site (at least) for excession

    November 20, 2019

  • you might like to pilfer from some of these: french--3, tricky-words-from-french, french-words-to-throw-around-next-time-you-feel-pretentious

    I really like empennage

    November 15, 2019

  • venomous reptiles, large carnivores, electric eels, hippopotamuses (don't @ me), etc. However I think pathogenic microorganisms are the hazardous lifeforms relevant to this context

    November 12, 2019

  • coolest

    November 12, 2019

  • it appears this list was rummaged through back in early october for Wordnik Words of the Day–wootz, hypertufa, gomesi, eprouvette, hygrodeik, manuport, grism, triblet girnel and others were consecutive WOTDs. i'm disproportionately proud.

    November 8, 2019

  • see choropleth map

    November 8, 2019

  • to commit to or take decisive action. Derived from similar expressions in automotive contexts.

    From definition-of.com:

    American English idiom: Bringing a pending act to fruition. Usually connotates an act which will have serious consequences. Also used in reference to quickly increasing speed in a car by manipulating a manual transmission gear shift (the "hammer").

    An answer on english.stackexchange.com:

    possible that ... "drop the hammer" evolved from "put the hammer down," a trucking term. Robert Chapman & Barbara Kipfer, Dictionary of American Slang, third edition (1995) has this entry for hammer down:

    hammer down, adv. phr. (truckers by 1960) Going full speed; with throttle to the floor; =wide open "...a herd of LA rednecks, all of 'em pie-eyed and hammer down"—Esquire

    From an answer on Quora:

    It's either hitting the gas very hard, or "dropping the clutch" at the beginning of a race.

    If drop the hammer = drop the clutch, it means releasing the clutch very quickly to start ("launch") the car quickly from a dead stop

    cf. lower the boom, hit the gas, give it the gunpull out all the stops

    November 8, 2019

  • Archaic European name for the Indian state of Odisha and of various kingdoms and/or cities that existed the area. orixa is also an alternate spelling for the orisha spirits of West Africa.

    November 1, 2019

  • to boil due to pressure differentials. See ebullism. Not to be confused with ebulliate/ebullient.

    November 1, 2019

  • see comment at Lemnian earth

    November 1, 2019

  • see lemnian. In antiquity Lemnian earth (lemnia sphragis) was an astringent for snakebites and wounds. The soil was dug ceremonially once a year near Hephaestia on the island of Lemnos.

    November 1, 2019

  • see also shode

    November 1, 2019

  • sundang, tanto

    October 31, 2019

  • I remember several from San Francisco (mostly closed years ago, but a lot of them retain their signage): Alhambra, Alexandria, Paragon, Vogue, Acme, Palacade, Lumiere, Coronet, Regency, El Rey, Pagoda, Granada, Embassy. We also have a Roxie.

    edit: found an internet list - there was also the Grand, the Amazon, the Tower, the Apollo, El Capitan, the Imperial...a Richelieu!

    October 31, 2019

  • you can place these comments directly on the word page for each one! Then, whenever someone looks up that word in the future, they can scroll down and see your comment/definition, even if the word otherwise has no entry.

    Example: see the comment I just posted at crumbledeed

    October 30, 2019

  • crumbledeed - breaking your word, such as a deed for property.

    ex. you owe someone money and you haven't paid them back, so the police come up to you and say "You're committing a crumbledeed."


    (see comments at user katiemagaw)

    October 30, 2019

  • I actually kinda want to know more about what a znes lens is.

    October 30, 2019

  • see het up

    October 30, 2019

  • slang, an imperative phrase. Advising the listener to slow down, calm down; to moderate excitement or agitation; consider consequences, look before you leap. Don't get in a tizzy or all het up.

    October 30, 2019

  • slow your roll there buddy

    October 30, 2019

  • Happily, this is a website and not an app so it shouldn't consume much in the way of device resources.

    However, it quite definitely is full of complete nonsense.

    October 25, 2019

  • HAHAHA

    haahaha

    ha

    hahaha

    cool

    October 22, 2019

  • do backbone, spine, and nerve fit? What about stones, balls, cojones? And why does this concept involve so many and various body parts?

    October 15, 2019

  • this is a term of art in apparel and product design and is more an industry-specific hyponym of variant or version than it is particularly related to color theory. In usage it refers almost exclusively to consumer product designs, often shoes, but also, e.g., wetsuits or skeins of yarn. 

    For example, a particular model of shoe may be available in three styles, each identical in form and construction except as regards the colors used: one in red and orange, another in green and white, and the last in black and gray. Each is a colorway

    October 15, 2019

  • is this satire?

    October 10, 2019

  • The Century definition reads like poetry

    The caul or apron of the intestines

    the great omentum

    a quadruplicature of the peritoneum

    hanging down in front of the intestines / from the stomach and transverse colon.

    October 9, 2019

  • ok

    October 9, 2019

  • I made interrogative-fictional-entities-Q6tTZP39vlra to resolve the wendigo issue and the Whos down in Whoville.

    September 24, 2019

  • whydah bird?

    September 19, 2019

  • cf. pet-rocks-and-carbon-footprints

    September 19, 2019

  • cf unwanted-matter

    September 19, 2019

  • khamaseen

    August 27, 2019

  • cf. bougie, bourgie

    August 26, 2019

  • lemming made me think of sheep and the satirical sheeple. Also, square was once in common use in this vein. Also normie itself would be a good addition to this list.

    August 22, 2019

  • first thought: aren't aborted and miscarried mutually exclusive?

    second thought: what the hell?

    August 17, 2019

  • isn't it usually spelled Cthulhu?

    August 9, 2019

  • A blend of tea and dinner, when you have a late tea with some food that usually take at dinner. Similar to brunch but in the afternoon evening.

    Suggested by manolito

    August 9, 2019

  • well, it does now. See teanner.


    You are welcome to add comments to any word page containing this kind of information, whether or not the word already exists.  

    August 9, 2019

  • i got thinking of this word again and went looking on Google Books. Found citations not entomological, but botanical. The Botanical Register, 1817, describes a gloxinia bloom (with a kind of poetry):

    Style white, ascendent, an inch long, tubular, bearded at the base : stigma hiant, broadest crossways, frosted within.

    another text, Principia Botanica: Or, Beginnings of Botany from 1960:

    ... in which the ovary remains hiant into the fruit stage ; and in early ontogeny many ovaries are hiant), and another genus already technically angiospermous by the ovary closing, and the style being already fully formed.

    August 9, 2019

  • In US/UK English "Kurdo" is usually rendered as Kurdish.

    For what it's worth, in about 5 minutes of Google Books/News searches and I can't find any examples of this usage of "gor." The only non-typo results in English in recent years are mostly references to Kenyan football club Gor Mahia.

    I'd guess that it's an extremely relaxed pronunciation of "according", spelled phonetically to capture the pronunciation. Assuming you saw this in print somewhere.

    August 2, 2019

  • Thanks for commenting! The entry for this word is included here: ctenoid—note that Wordnik is case-sensitive. 

    August 2, 2019

  • a phrase used in English-speaking areas of South Asia referring highly euphemistically to various forms of female-directed sexual harrassment or assault


    July 30, 2019

  • cf. obfusc, obfuscate

    July 30, 2019

  • cf. exhort

    July 29, 2019

  • Obs.; reference for this is Edward Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895

    etymology it gives is from Anglo-Saxon a, on, + heahdhu, height.

    July 29, 2019

  • cf. qms

    July 27, 2019

  • Obsolete, a wax- or lard-based pomade for the hair.

    The name of this preparation, which is a compound of Greek and Latin, signifying “a friend to the hair,” was first introduced by Parisian perfumers; and a very good name it is, for Philocome is undoubtedly one of the best unguents for the hair that is made.

    from The Art of Perfumery, and Method of Obtaining the Odors of Plants, G.W. Septimus Piesse, 1857

    July 26, 2019

  • it is like listening for falling dew is my new favorite phrase of the week.

    July 26, 2019

  • defined at Metroidvania

    July 25, 2019

  • Also, apparently, sorcerperson

    July 24, 2019

  • see comments at magicaer

    July 24, 2019

  • Assassinesslessnesses are a scourge on modern culture. Measures are called for to expand the pipeline to increased assassiness presence across literally every sector of our society. Contact your representative.

    July 24, 2019

  • Aw, I wanted to see some examples of cool boi words

    July 24, 2019

  • I may need to write this out on a card and put it in my wallet for easy reference

    July 24, 2019

  • see comment at sha

    July 24, 2019

  • From a wikipedia article:

    In ancient Egyptian art, the Set animal, or sha, is the totemic animal of the god Set...Unlike other totemic animals, the Set animal is not easily identifiable in the modern animal world. Today, there is a general agreement among Egyptologists that it was never a real creature and existed only in ancient Egyptian imagination. In recent years, there have been many attempts by zoologists to find the Set animal in nature.

    July 23, 2019

  • interesting; some conceptual commonality with sha aka Set animal

    July 23, 2019

  • see also riffraff, scaff-raff, raffish

    July 21, 2019

  • cf. ill-wisher

    July 21, 2019

  • cf. well-wisher

    July 21, 2019

  • cf. wofare

    July 21, 2019

  • cf. welfare

    July 21, 2019

  • Per the Century, this is pronounced /pəˈɹækəpi/ i.e., rhymes more or less with catastrophe

    July 18, 2019

  • The Frontmatec butt puller offers a much better control of yield by producing shoulder butts with uniform fat cover.

    The advantages of the Automatic Butt Puller are:

    · Higher productivity–up to 1,500 butts per hour

    · Consistent product quality

    · Designed for easy sanitation and maintenance

    · Capacity to process left/right products with one machine

    · Safe use for operator

    https://www.frontmatec.com/en/pork-solutions/deboning-trimming/automatic-deboning-trimming/automatic-butt-puller

    July 8, 2019

  • Who was talking about Joy Harjo? Was it fbharjo? Today, Joy Harjo was appointed the US poet laureate by the Librarian of Congress and became the first Native American so appointed.

    https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-066/

    June 20, 2019

  • see also mage

    June 7, 2019

  • name of a chemical found in the skin of older people, and used in caregiving as shorthand for a distinctive "old people smell." Discussed in this article.

    Some people refer to it as “old-people smell,” ... often mistakenly attributed to poor hygiene, but it is actually an inescapable component of body odor that only manifests in older individuals. The official (and more respectful) term for the smell is nonenal...

    Found only in participants aged 40 and older, nonenal is a component of body odor that is produced when omega-7 unsaturated fatty acids on the skin are degraded through oxidation.

    April 20, 2019

  • eye-dialect spelling of a very relaxed pronunciation of "I don't know." Used as a text-speak abbreviation of same.

    April 10, 2019

  • *slaps knee* boy howdy ain't that a plum

    April 9, 2019

  • to wit, an abbreviation of motherfucking

    April 9, 2019

  • I want this to be the WOTD so qms will make a limerick with it and hopefully rhyme it with chainsaw.

    April 9, 2019

  • this sounds like a steampunk fantasy setting! Maybe this can help?

    March 18, 2019

  • chib

    December 28, 2018

  • see comment at tapetolucence

    December 24, 2018

  • a nonsense word similar to doohickey or thingamajig

    December 24, 2018

  • also this one

    November 15, 2018

  • where is that list of words that look like misspellings but aren't?

    November 15, 2018

  • a triple rhyme wotd limerick. what a time to be alive.

    September 14, 2018

  • cf. hiant

    August 3, 2018

  • There’s even a word to describe words that are exactly the right word for what you want to say – “teleolexical”. Why wouldn’t we want to give every word a chance to be someone’s teleolexical word?
    —Erin McKean

    June 12, 2018

  • There is a definition under antum. The consort of the sky god Anu in ancient Babylonian myth.

    June 12, 2018

  • pronounced tap-ROB-a-nee. Name used by the ancient Greeks, from the time of Alexander, to refer to the island of Sri Lanka.

    June 12, 2018

  • see Taprobane

    June 12, 2018

  • In ancient alchemy, a precious stone believed to cause the phoenix to renew its youth. Also referred to as the "slender stone." In the work of 13th-century minnesinger Wolfram von Eschenbach, the Lapis exilis is conflated with the Holy Grail.

    June 12, 2018

  • A member of various Russian free-thinking Christian sects.

    From Wikipedia:

    A Molokan (Russian: молокан, IPA:məlɐˈkan or молоканин, "dairy-eater") is a member of various Spiritual Christian sects that evolved from Eastern Christianity in the East Slavic lands...The term Molokan is an exonym used by their Orthodox neighbors; they tend to identify themselves as Spiritual Christians (духовные христиане, dukhovnye khristiane).

    June 12, 2018

  • from Wiktionary:

    Vis inertiae

    1. The resistance of matter, as when a body at rest is set in motion, or a body in motion is brought to rest, or has its motion changed, either in direction or in velocity.

    2. Inertness; inactivity.

    Usage notes

    Vis inertiae and inertia are not strictly synonymous. The former implies the resistance itself which is given, while the latter implies merely the property by which it is given.

    June 12, 2018

  • never thought I would like a piece of verse with the word 'moister' in it, but the conceit has now proven false.

    June 12, 2018

  • in medicine, refers to body parts that are minimally echogenic, reflecting less sound waves in ultrasound scanning.

    June 12, 2018

  • obsolete form of atrament. In ancient Rome, atramentum referred to various types of black coloring matter, such as writing ink or octopus ink.

    June 12, 2018

  • In music, "with bitterness;" "poignantly." Used as a musical direction

    June 11, 2018

  • see retrocausality

    June 11, 2018

  • PSA: I have been using this to tag "words" whose definitions that belong to other words entirely. Anyone else is of course welcome to do the same.

    There are also alexz's glitched-definitions and TankHughes' this-definition-is-wrong lists.

    Eyebeam is amusing.

    June 4, 2018

  • vingt-et-un

    June 2, 2018

  • sa‘d al-malik "Luck of the king". An equatorial star, Alpha Aquarii, a yellow supergiant.

    March 7, 2018

  • Arabic, "the Boat". Traditional name of Gamma Eridani, a southern star, a red giant.

    March 7, 2018

  • phrasal verb, to effect agonized crying or sobbing with such "ugly" displays as facial grimaces or spasm, flush, hyperventilation, rhinorrhea, etc. Merriam Webster did a blog post about it.

    January 19, 2018

  • andrias

    November 22, 2017

  • hard to believe it's been almost 5 years since the week that this list took over my life

    November 21, 2017

  • see squiff

    November 21, 2017

  • obsolete slang corruption of papier-mâché

    seen here

    November 20, 2017

  • theorized phase of matter occurring at extremely high temperature and density, composed of free quarks. Could have been extant shortly after the Big Bang

    January 31, 2017

  • similar to cloud-mine

    November 29, 2016

  • This word is still in high frequency usage in video gaming contexts, from my observation. Blogs and such, it does seem a little dated, recalling to mind things like Geocities and latter Usenet. I don't think it was much in common usage at all prior to 2000, though. It's not in the jargon file, which is telling.

    November 24, 2016

  • see comment at Neue Sachlichkeit

    November 23, 2016

  • A German post-Expressionist style of art circa 1920s.

    Although "New Objectivity" has been the most common translation of "Neue Sachlichkeit", other translations have included "New Matter-of-factness", "New Resignation", "New Sobriety", and "New Dispassion". The art historian Dennis Crockett says there is no direct English translation, and breaks down the meaning in the original German:

    Sachlichkeit should be understood by its root, Sache, meaning "thing", "fact", "subject", or "object." Sachlich could be best understood as "factual", "matter-of-fact", "impartial", "practical", or "precise"; Sachlichkeit is the noun form of the adjective/adverb and usually implies "matter-of-factness".

    November 23, 2016

  • archaic British cant slang, referring to daylight/daytime. cf. darkmans

    November 22, 2016

  • of, like, or in the manner of a kakistocracy

    November 22, 2016

  • obsolete American name for the city of Colón, Panama

    November 22, 2016

  • I saw this word used in online conversations with video gamers. Fascinating article about how the word is used as a sort of emoticon indicating sarcasm or mild provocation:
    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-a-former-twitch-employee-has-one-of-the-most-reproduced-faces-ever/

    The most interesting part of is how this usage derives, tortuously, from the Japanese folkloric kappa.


    (This also explains how the word showed up on the Twitter loves/Twitter hates robo-lists.)

    November 22, 2016

  • archaic name for the star Aldebaran

    November 22, 2016

  • see comments at trabaccolo

    November 22, 2016

  • see comments at trabaccolo

    November 22, 2016

  • A type of shallow-hulled sailing coaster once used in the Adriatic as a cargo vessel. Typically about 20 meters long with a crew of 10-20. Also trabaccalotrabacalo

    November 22, 2016

  • French, "a few things." A trifle or trifling matter.

    c'est peu de chose: essentially, "it's nothing; don't worry about it."

    November 22, 2016

  • I always understood this to refer to a person who stirs up trouble, and/or enjoys watching others argue and fight. 
    I found this which says it is "a person who does not prevent bad behavior," per students at University of Leicester (UK)

    November 22, 2016

  • Can be used to refer to a somewhat vague linguistic process. See comment at zedify

    November 22, 2016

  • from urbandictionary:

    to shorten a normal word with the letter Z at the end. usually used in text messages or in chat rooms/instant messaging programs on the net.

    2moz instead of tomorrow; soz instead of Sorry

    November 22, 2016

  • perhaps a useful phrase for political discourse circa 2016...

    November 22, 2016

  • see comment under merk

    November 22, 2016

  • transitive verb (slang): to murder, literally or figuratively. From "mercenary." To "get merked" is to be killed; to be beaten badly (in a game, sport, or exchange of insults); or to become highly intoxicated.


    See usage examples at merked

    November 22, 2016

  • seems like the definition given ("positively influences the environment") would require the facility to produce something of value to the environment rather than simply doing no harm. I.e., solar distributed back into the grid, compost production, waste heat recovery, etc. etc. Simply having a zero-waste facility, laudable as it is, wouldn't fit the criteria given.

    October 19, 2016

  • Heard this watching football (soccer and Irish football). An intentional or tactical foul, i.e., with little or no intent to gain the ball but instead for breaking opponents' rhythm, stopping an attack, intimidation or sometimes even sheer bloody-mindedness

    October 19, 2016

  • shorthand in computer graphics for Phong shading. Phong shading is an implementation of the Phong reflection model, which is a local illumination model devised by computer scientist Bui Tuong Phong in the 1970s that can produce a certain degree of realism in three-dimensional object rendering by combining three elements—diffuse, specular and ambient lighting—for each considered point (usually a pixel) on a surface.

    Phong is the math behind that particular jelly-like sheen that is, or was, common to many computer graphics renderings.

    October 18, 2016

  • A written representation of various trombone stings used humorously in television and film to punctuate instances of misfortune, stupidity, or awful jokes.

    One example
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKdcjJoXeEY

    cf. rimshot

    October 12, 2016

  • womp womp

    October 12, 2016

  • slang, noun. An act or instance of owning oneself, usually as an unintended consequence of some act—"own" in the sense of defeating, subjugating, embarrassing or otherwise achieving dominance over another (cf. pwn).

    Often, a self-own is when someone inadvertently insults themselves due to unawareness of the implications of their own statement(s).

    Not related to the political concept of self-ownership

    October 12, 2016

  • cf. plushie.

    Also a style of word-listing from back in the day: stuffie-the-castle-keep; stuffie-who-s-keeping-score; stuffie-monging; stuffie-picking-up-the-pieces

    September 30, 2016

  • similar/related lists: collection-o-collocations, collocative-phrases, great-race-horse-names3, phrases--cool, junk-drawer--2


    also used: Google ngrams (https://books.google.com/ngrams) and the COCA (http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/)


    additionally some of these came from gulyasrobi's programmatically generated lists.

    September 30, 2016

  • https://twitter.com/iamdevloper

    September 29, 2016

  • seems like a kind of mountweazel, in a way

    September 26, 2016

  • this is usually spelled dramedy

    September 26, 2016

  • I've always seen this spelt sabretache

    September 26, 2016

  • see aliquot

    April 25, 2016

  • Slang, a very short time.

    March 23, 2016

  • slang. A very long time. Not to be confused with a hot second, which is a very short time.

    March 23, 2016

  • many persons diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome consider this an acceptable and even affectionate epithet. Some however do not.

    http://life-with-aspergers.blogspot.com/p/disclaimers-and-definitions.html

    February 22, 2016

  • more commonly rendered as aspie

    February 22, 2016

  • I haven't heard that. kablooey is common. I say splooey. Or "it asploded"

    January 20, 2016

  • from a deleted wikipedia article.

    http://gawker.com/the-10-best-articles-wikipedia-deleted-this-week-1749445064

    December 24, 2015

  • from Wikipedia:

    The man on the Clapham omnibus is a hypothetical reasonable person, used by the courts in English law where it is necessary to decide whether a party has acted as a reasonable person would — for example, in a civil action for negligence. The man on the Clapham omnibus is a reasonably educated and intelligent but nondescript person, against whom the defendant's conduct can be measured.

    November 19, 2015

  • see pænula

    November 13, 2015

  • shouldn't this be reverse spelunking?

    November 13, 2015

  • to put stickers on walls in public places as a form of street art, vandalism, or both

    November 12, 2015

  • chullo

    November 12, 2015

  • the consensus on urbandictionary is that this word refers to food, but after a cursory read through of Google search results, I conclude that it means whatever you want it to mean.

    November 12, 2015

  • see comment at yaeyaema

    November 12, 2015

  • this should go on those "words about words" type lists maintained by some wordniks

    November 12, 2015

  • a great fondness or paraphilia for thunder, lightning, and/or thunderstorms

    November 11, 2015

  • It doesn't have anything to do with FedEx?

    November 11, 2015

  • that must be one of the top ten etymologies I have ever read.

    November 10, 2015

  • Hi everyone, by the way. How are you all?

    November 10, 2015

  • Or a county cumberer would be more alliterative. But you could also say maybe a borough burden. Or a burg blag? Or a local lackadaisical. a district drain. a parish pain point.

    Sorry. Suggesting any kind of simple wordplay to me is like waving a chew toy over your dog's head

    November 10, 2015

  • a commune in the south of France, population ~13,500. Legendary stomping ground of the tarasque in the 1st century CE.

    November 10, 2015

  • this is used to form any number of hyperbolic nonce words referring to a "climactic" level of enthusiasm for something.

    you can also paste this into google (I can't get href code to work with Google search url syntax): <strong>"a+*gasm"+-orgasm</strong>

    November 10, 2015

  • a sizing grade of arborio rice used in making risotto. The largest-grained varieties of arborio rice are termed superfino.

    November 10, 2015

  • weird, this word appears on Wiktionary but the Wiktionary entry does not appear here.

    Noun
    cumberer ‎(plural cumberers)
    Someone or something that cumbers

    November 10, 2015

  • archaic alternate spelling of schiedam, referring to gin.

    November 10, 2015

  • the "stack" of photographic images of the same subject, captured at different focal depths, used in focus stacking, a.k.a. z-stacking.

    November 10, 2015

  • see focus stacking

    I would guess this refers to the "z-axis" (i.e., depth) of the images used in this type of digital image processing

    November 10, 2015

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stacking

    "Focus stacking (also known as focal plane merging and z-stacking or focus blending) is a digital image processing technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field (DOF) than any of the individual source images."

    November 10, 2015

  • In French, this refers to the technique of "focus stacking" in digital image processing

    November 10, 2015

  • alternate rendering of piezo stage

    November 10, 2015

  • "A piezo stage can be defined as a mechanical device driven be a piezoelectric actuator, which provides one or more axis of motion. In the case of nanopositioning, a piezo stage makes use of flexure hinges where a moving platform is linked to a static base."

    whatever that means

    November 10, 2015

  • doesn't someone have a list of purely nominal locations?

    November 9, 2015

  • it keeps the malt in the vat.

    November 9, 2015

  • oh hmm I've been tagging such words under glitch definition for a while now. i will continue to do so, no reason we can't have a list *and* a tag

    November 9, 2015

  • Interesting word. All the citations above are from the Mahabharata. Various heroic figures in the story are repeatedly referred to as "car-warrior". Appears to be a translation of the Sanskrit ati-ratha where ratha literally means a chariot.


    Can't find an actual definition anywhere, but reading some passages, it looks like these characters are all chariot-mounted archers to whom are ascribed supernatural levels of martial prowess and general badassery. I think the chariots are flying in some cases. There are a lot of connotations I'm sure I'm missing.

    November 9, 2015

  • I can't figure out what language this is from, but as shown in the citation, it meant "black devil" in a central Indian dialect as of 1919.

    November 9, 2015

  • pickle (as in to be in a pickle–see Wiktionary definition #4) + predicament

    November 9, 2015

  • Alternate name for any of the Greek mythological figures called Asterion. Also a lesser known Greek Arian theologian of ancient Anatolia.

    November 9, 2015

  • Distinct from the anatomical asterion, this is the name of several Greek mythological figures, including two kings of Crete, a minotaur, and a river god.

    November 9, 2015

  • don't know why I had this on my list of stuff to look up, but for the record, it's French, a noun meaning shimmer or shimmering

    November 9, 2015

  • glitch definition. This is a French word meaning "detainees" or "inmates".

    Lovely archival flickr content here.

    November 9, 2015

  • archaic alternate spelling of vetiver

    November 9, 2015

  • from Webster's Revised Unabridged 1913: (Dyeing) stannous chloride, used as a mordant in dyeing and calico printing.

    could go on lists of dyes/pigments.

    November 9, 2015

  • this is great. I wonder if it is derived from gnarly?

    November 9, 2015

  • supposedly this is an italian word referring to the ring of liquid or condensation left on a surface by a beverage in a glass.

    (http://www.omgfacts.com/theworld/16419/20-Words-That-Mean-Nothing-In-English-But-Mean-So-Much-In-Other-Languages)

    November 3, 2015

  • I'm great in the living room, but I'll live in the great room.

    October 16, 2015

  • a type of illustration particular to the Wall Street Journal; a pen and ink head-and-shoulders portrait in a style mimicking the woodcuts used in early journalism.

    October 16, 2015

  • a small temple or shrine

    October 8, 2015

  • upset about how many times recently I've seen this word confused with pixilated. Otherwise reputable publishers in various media cannot seem to find proofreaders who know the difference.

    October 6, 2015

  • I nominate this for WOTD

    October 6, 2015

  • blue-sky thinking?

    October 6, 2015

  • also defined under moose knuckle

    October 6, 2015

  • I want to read this book

    October 6, 2015

  • Late one night at home i was writing down ideas for a thing about postcolonialism or something like that and fell asleep. i woke up in the wee hours and the last paragraph i'd written unmistakably narrated a dream sequence, in some version of my handwriting, shaky but legible. Something about the Minotaur and my brother and a cargo ship full of hay bales? don't remember. i couldn't remember any part of the actual experience, but it was observed on some level obviously. i think i still have the page somewhere. strange

    September 25, 2015

  • I don't know if it was already done between 2010 and now, but I have made a list of most listed words. I think schadenfreude continues to be the most listed word on this site.

    September 25, 2015

  • this reminds me of The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. from a few years back.

    September 18, 2015

  • this was my first favorite word. I remember being pretty small, reading it somewhere, looking it up and becoming very enthused

    September 1, 2015

  • I got this from "Random Word" a couple weeks ago and had the same thought.

    August 28, 2015

  • as in rhetoric(?)

    August 24, 2015

  • grrrl/riot grrrl

    August 20, 2015

  • I think there may have been an upswing in usage starting with this:

    http://metro.co.uk/2015/05/20/spunk-trumpet-and-10-other-rude-places-jokers-have-added-to-google-maps-5207192/

    August 18, 2015

  • I'm sure this is simply the newest variation on the theme of words like cum dumpster, douchecanoe, turd burglar, fucknugget etc.

    (sorry for the profanity, I'm a fan of creative swearing)

    August 18, 2015

  • a half-serious alternative to bitcoin

    http://coinmarketcap.com/

    August 14, 2015

  • I had that book.

    July 24, 2015

  • this is a shortened form of lying sack of shit, that i've heard younger folks use here and there in the last few years. "Don't listen to him, he's a lying sack," sort of thing.

    July 21, 2015

  • Then there's howling fantods and creeping horrors. I wonder if a fantod is anything like a meemie.
    I also thought of some others I am not sure really fit: spinning jennylying sack, Fallingwater, simmering hatred, stabbing pain

    July 21, 2015

  • like "that sounds too unsanitary," or "an unsanitary choice of words"? I've definitely not seen or heard such usage.

    July 21, 2015

  • The rock/jazz/funk band of long standing on The Muppet Show and in related film properties.

    Also a bar on Valencia Street in San Francisco, CA.

    July 21, 2015

  • this got some attention and so I was remiss in not mentioning that it's simply an anagram of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem which is itself an amazing bit of verbiage

    July 21, 2015

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