Comments by vendingmachine

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  • DarkSide is believed to have roots in Russia and the country provides a haven for cybercriminals.

    October 24, 2021

  • Mr. Biden, who is expected to announce an executive order in the coming days to strengthen America’s cyberdefenses, said there was no evidence that the Russian government was behind the attack.

    October 24, 2021

  • The explosion of ransomware cases has been fueled by the rise of cyberinsurance — which has made many companies and governments ripe targets for criminal gangs that believe their targets will pay — and of cryptocurrencies, which make extortion payments harder to trace.

    October 24, 2021

  • “Right now, they’ve not asked for cybersupport from the federal government,” Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, told reporters at a briefing at the White House.

    October 24, 2021

  • We could also talk about gender privilege (men still get paid more than women for the same jobs, and that’s a fact).There’s cis-hetero privilege, educational privilege, ZIP code privilege, right-handed privilege and able-bodied privilege, age privilege, and hair privilege.

    October 23, 2021

  • Privilege, though, is not confined to money or pedigree. Although most people generally think of privilege as socio-economic, that’s just one of many categories. Of course, there is white privilege, but there’s also colorism. Colorism, favoring light-skinned people over darker skin tones, is real and present in both Black and white communities.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-woman-racism-privilege_n_613b9ea2e4b00ff836ec9480

    October 23, 2021

  • See petrology and petrography.

    October 23, 2021

  • noun The art of writing or inscribing on stone.

    noun The study of rocks; lithology; petrology.

    noun The art of writing on stone.

    noun The scientific description of rock which investigates the constitution of rocks; petrology.

    October 23, 2021

  • Any day that I get to use diacritics is a good day.

    In petrography, an oölitic limestone found at Ketton, England.

    October 23, 2021

  • I can't decide which is more fun to say... goatfish or ahuruhuru.

    ruzuzu is pretty fun, too.

    October 23, 2021

  • The study of grasshopper species.

    October 23, 2021

  • noun A sheltered place for storing dung.


    Some dung is sheltered not from wind or weather, but because it is very valuable dung, like bilby dung.

    October 22, 2021

  • Urban dictionary: Not Even Cute

    October 22, 2021

  • This definition is lacking an etymology or has an incomplete etymology. You can help Wiktionary by giving it a proper etymology.

    Is it okay to make up an etymology? Truthfully, many of Wiktionary's words look like they were made up by a sleepy bilby.

    October 22, 2021

  • noun Games A set of three, especially a combination of three numbers that wins a lottery.

    Three birds (terns) is the secret to winning a lottery. Who knew?

    October 22, 2021

  • Which sounds better... to smell herbulent, herbous or herbaceous?

    October 21, 2021

  • On the island of Guam, the coral-tree, Erythrina Indica, the appearance of the bright scarlet blossoms of which announces the beginning of the rainy season. Its wood is soft and is used for making troughs.

    This sounds poetic... the appearance of the bright scarlet blossoms .... announces the beginning of the rainy season.

    October 18, 2021

  • Do dogs even care if you contemptuously call them a jackdog?

    October 18, 2021

  • "The reason golf balls have dimples is for control and for longer distance due to interaction with the air."

    October 16, 2021

  • noun US, slang, vulgar A workboot.


    What's so vulgar about footwear?

    October 16, 2021

  • noun Congenital malformation which is not sufficient in degree to amount to monstrosity.

    October 16, 2021

  • A derder is an impromptu kazoo-like musical instrument fashioned by placing one's mouth on the end of a toilet paper tube and tunefully going "der-der-der" into it . This cheap and innocent toy has delighted children of all ethnicities and socioeconomic strata since the invention of the toilet paper roll in 1877.

    --https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010704496.html?wprss=rss_print/washpostmagazine

    October 16, 2021

  • See also cross purpose.

    October 15, 2021

  • See also eiking.

    October 15, 2021

  • Bee softy?

    October 15, 2021

  • Spice - often dubbed ‘fake’ or ‘synthetic’ cannabis - is made from dried plant material, chopped up herbs and man-made chemicals.

    Some of the ingredients in Spice are similar to those in marijuana, but the substance is often much more potent.

    It was invented in the US by an organic chemist who was looking for a new way of developing anti-inflammatory medication.

    One of the substances included the synthetic cannabinoid ‘JWH-018’.

    The substance was declared unfit for human consumption in 2006, but it began being sold on the internet two years later, advertised as a plant fertiliser.

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/what-is-spice--12871477

    October 15, 2021

  • I think I know what this means, but then... maybe I don't want to know.

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/men-from-manchester-holding-dogging-21863620

    October 15, 2021

  • ...Joshua speaks with a Mancunian accent, but he is also known to put on a Scottish accent when talking.

    October 15, 2021

  • Hm. I had no idea that the British equivalent of a drunk driver is a drink driver.

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/police-officers-catch-drink-driver-21868134

    October 15, 2021

  • English can be a silly language.

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

    October 14, 2021

  • A person who runs with the needle the design imprinted upon machine-made net. This operation is called lace-running.

    I don't think it's safe to run with a lace-running needle. We aren't encouraged to run with scissors, why lace-running needles?

    October 11, 2021

  • Thanks, Erin. You're terrific.

    October 11, 2021

  • I seen it more specifically as a person who acts like they have a lot of money, but really they are broke.

    October 10, 2021

  • "Continental Mine ores are crushed in two stages. The crushed ores are then sent to the mill, where they are ground down to the fineness of talcum powder. Flotation and lime are used in processing. Sulfides are collected. 1% of the mined material goes to the concentrator. 99% of mined material becomes tailings. The tailings powder is wet (33% solid and the rest is water) and piped uphill to a pond. The tailings pond water has a pH of 10. Water from the pond is recycled to make tailings slurry. 27 million gallons a day enters the pond. An earthen dam around the pond is designed to withstand a powerful earthquake."

    October 8, 2021

  • That's convenient for ground consumers. Pitted olives can be hand-pitted or machine-pitted. I suppose the ground is the same way.

    October 8, 2021

  • A Canadian Karen?

    October 7, 2021

  • It's been years (I'm assuming) since any of us have heard how John is doing. Before wordnik, we were wordie. I was frogapplause back then. As much as I love, love Erin, it all started with John.

    I was trying to compile the user names of all the old gang, but I was afraid of slighting someone by forgetting a name or two. Is there a list of all the wordie people somewhere?

    October 7, 2021

  • If you're going camping, do it right and go sugar-camping, dagnabbit!

    October 7, 2021

  • My eyes were covered, but my coin slot (gasp!) was left wide open.

    October 7, 2021

  • So, this is the origin of crap?

    When I am really, REALLY steamed... I am known to say, "crap and a half"

    October 6, 2021

  • This is the only way to describe the color I saw a Jeep truck today. Maybe I should try looking it up to see what color it REALLY is.

    October 5, 2021

  • Many word enthusiasts on this site have coined words, too, but we don't overdocument our timelines, keep promoting ourselves or (worst of all) keep shouting about it. It's time to move onto the next word. It's a clever creation, but the world is waiting for something new now. How about PHOTOMOVER?

    October 5, 2021

  • Lone star ticks don't just induce alpha-gal syndrome; they transmit several deadly diseases, including the little known Bourbon and Heartland viruses.

    October 4, 2021

  • Primates lack alpha-gal naturally.

    October 4, 2021

  • Fortunately, disputes about words don't turn into a war of words of wordnik.

    October 4, 2021

  • This word does not make me glad.

    October 4, 2021

  • Alpha-gal syndrome is a recently identified type of food allergy to red meat and other products made from mammals. In the United States, the condition most often begins when a Lone Star tick bites someone. The bite transmits a sugar molecule called alpha-gal into the person's body. In some people, this triggers an immune system reaction that later produces mild to severe allergic reactions to red meat, such as beef, pork or lamb, or other mammal products.

    October 4, 2021

  • Pork–cat syndrome is an allergy to pork, usually after adolescence, that is caused by exposure to cats. Although first described in 1994, it was first documented in the U.S. by Scott Commins and Thomas Platts-Mills during their research on alpha-gal allergy.

    It is called "pork–cat syndrome" because "almost all people with the condition are cat owners, and many have multiple cats. Some develop an allergic response to cat serum albumin (protein made by a cat’s liver) that cross-reacts with albumin in pork when someone consumes it, and can lead to severe or even fatal allergic reactions when pork is consumed."

    I knew someone who suffered from alpha-gal syndrome. It is a tick-borne disease.

    October 4, 2021

  • If it's so important, what's it's name? Viscid?

    September 29, 2021

  • Is this an old word or a new creation?

    September 23, 2021

  • This word has NOTHING to do with a skier or skiing.

    September 20, 2021

  • A coin placed on the tongue of the dead.

    pass swine-penny. A coin placed on the tongue of a dead pig.

    September 20, 2021

  • Money rooted up by swine? And here I thought it was money that first traveled through the digestive tract of hogs...

    I've heard of a piece of pie, but never a piece of money...

    September 20, 2021

  • A person who sleeprides a unicycle at night.

    September 18, 2021

  • Witches' stones are flat stones jutting from chimneys in the islands of Jersey and Guernsey.

    According to folklore in the Channel Islands, these small ledges were used by witches to rest on as they fly to their sabbats. Householders would provide these platforms to appease witches and avoid their ill favor.

    September 11, 2021

  • Bilbies have a gestation of about 12–14 days, one of the shortest among mammals.

    Little-known fact: The gestational period would take a little over a week, except for the ears. The bilby's ears slow down gestation considerably.

    September 11, 2021

  • I just found out that wordnik has a blog. Am I the only one who didn't know? I feel like an idiot. 

    https://blog.wordnik.com

    September 8, 2021

  • epithalamiura

    September 5, 2021

  • I just called it a fountain bowl or a birdbath bowl. I just emptied mine today. It was full of wet and gunky, decaying leaves.

    September 4, 2021

  • Ho hum. The "big" controversy only had to do with the action of light on water colors. Not even a single mention of portcrayons!

    September 4, 2021

  • I don't know what the controversy is all about yet. I have to read the introduction mentioned here first:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/126377022@N07/14779993744

    September 4, 2021

  • My mother died of complications from this horrible disease on Thursday, August 19, 2021.

    August 24, 2021

  • Is there a rat called the moldy-mole?

    August 17, 2021

  • The putty-nosed monkey, even with his pyow-pyow-pyow, has nothing on the little-known putty-eared bilby.

    August 17, 2021

  • Odd etymology.

    July 29, 2021

  • There are several reasons why firefly populations are declining, including climate change and the harvesting of luciferase from them, light pollution and habitat destruction. When firefly habitats are destroyed for roads or other construction, they don't migrate to a new spot, they simply disappear.

    July 12, 2021

  • What is bread-sauce?

    July 7, 2021

  • Gratuitous carnography

    July 7, 2021

  • Hm. Perhaps not. It is legless but not rectangular.

    July 6, 2021

  • I wonder if the image below https://www.flickr.com/photos/126377022@N07/14784960555 is a pair of virginals. How could one instrument be a pair... unless the player is the other half of said virginals.

    July 6, 2021

  • "This remarkable, one-of-a-kind actress has, since the early 1990s, intrigued film and TV audiences with her glowing, yet careworn eccentricity and old world-styled glamour. Very much in demand these days as a character player, Patricia Clarkson nevertheless continues to avoid the temptation of money-making mainstream filming while reaping kudos and acting awards in out-of-the-way projects." --bio of Patricia Clarkson for IMDb

    July 5, 2021

  • LGBT+ is an "inclusive" way to represent all the different identities in the longer acronym but here's a breakdown of what each of the letters in LGBTQQIAAP mean.

    L - lesbian: a woman who is attracted to other women

    G - gay: a man who is attracted to other men or broadly people who identify as homosexual

    B - bisexual: a person who is attracted to both men and women

    T - transgender: a person whose gender identity is different from the sex the doctor put down on their birth certificate

    Q - queer: originally used as a hate term, some people want to reclaim the word, while others find it offensive. It can be a political statement, suggest that someone doesn't want to identify with "binaries" (e.g. male v female, homosexual v straight) or that they don't want to label themselves only by their sexual activity

    Q - questioning: a person who is still exploring their sexuality or gender identity

    I - intersex: a person whose body is not definitively male or female. This may be because they have chromosomes which are not XX or XY or because their genitals or reproductive organs are not considered "standard"

    A - allies: a person who identifies as straight but supports people in the LGBTQQIAAP community

    A - asexual: a person who is not attracted in a sexual way to people of any gender

    P - pansexual: a person whose sexual attraction is not based on gender and may themselves be fluid when it comes to gender or sexual identity

    July 3, 2021

  • "The queer having bareback sex in the back room of a club might not identify with the term “queer” or think of their actions as political, but in rejecting what society says they should be doing, they are queer."--https://www.them.us/story/what-does-queer-mean

    July 2, 2021

  • "It’s paradoxical because these queer leftists are usually white, and they pepper their events and issues with a kind of “diversity by numbers” approach. I call this approach “queernormativity.” Like heteronormativity, they identify a “right” way to be queer and argue that everyone else is doing queerness incorrectly."--https://www.them.us/story/what-does-queer-mean

    July 2, 2021

  • "First, there is “queer” as an umbrella term. Rather than use the alphabet soup of LGBTQQIIAAPSS+, “queer” encompasses any non-cisgender, non-heterosexual identity, relationship, behavior, or desire. I use “queer” this way because I think it includes a wide variety of ways people are non-cisgender and/or non-heterosexual."--https://www.them.us/story/what-does-queer-mean

    July 2, 2021

  • "For me, queerness encompasses my sexual identity as someone uncomfortable with binary presentation. It also encompasses my rebuke of cisgender and heteronormative privilege and the intersection of these privileges with white privilege. LGBT+ labels tend to presume a binary origination, and their usage coincides with a social movement that seeks assimilation and erases the existence of non-binary identities. Using “queer” as a catch-all umbrella term, whether intentionally or not, silences that important fringe voice."--https://www.them.us/story/what-does-queer-mean

    July 2, 2021

  • #ScamOfTheCentury (for the propaganda aspect for litigation purposes.)

    June 29, 2021

  • I now realize that I can't create a hashtag list because the symbol # makes Wordnik sad and confused. The words don't alphabetize well, and they link to irrelevant, random words like "somehow", "forest fire", and "the earth is flat."

    June 29, 2021

  • A new word for me.

    June 28, 2021

  • The Airstairway to Heaven... by Led Zeppelin

    June 28, 2021

  • Flavocastaneous Locks and The Three Bears...

    June 28, 2021

  • The large blooms produce a scent that smells strongly reminiscent of rotting meat. Its powerful scent attracts huge numbers of flies and it is exactly these flies that become covered in the pollen of the Pelican Flower and transmit it to others. 

    June 27, 2021

  • Just say NO to human-hamster meatballs.

    June 27, 2021

  • "Having to don and doff new PPE with every patient, and do it quickly enough to keep up with the chaos of a pandemic ER, “made every shift, and every hour, a lot more stressful than even it had been before,” Myles Greenberg, his best friend and a former ER doctor, says."

    June 23, 2021

  • I love it when typos become words. Not really.

    June 22, 2021

  • I don't care what a pelican flower looks like. It sounds nice.

    June 22, 2021

  • Let's not forget the traditional cowboy ballad "Git Along, Little Dogies"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_Along,_Little_Dogies

    June 17, 2021

  • bristol milk

    See the nouns.

    See which nouns?

    May 29, 2021

  • Why is it hard to believe that your name is John Mullen? Why are you apologizing for being 84? When is two of Payment time? If you cannot do a monthly donate, try a newly other donate time. I will to be trying to safe live a good life in my work.

    May 29, 2021

  • A fake Shemp is someone who appears in a film as a replacement for another actor or person. Their appearance is disguised using methods such as heavy make-up (or a computer-generated equivalent), filming from the back, dubbing in audio and splicing in past footage from the original actor's previous work, using a sound-alike voice actor, or using partial shots of the actor. Coined by film director Sam Raimi, the term is named after Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges, whose sudden death in 1955 necessitated the use of these techniques to finish the films to which he was already committed. Once somewhat commonplace throughout the 20th century, the use of fake Shemps to emulate living people is now forbidden under Screen Actors Guild contracts, largely because of a lawsuit filed by Crispin Glover — following his replacement in Back to the Future Part II — that determined that the method violates the original actor's personality rights. The method continues to be used in cases, such as Shemp's, where the original actor is deceased and permission from the deceased actor's estate is granted.

    A fake Shemp is distinguished from a stunt double. Stunt doubles usually only substitute for an actor in select scenes where the original actor is either unable to perform the stunt or is unwilling to take the risk of being injured in the stunt. The same techniques are often used for both.

    May 24, 2021

  • How does one garden in a car? Should I picture a junked and hollowed out car being used to grow veggies and such?

    May 17, 2021

  • There is a list or lists on wordnik that include words with untranslatable definitions.

    May 17, 2021

  • Glad to hear that you finally came around and joined the fun. Welcome to wordnik. We all love words, too!

    I doubt that you're as old as you claim. You've never too old when it comes to being a logophile or, in the case of most users here, a logomaniac.

    May 17, 2021

  • "Robin DiAngelo describes white fragility to be a defensive response by a white person when their whiteness is highlighted or mentioned, or their racial worldview is challenged, whether this response is conscious or otherwise. She gives examples including a white man accusing someone of "playing the race card" or a white woman crying to avoid conflict.

    DiAngelo proposes that white people are used to viewing themselves as "raceless" or the "default" race, and as such are insulated from feelings of racial discomfort. She describes racism as systematic rather than overt and conscious, arguing that racial segregation has shaped the United States. She points to research that has shown that children as young as four years old show a strong and consistent pro-white bias and an especially strong prejudice against black males."

    _____________________________________________

    (Forget DiAngelo's book. Read this instead: )

    The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility

    The popular book aims to combat racism but talks down to Black people.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/


    May 17, 2021

  • Darn. To be blamed for EVERYTHING... and on my birthday (May 5)!

    May 7, 2021

  • Is your listing problem something I've done wrong, bilby?

    May 3, 2021

  • What made you want to share your story here (on Wordnik)? Approximately, what year did this take place?

    May 2, 2021

  • "It is most efficient and relevant to conduct these studies in populations with a high symptom burden."

    "Fifty percent or more of patients in Cluster II experienced a high symptom burden."

    "A high symptom burden is associated with a high use of healthcare, admissions to nursing homes, and reduced quality of life."

    "A study focusing on community pharmacies in Missouri found that patients with COPD receiving respiratory medication from the pharmacies had high symptom burden and low medication adherence."

    April 26, 2021

  • Bearing undivided or simple spines, as the surface of certain brachiopod shells: contrasted with dujlicispinate.

    unicispinate

    April 26, 2021

  • "Ever since Starbucks onboarded Oatly's milk as its latest dairy alternative, the company has had a hard time keeping up with skyrocketing demand." --Twitter

    April 22, 2021

  • snackwichcraft. That's almost a sweet tooth fairy, is it not?

    April 18, 2021

  • I don't see myself EVER using this word. It's too cutesy for my taste (no pun intended; I hate puns.)

    April 16, 2021

  • It keeps doing it... I give up. Is anyone else having a problem creating new lists or with disappearing words added to a list?

    April 16, 2021

  • I've created this list at least eight times and it keeps self-erasing. Maybe it's because it's a list about sharks. My list keeps eating itself. I had perhaps 50+ words, now I see 7. And what's with ILZf4M-6DSX?

    April 16, 2021

  • What? No bilby-related hand tools?

    April 6, 2021

  • Poor quinoa. Being called petty-rice is PrETTY insulting.

    April 6, 2021

  • hain't. This is a word that I've heard at least one person use habitually.

    This person also used the non-count noun HAIR as in, "I hain't washed my hairs today."

    March 26, 2021

  • At the end of the day / just kidding (after saying something rude or inappropriate) / let's give a shout-out to ---.


    March 16, 2021

  • twist in a road

    February 6, 2021

  • This sounds like an mild insult.

    February 5, 2021

  • doven

    lazy (unwilling to work)

    stale (of beverages)

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doven

    February 5, 2021

  • "Several members always end up moaning and thudding their foreheads on the table in the 'dovening for democracy' portion of the evening."

    "I noticed that I wasn't the only woman dovening (praying) on the bus."

    The quotes (above) suggest that dovening is praying, whereas the definition refers to it as a slumber. Maybe it is praying while sleeping?

    February 5, 2021

  • If you love words, you belong here and we welcome you.

    January 29, 2021

  • Correction: A very interesting scam site.

    January 29, 2021

  • "Not all human intervention has been as successful, however. For example, the degradation of brown earths under heath in western France is not a natural feature but the product of human clearance and grazing practices."

    January 17, 2021

  • " The quality of the soils depends heavily upon the origin of their waste sheets; sand spreads derived from the granites of the Hercynian massifs, for example, provide only poor soils."

    January 17, 2021

  • "These may provide a particularly favorable soil material; most notable is the windblown limon that mantles the Paleogene and Neogene limestone plateaus of the central Paris Basin and the chalk beds to the northwest, the basis of the finest arable soils of France."

    January 17, 2021

  • "Over large areas of France, soils have developed not directly from the disintegrated bedrock but from the waste sheets created by periglacial action."

    January 17, 2021

  • "Some climate-related variation can be detected within the French brown earth group; in the high-rainfall and somewhat cool conditions of northwestern France, carbonates and other minerals tend to be leached downward, producing a degraded brown earth soil of higher acidity and lesser fertility; locally this may approach the nature of the north European podzol."

    January 17, 2021

  • On a broad, general scale, virtually the whole of France can be classified in the zone of brown forest soils, or brown earths. These soils, which develop under deciduous forest cover in temperate climatic conditions, are of excellent agricultural value.

    January 17, 2021

  • A method of trolling, crapflooding is flooding a weblog's comment form with text consisting of repeated words and phrases.

    January 17, 2021

  • Do denizens of Tasmania have a moniker?

    December 29, 2020

  • flagstones (collectively)

    December 27, 2020

  • Antiquated term for a person native to the state of Victoria, Australia.

    In the same way, South Australians are croweaters, West Australians are sandgropers and Queenslanders are banana benders.

    What's with all the weird monikers?

    December 27, 2020

  • A word coined by someone I know who said there was a void for a word that labeled all the cemetery-related duties he had: grave digger, marketing and sales, administrative work, etc. I like the mouthfeel of his creation. Coining a word carries with it a certain degree of responsibility that I respect and admire. I've only coined one word with any lasting power (shoecabbage), so I enjoy the process and end result.

    December 11, 2020

  • Industrially, pine oil is used as a frother in mineral extraction from ores. For example, in copper extraction, pine oil is used to condition copper sulfide ores for froth flotation. Therefore, it is important in the industry for the froth flotation process. It has largely been replaced by synthetic alcohols and polyglycol ethers.

    December 5, 2020

  • The limited functional expression of olfactory receptors in heterologous systems, however, has greatly hampered attempts to deorphanize them (analyze the response profiles of single olfactory receptors).

    December 4, 2020

  • I detest blended words such as this.

    December 1, 2020

  • Canada Lynx, commonly termed the "peeshoo" by French colonists.

    November 28, 2020

  • See puet.

    November 28, 2020

  • noun (Zoöl.) The pewit.

    puet duet

    November 28, 2020

  • See wax-cluster.

    November 18, 2020

  • This term doesn't sound particularly seductive.

    November 17, 2020

  • Several strategies could improve the interview experiences of Black applicants. First, academic leaders must accept that inequitable treatment of Black applicants exists and will take time to correct. Second, everyone involved in the interview process from host institutions should be educated about microaggressions, stereotype threat, and other challenges and biases that disadvantage Black applicants. We recommend bystander and upstander training to prepare people to act when they witness discrimination, bias, or racism. Third, we favor careful and fair recruitment of diverse interviewers to create a welcoming environment. We also suggest incorporating work related to diversity and inclusion when describing the mission and values of the program or institution. On a wider scale, we recommend the creation of institutional databases — or, ideally, a national database — where applicants can report experiences of racism or bias while interviewing, which would be aggregated to protect their identity. Improving the experiences of Black applicants will be a first step toward increasing the diversity of programs and subsequently addressing the unmet needs of the diverse patient populations they serve.

    November 14, 2020

  • Finally, it is widely recognized that people tend to associate with and gravitate toward others who have backgrounds and interests that are similar to their own. This phenomenon, called homophily, drives much of Black applicants’ discomfort and isolation. The concept of homophily was popularized by Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton in 1954. Although the tendency to socialize with people like oneself creates opportunities for positive, lasting relationships, homophily can lead to applicants being excluded on the basis of differences.

    November 14, 2020

  • Tokenism entails making cursory strides toward diversity and inclusion. The recruitment of Black candidates merely to achieve a metric undermines the applicant’s academic value and dismisses the difficulty associated with navigating medicine as a member of an underrepresented minority group. Awareness of tokenism and of the ways in which it can lead to depression, burnout, attrition, and a minority tax — extra responsibility placed on underrepresented minorities with a goal of achieving diversity — is warranted as early as interview day. A clear demonstration of efforts to recruit, retain, support, and promote Black applicants better illustrates dedication to diversity in medicine.

    November 14, 2020

  • Another challenge facing Black interviewees is imposter syndrome. In 1978, Pauline Clance described imposter syndrome as an “internal experience of intellectual phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” Studies have revealed feelings of imposter syndrome in up to 82% of students, with minorities and women reporting such feelings at higher rates than White men. Imposter syndrome can cause qualified Black applicants to feel unqualified and isolated.

    November 14, 2020

  • Stereotype threat was defined by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson in 1995 as “being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group.” In landmark research, Steele and Aronson demonstrated that Black participants performed worse than White participants during a test when they believed that they were at risk for fulfilling stereotypes about Black people’s intellectual abilities. When that stereotype threat was removed, Black participants performed similarly to their White counterparts. Stereotype threat has been found to be present in medicine. In a 2020 study of medical students, 82% of Black respondents had high scores on a measure of vulnerability to stereotype threat, as compared with 4% of White respondents.2 When Black applicants see photographs of only non-Black graduates on the walls, they may perceive the threat of a negative stereotype, such as “Black people are not smart,” and perform worse than expected.

    November 14, 2020

  • Although there are many concerns that broadly affect Black people in medicine, such as institutional racism and inequality of educational opportunities, the experiences of Black interviewees in particular remain underaddressed. Being interviewed while Black involves a collision of microaggressions and feelings and experiences related to stereotype threat, tokenism, imposter syndrome, and homophily (see table). Many of these experiences are rooted in unconscious bias, whereas some can be born from overt racism. In turn, Black interviewees collect impressions that make them doubt that they will be welcomed and valued in medicine.

    https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2023999?query=race_and_medicine

    November 14, 2020

  • See buckle-beggar.

    November 14, 2020

  • See also hedge-parson.

    November 14, 2020

  • Both capitalized, just like First Lady is.

    November 13, 2020

  • A comment that could ONLY come from the brilliant and creative mind of you, bilby.

    October 30, 2020

  • Really? Has anyone ever heard of a wooden spooner?

    October 24, 2020

  • "Shortly afterwards, Anne was asked for her consent to an annulment, to which she agreed. Cromwell, the moving force behind the marriage, was attainted for treason. The marriage was annulled on 9 July 1540, on the grounds of non-consummation and her pre-contract to Francis of Lorraine. Henry VIII's physician stated that after the wedding night, Henry said he was not impotent because he experienced "duas pollutiones nocturnas in somno" (two nocturnal pollutions while in sleep; i.e., two wet dreams)."

    --Anne of Cleves, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Cleves

    October 18, 2020

  • To go back on one's words or actions in a cowardly or weaselly fashion.

    October 2, 2020

  • Promote a Dodgy Site Day!

    September 30, 2020

  • "Psychometric profiling is the process by which your actions are used to infer your personality. The technique was developed by academics and used by marketers and advertisers to assess the psychological characteristics of an individual or a group. These profiles give advertisers and political strategists insights into users' beliefs, behaviours and motivations. By appealing to these underlying traits on an individual or group level, psychometrically-informed advertisements have the potential to be more persuasive and are thus used to influence decisions like what to buy or how to vote."

    September 22, 2020

  • "The racehorse theory is the belief that some humans have a better genetic endowment than others, and by breeding two superior people you end up with superior offspring. The belief in eugenics, the pseudoscience of trimming out “inferior” bloodlines to increase the quality of the gene pool, is part of a long, racist history in America, from forced sterilizations to research funded by the Carnegie Institution, among other wealthy foundations. Earlier this month, charges surfaced that a doctor at an ICE facility was performing unwanted and likely unnecessary hysterectomies on detained immigrant women, which would prevent them from having more children."

    September 22, 2020

  • "It's called a “dog whistle,” a word or phrase in a speech that is unobjectionable on the surface but conveys a coded message to partisans, by analogy to high-pitched sounds that are audible to dogs but not to people. Richard Nixon leaned on it heavily during his 1968 presidential campaign, referencing “law and order” and a “war on drugs,” further codifying racial appeals from Barry Goldwater for “states’ rights” and “freedom of association.” Ronald Reagan took it to another level in 1976, demonizing a “welfare queen” who fraudulently collected $150,000 in government benefits, a barely concealed appeal to the race and class resentments of white voters toward Blacks.

    By that standard, President Trump’s riff about the “good genes” found among the people of Minnesota — an 80 percent white state — wasn’t a dog whistle. It was a train whistle, folding in Trump’s long-held belief that some people, himself especially, are simply born with superior traits to others."

    --Trump to nearly all-white crowd: 'You have good genes', Yahoo! News, https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/09/21/trump-to-nearly-all-white-crowd-you-have-good-genes/24626071/

    September 22, 2020

  • Do you have an example to share?

    September 22, 2020

  • Erin,

    What is the correct pronunciation for jabot? I've heard at least four different pronunciations. Which one should I believe? Maybe they are ALL correct. Maybe they are ALL wrong.

    Have you ever seen Ruth Bader Ginsburg's jabot collection? Fascinating!

    BTW, for those who don't subscribe to Erin's "Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things"... you're really missing out. I look forward to each installment!

    September 21, 2020

  • Republic, Missouri; Battlefield, Missouri; Bellflower, Missouri; Bland, Missouri; Clever, Missouri; Crane, Missouri; Fisk, Missouri; Foley, Missouri; Eminence, Missouri; Miller, Missouri; Miner, Missouri; Reeds, Missouri; Stover, Missouri.

    September 13, 2020

  • Fatty series? Seems rather harsh.

    September 8, 2020

  • In a vehicle: A reinforcing piece of wrought-iron used to connect a swingletree to a doubletree or a doubletree to the tongue.

    September 7, 2020

  • unrelated to gnat worship.

    August 31, 2020

  • Gosh!

    August 31, 2020

  • Wikipedia claims that the term was coined in 1977 for the song "Brick House" by Shirley Hanna-King, who took it from the older expression built like a brick shit house.

    August 30, 2020

  • "My nym is a nom-de-guerre not a pseudonym like some of the anonymous cowards around here." See nymshifter.

    August 28, 2020

  • She was a lump of a thing—what the sailors call a butter-box.

    August 28, 2020

  • A passion for building what?

    August 28, 2020

  • Again, no surprise.

    ‘disembosoming’ is no one's favorite word yet, has no comments yet, and is not a valid Scrabble word.

    August 28, 2020

  • pilgrim pouch

    August 28, 2020

  • Patients do not come to us (our medical malpractice law firm) because they want to bring a frivolous claim or “jackpot justice.” They come to us because they are in the most dire circumstances.

    August 27, 2020

  • Cool. Now I know what to call a cicada's exoskeleton. Cicada exuvia! (I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly.)

    August 24, 2020

  • ‘thallophori’ is no one's favorite word yet, has no comments yet, and is not a valid Scrabble word.

    So sad. That's why:

    I favorited thallophori and left this comment. Sorry, I can't do anything about thallophori's Scrabble validity.

    August 24, 2020

  • Hm. I guess it's perfectly possible to be unchaste and also lack voluntary control over one's excretory functions.

    August 24, 2020

  • A ceramic pharmacy or drug jar, generally majolica ware. They are usually tall rather than wide, and often of a waisted shape.

    August 18, 2020

  • Don't let that stop you, dear ru. Pun away! I see Twitter poster are busy in this regard, too.

    *my fursona is a giant panda (said by an icon of an animal with fur)

    August 14, 2020

  • “Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry”, wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, in March 2004. In the same year, Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, lambasted the industry for becoming “primarily a marketing machine” and co-opting “every institution that might stand in its way”. Medical journals were conspicuously absent from her list of co-opted institutions, but she and Horton are not the only editors who have become increasingly queasy about the power and influence of the industry.

    August 7, 2020

  • Mugabe's parents belonged to the Zezuru clan, one of the smallest branches of the Shona tribe.

    August 5, 2020

  • Through his father, Mugabe claimed membership of the chieftaincy family that has provided the hereditary rulers of Zvimba for generations.

    August 5, 2020

  • noun An upstart; a man newly risen into notice.

    A man, huh. Really? How old is this definition?

    August 5, 2020

  • A box on the ear? What kind of box.. a cereal box, a cake mix?

    August 4, 2020

  • Thanks for this clarification, bilby. "Humans essen and animals fressen." Easy and worth remembering!

    August 4, 2020

  • To gobble up food; to gorge oneself. "To eat quickly or noisily, like an animal".

    August 3, 2020

  • The stench or high flavor (?) of game meat. Hm.

    August 3, 2020

  • My favorite word for today.

    August 2, 2020

  • It also awarded $354 million to Phlow Corp. in May to start producing active pharmaceutical ingredients, or API, among other chemical ingredients, used in certain essential medications. A spokesperson for Phlow said the company can’t disclose the list of drugs, but it includes treatments for pain and blood pressure that can be used by hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The total contract is worth up to $812 million. Phlow cites a shift toward producing API in China and India as the rationale behind its business model.

    July 30, 2020

  • Ironically (or not), with the rising militancy of suffragists, skirts began to narrow until they became the barreled, banded style known as the hobble skirt or "the speed-limit skirt."

    July 30, 2020

  • Discovered in 1957 by a Swiss pharmaceutical firm, isotonitazene is an analogue of its banned parent compound, etonitazene, which was discovered in 1956 and is itself 60 times more potent than morphine.

    “Isotonitazene is the most persistent and prevalent new opioid in the U.S.,” said Logan, adding that he is now seeing 40 to 50 isotonitazene-related deaths per month in the U.S. compared to about six per month last summer (2019).


    Isotonitazene is legal to export from China and is not specifically banned in the U.S., Europe or China. America’s Analog Act would cover it as a derivative of a banned substance, but no case has come to court yet. It could take years before it is scheduled in the U.S. and internationally.

    Chemists in Shanghai and other major manufacturing centers are still out-inventing lawmakers the world over, quickly synthesizing new, legal variants of recently banned drugs. Isotonitazene and several variants of it are now being sold online, legally by Chinese suppliers offering bulk deals.

    July 30, 2020

  • "Previously, isotonitazene was a niche drug used by internet drug geeks, or psychonauts, Logan said. But he now, as happened with fentanyl, there are bags of heroin on sale on the streets in the U.S. with mixtures containing isotonitazene, with users having no idea what they are buying."

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxebjb/40-americans-are-dying-every-month-from-taking-this-new-legal-opioid

    July 30, 2020

  • I believe that this is a common MISSPELLING for spinal cord but no way is it a legitimate, alternative spelling.

    July 23, 2020

  • What's wrong with long-legged petrel? Stilts are artificial legs, are they not?

    noun stilt-bird. In ornithology, any bird of the genus Himantopus: so called from the extremely long, slender legs.

    July 18, 2020

  • Now I know what a zeme meme is, I guess.

    July 18, 2020

  • A fear of symbols is concise and seems to make sense, but the definition provided adds different layers of meaning that appear made-up.

    July 18, 2020

  • There are other examples of vowelless sentences in Czech and Slovak, such as prd krt skrz drn, zprv zhlt hrst zrn, meaning "a mole farted through grass, having swallowed a handful of grains"

    July 18, 2020

  • So, every -ist is an addict? How exactly does an addiction to vowels manifest itself? Do vowelists insist on buying game-show vowels even when a vowel is not needed to identify a word or phrase? Do vowelists suffer mercilessly when encountering languages such as Czech?

    Strč prst skrz krk

    --a Czech and Slovak tongue-twister meaning "stick a finger through the throat".

    July 18, 2020

  • A sucker surrounding the genital opening...

    Not sure why this particular detail describes this worm, unless it helps to distinguish one trematode worm from another.

    July 18, 2020

  • To make a trope of.

    July 8, 2020

  • mummichog

    July 8, 2020

  • There were galleys and caravels, barques and feluccas, pinnaces and caraccas.

    July 3, 2020

  • What? Not an earful of bilbies? (BTW, my spell-check keeps trying to change bilbies to bibles.)

    July 3, 2020

  • A pathocracy is a social movement, society, nation, or empire wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people.

    June 30, 2020

  • Political ponerology (originating from the Greek word for evil, poneros) is a science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes which ultimately on a larger scale results in a pathocracy.

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/55641292@N03/5482658316

    June 30, 2020

  • See ponerology

    • noun In theology, the doctrine of wickedness.

    June 30, 2020

  • Cross-cutting relationships is a principle of geology that states that the geologic feature which cuts another is the younger of the two features. It is a relative dating technique in geology. It was first developed by Danish geological pioneer Nicholas Steno in Dissertationis prodromus (1669) and later formulated by James Hutton in Theory of the Earth (1795) and embellished upon by Charles Lyell in Principles of Geology (1830).

    June 29, 2020

  • The principle of faunal succession, also known as the law of faunal succession, is based on the observation that sedimentary rock strata contain fossilized flora and fauna, and that these fossils succeed each other vertically in a specific, reliable order that can be identified over wide horizontal distances. A fossilized Neanderthal bone will never be found in the same stratum as a fossilized Megalosaurus, for example, because neanderthals and megalosaurs lived during different geological periods, separated by many millions of years. This allows for strata to be identified and dated by the fossils found within.

    June 29, 2020

  • The principle of lateral continuity states that layers of sediment initially extend laterally in all directions; in other words, they are laterally continuous. As a result, rocks that are otherwise similar, but are now separated by a valley or other erosional feature, can be assumed to be originally continuous.

    June 29, 2020

  • The Principle of Original Horizontality states that layers of sediment are originally deposited horizontally under the action of gravity.1 It is a relative dating technique. The principle is important to the analysis of folded and tilted strata. It was first proposed by the Danish geological pioneer Nicholas Steno (1638–1686).

    June 29, 2020

  • The law of superposition is an axiom that forms one of the bases of the sciences of geology, archaeology, and other fields dealing with geological stratigraphy. It is a form of relative dating. In its plainest form, it states that in undeformed stratigraphic sequences, the oldest strata will be at the bottom of the sequence. This is important to stratigraphic dating, which assumes that the law of superposition holds true and that an object cannot be older than the materials of which it is composed.

    June 29, 2020

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

    June 29, 2020

  • See also prairie remnant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_remnant

    Land that has never been plowed and remains undisturbed by agricultural and urban/suburban development.

    June 29, 2020

  • thaumaturgy

    June 29, 2020

  • nut-culture; a branch of pomology.

    June 26, 2020

  • demonymic: bearing a name derived from the deme, or township, to which one (who was an inhabitant of ancient Attica) belonged.

    June 23, 2020

  • “Take the red pill.” The term is popular in internet communities such as the alt-right and the manosphere, and refers to the scene in the film The Matrix in which the protagonist, Neo, is offered the choice between a blue pill that will allow him to remain safely deluded, or a red pill, which will allow him to discover the underlying truth about reality. The phrase has come to mean rejecting widely accepted truths — particularly those that relate to equality between races, genders and social groups — and choosing an alternative narrative about society. Such narratives lean, in many cases, towards racism, misogyny and other highly controversial beliefs. While this is not true of every single person who would consider themselves “redpilled”, the members of pretty much every alt-right group you might have heard of – incels, neo-Nazis, eco-fascists – will often consider themselves to have awakened in this way to their fringe theories and socially unacceptable beliefs.

    June 23, 2020

  • How do the Jans, Chads, Janets, and Sharons of the world feel about the memeification of their names? While their experiences are obviously in no way comparable to people who face real-world, racially-motivated name discrimination, it is potentially frustrating to have a name that is part of pop culture. Just ask Harry Potter.

    June 23, 2020

  • These words don't actually describe women; they label women. Words used to describe women could be: intelligent, tall, brave, adventurous, funny; meddlesome, annoying, attractive, unattractive...

    *climbing off my soap-box now.

    June 18, 2020

  • A variation of bilby-ian theory. Not sure about spelling. bilbian? bilbyian?

    June 18, 2020

  • Nice alliteration!

    June 18, 2020

  • Beats decreased glaciation, I guess.

    June 17, 2020

  • Meaning what? Is it a disparaging term? My first thought was a weed, but then, I just got through pulling a bunch from my garden.

    June 17, 2020

  • Hey, we got a visual below. This must be the wordnik factor!!

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/9361468@N05/1338213272

    June 17, 2020

  • Thanks, Alex. I was hoping for more intrigue than this. The explanation ended up sounding as boring at its newfound meaning.

    What do you suppose the definition is for the wordnik factor? :)

    June 17, 2020

  • reverse dictionary: hong.

    Still not helping to explain foreign factor. You are such a tease, wordnik.

    June 16, 2020

  • OK, wordnik. You randomly selected this term for me. Explain it. What is the foreign factor?

    June 16, 2020

  • A real event, apparently.

    June 16, 2020

  • "Luce's climbing style was dynamic and determined and she seemed to thrive in the modern style of competition bouldering. Athletes and coaches sharing tributes online are recalling the energy that she brought to competitions with her ever-smiling presence.

    Luce began climbing from a young age with her father on crags in the Chartreuse Massif near her home. In May, Luce ticked her first 8b+ on rock at a local crag, just weeks after French lockdown ended."

    June 16, 2020

  • So much gloom and doomage...

    June 16, 2020

  • Everyone needs a bolthole.

    May 29, 2020

  • Many badger species are very social creatures and live in groups called a cete or clan. A clan shares territory and setts. Setts can be centuries old and are used by many generations of badgers. One sett can be 22 to 109 yards (20 to 100 meters) or more long.

    May 29, 2020

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

    Honey badgers became popular due to a YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg)  with a humorous voiceover. Honey badgers are known for their ferocity. Some fun facts about honey badgers:

    * They are called ratels because of the rattling sound they make when they are being attacked.

    * They have a resistance to snake venom.

    * When attacking beehives, they release a fume that spreads throughout the hive.

    * When attacking large animals, such as lions, they go for the scrotum.

    May 29, 2020

  • This visual makes more sense than the actual definition:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/148501304@N06/49855658911

    May 27, 2020

  • Interesting history regarding this insect's name.

    May 18, 2020

  • From Twitter:

    A rare representation of an Ogbanje and mami-water spirit messenger communicating in encrypted language..

    Yep. Water spirits communicate in encrypted language. Good to know.

    May 18, 2020

  • Found this:

    Any substance added to the soil with the view of rendering it more fertile; specifically, and as used in leases and other contracts relating to real property, the excrementitious product of livestock, with refuse litter, accumulated, and used for enriching the land.

    May 18, 2020

  • I thought manure consists of feces. How can hair, lime and oil be classified as manure?

    Never heard of the word POAK.

    May 18, 2020

  • That's what you get for giving us a swift kick when we don't uncoil your Dorito's fast enough.

    April 30, 2020

  • What pajamas? --frogapplause

    April 30, 2020

  • A diegetic sound is any sound that originates from the world of a production. A very simple way to think about diegetic sounds is to think of them as anything that’s real, or anything that could make sound in the world of a film. The sound doesn't have to be featured on-screen.

    In fact, many diegetic sounds are not shown on-screen. Say there’s an emergency and an ambulance is called. The corresponding siren sound would be diegetic, even if it’s not shown on screen. This is because it’s a natural sound of the film world.

    Examples of Diegetic Sounds

    *Dialogue between characters

    *Music played within the world. Piano playing at a restaurant, music in an elevator, a street performer banging drums.

    *Sound effects such as: explosions, rain drops on a stormy night, wind whirring through a turbine, and many, many more.

    https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-diegetic-sound/

    April 25, 2020

  • nonbilby... that which is not a bilby.

    non + bilby
    The possibilities are endless! 

    April 25, 2020

  • Who knew?

    April 11, 2020

  • Why not call it a stocky lemur?

    April 10, 2020

  • I'm not sure she I want to know what a butt woman is.

    April 10, 2020

  • A paroled man, huh? So, is this a one-size-fits-both-genders type word?

    April 10, 2020

  • According to a 2018 survey by the United States Department of Agriculture, 11.1 percent of American households could be described as “food insecure.”

    April 8, 2020

  • I misread it as fishdancing.

    April 2, 2020

  • See oxland, oxgang.

    March 27, 2020

  • See oxland, oxgate.

    March 27, 2020

  • Seriously?

    March 27, 2020

  • Don't you mean remote computer fraud/scam/control/hijacking/stealing? Shame on you and scum like you.

    March 27, 2020

  • True or False... the CDC recommends that instead of shaking hands, people touch elbows.

    March 27, 2020

  • M-m-m-my Coronavirus

    March 25, 2020

  • I read that coins pose a greater threat to virus transmission than paper money.

    March 20, 2020

  • This is listed under Fun Words?

    March 17, 2020

  • The janitor's hat?

    March 17, 2020

  • I like this statement:

    "Kerr was well known for panning musicals that were musically ambitious."

    March 11, 2020

  • The military has a long history of discriminating against servicemembers who either were or were perceived to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer (LGBTQ). That history of discrimination included the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy in place from 1994 to 2011, as well as predecessor policies that were even more harsh, and extends to the current ban on service by openly transgender individuals. Under DADT and prior policies, between the end of World War II and the repeal of DADT, over 100,000 servicemembers were discharged with bad paper discharge because of their actual or perceived LGBTQ status. In addition, thousands of LGBTQ servicemembers were discharged with bad paper for behaviors—interpreted as inexcusable misconduct—that stemmed from the trauma of having to conceal their sexual or gender identity or were discharged for pretextual reasons, such as minor misconduct, when the true cause was discrimination against them due to their LGBTQ status.16 The nation’s history of discrimination against LGBTQ servicemembers is therefore another cause of bad paper discharges that is perpetuated when these veterans are turned away from VA without being allowed to apply.

    March 10, 2020

  • PTSD and TBI Traumatic Brain Injury are considered the signature wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and both conditions can significantly impair a person’s ability to conform their behavior to the military’s standards. In particular, the symptoms of PTSD can lead to behaviors that are misinterpreted by military commanders, which in turn can lead to a bad paper discharge.

    http://www.legalservicescenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Turn-Away-Report.pdf

    March 10, 2020

  • Others may have been discharged with bad paper based on discriminatory policies, such as the now-repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy.

    March 10, 2020

  • Military Sexual Trauma

    March 10, 2020

  • Every servicemember is assigned a “character of service” or “discharge status” upon leaving military service. While most servicemembers receive Honorable discharge statuses, a substantial percentage—approximately 7 percent of (American) veterans discharged since 1980—receive discharge statuses that are not Honorable, which are known as “bad paper.” Servicemembers usually get “bad paper” because of some alleged misconduct, though that misconduct frequently is minor, for a military-only offense, or not proved in any court. Studies also show that many servicemembers are separated with bad paper for misconduct related to a service-related mental or physical health condition or Military Sexual Trauma (MST).

    March 10, 2020

  • Former military servicemembers with “bad paper” — an Other Than Honorable, Bad Conduct, or Dishonorable discharge...

    (Dear VA: Stop kicking veterans with PTSD out of your hospitals)

    https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/486640-dear-va-stop-kicking-veterans-with-ptsd-out-of-your-hospitals

    March 10, 2020

  • What are super-spreaders?

    Not everybody is equal when it comes to the transmission of infectious diseases. In fact, it has been established for at least two decades that there is something called the 20/80 rule – that a small core group of about one in five people transmit infections to far more people than the majority do.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/27/what-are-super-spreaders-and-how-are-they-transmitting-coronavirus

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/11/what-is-a-coronavirus-covid-19-super-spreader-infections-explained.html

    March 8, 2020

  • Coronavirus is more of an infodemic than an epidemic.

    March 8, 2020

  • On 2 February, the WHO declared there was a "massive infodemic" accompanying the outbreak and response, citing an over-abundance of reported information, accurate and false, about the virus that "makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it."

    March 8, 2020

  • Elephants doing somebody job, eh? What kind of job?

    March 6, 2020

  • About Hawaiian diacritical marks. https://www.hawaii.edu/site/info/diacritics.php

    The Hawaiian language uses two diacritical markings. The ‘okina is a glottal stop, similar to the sound between the syllables of "oh-oh." In print, the correct mark for designating an ‘okina is the single open quote mark. The kahako is a macron, which lengthens and adds stress to the marked vowel. For example 'pau,' depending on placement of ‘okina and kahako, can mean completed, smudge, moist or skirt.

    The State of Hawai‘i and University of Hawai‘i strongly encourage use of Hawaiian diacritical markings.

    March 2, 2020

  • "In many Polynesian cultures, it is believed that a person's errors (called hara or hala) caused illness. Some believe error angers the gods, others that it attracts malevolent gods, and still others believe the guilt caused by error made one sick. In most cases, however, specific 'untie-error' rites could be performed to atone for such errors and thereby diminish one's accumulation of them.

    Among the islands of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, people believe that illness usually is caused by sexual misconduct or anger. "If you are angry for two or three days, sickness will come," said one local man. The therapy that counters this sickness is confession. The patient, or a family member, may confess. If no one confesses an error, the patient may die. The Vanuatu people believe that secrecy is what gives power to the illness. When the error is confessed, it no longer has power over the person.

    Like many other islanders, including Hawaiians, people of Tikopia in the Solomon Islands, and on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, believe that the sins of the father will fall upon the children. If a child is sick, the parents are suspected of quarreling or misconduct. In addition to sickness, social disorder could cause sterility of land or other disasters. Harmony could be restored only by confession and apology.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoʻoponopono (grave accent mark messes up link; must copy and paste. In Hawaiian, the grave accent is not placed over another character but is sometimes encountered as a typographically easier substitute for the ʻokinaHawai`i instead of Hawaiʻi.).

    March 2, 2020

  • See hooponopono.

    March 2, 2020

  • Nebraska's tag line. https://www.omaha.com/news/state_and_regional/nebraska-s-new-tourism-pitch-honestly-it-s-not-for/article_4e7a5320-fe58-544a-b8ac-078e075fb3f8.html

    Another ad, which was popular with focus groups in Minneapolis, Kansas City and Denver, was titled “Festivals for everything from mud to testicles.” The latter refers to a Father’s Day weekend Testicle Festival, at the Round the Bend Steakhouse east of Ashland, that features deep-fried sheep and beef testicles.

    February 23, 2020

  • So, slim and plim isn't so good, I guess.

    February 16, 2020

  • We call these snow devils; they are pretty much the opposite of a dust devil.

    February 16, 2020

  • And yo' Momma was a celery-looper, too.

    February 16, 2020

  • This is probably what I'd call green onions. Some people call them, irk, scallions.

    February 16, 2020

  • Sounds like a good insult.

    February 16, 2020

  • See pintle.

    February 3, 2020

  • "Equilibristics is a blanket term for a number of circus skills which involve balancing or maintaining equilibrium. The term applies equally to acts in which the performer balances on a prop, and acts in which the performer balances or spins a prop. Many different tricks and stunts fit into this category. Some well-known examples of equilibristics include juggling, baton twirling, unicycle riding, stilt walking, tightrope walking, the manipulation of devil sticks, plate spinning, and some acrobatics. Couch juggling is a stunt in which one lies on one's back, balancing an upended sofa on the soles of one's feet. The couch is flipped end-for-end and caught at the other end, beginning a spin which is maintained by deft movements of the feet. This stunt can also be performed with a canoe, or any other large and unwieldy object. It can even be performed as a gymnastic stunt, using a human gymnast as the juggled object. Technically, balancing a cane on the tip of a finger is an equilibristic stunt, but generally equilibristics is more flashy."

    February 2, 2020

  • "During times of rapid change, there is always a lag between events and our perception and understanding of those events. “Thought” is past tense. Reflection is always after the fact. Someone once said that “time makes hypocrites of us all”, but what that really means is that there is a dissonance between change and the adequacy of our responses to that change. We are already living in the future, but our thinking is still in the past, so that we live divided between the past and the future."

    --https://longsworde.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/horseless-carriage-syndrome/

    February 2, 2020

  • Thanks for liking my shitty anagram poem!

    My two-word poem also works on another list of mine (created by my former user identity, frogapplause).

    https://www.wordnik.com/lists/two-word-poems

    February 1, 2020

  • I'm having fun adding to this list. One entry, however, might be misconstrued:

    this shit

    January 25, 2020

  • Clinodactyly is an autosomal dominant trait that has variable expressiveness and incomplete penetrance


    *(the frequency, under given environmental conditions, with which a specific phenotype is expressed by those individuals with a specific genotype.)

    January 23, 2020

  • Some phenotypes (characteristics) of people who have Russell–Silver syndrome are inadequate catch-up growth in the first two years, body asymmetry, lack of appetite, low-set posteriorly rotated ears, clinodactyly* (inward curving) of the 5th finger, webbed toes, non-descended testicles, weak muscle tone, delayed bone age, downturned corners of mouth and thin upper lip, hypospadias, high-pitched voice, small chin, delayed closure of the fontanel, hypoglycemia, and a bossed forehead.


    *spelling (copied from source) corrected. Thanks!

    January 18, 2020

  • A shuriken. A throwing star.

    January 16, 2020

  • The omoluwabi is a philosophical and cultural concept that's native to the Yoruba people. It's used to describe a person of good character. The omoluabi concept signifies courage, hard work, humility and respect. An omoluabi is a person of honor who believes in hard work, respects the rights of others, and gives to the community in deeds and in action. Above all, an omoluwabi is a person of integrity.

    The Omoluwabi concept is an adjectival Yoruba phrase, which has the words - "Omo + ti + Olu-iwa + bi" as its components. Literally translated and taken separately, omo means 'child', ti means 'that or which', Olu-iwa means the chief or master of Iwa (character), bi means 'born'. When combined, omoluabi translates as "the baby begotten by the chief of iwa". Such a child is thought of as a paragon of excellence in character.

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

    January 16, 2020



  • January 16, 2020

  • The act of plowing.

    January 14, 2020

  • What kind of springs? Bedsprings?

    January 14, 2020

  • More than 1 in 5 wealthy people pay an extra fee for direct access to their doctor, according to a new poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. For low and middle income people, the rates are less than half that.

    https://tinyurl.com/wwghlyn

    January 14, 2020

  • So, a bilby with coenestopathy is perhaps unaware that he has big ears.

    January 14, 2020

  • This term seems rather harsh and belittling (no pun intended.)

    January 11, 2020

  • Another fun and creative list by yarb.

    January 7, 2020

  • Not to be confused with a puddler, cuddler, fuddler or huddler.

    December 31, 2019

  • The Houdini Deluxe Mojito Muddler:

    https://tinyurl.com/whz7y9q

    Also, get your muddler away from my double jigger!

    https://tinyurl.com/rg5ktyc

    December 28, 2019

  • also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality and environmental value.

    December 23, 2019

  • aka urinal cake-urchin

    December 23, 2019

  • A severe beating with hazel rods? What's a severe beating with bilby ears and feet?

    December 23, 2019

  • I've never heard of a muddler. I suppose it could be used interchangeably with potato masher.

    December 23, 2019

  • My new favorite word, birdwise.

    December 19, 2019

  • I'm looking for a used rickshaw to add luxury to my life and to boost my bidness. Please help me most promptly.

    December 17, 2019

  • The newspaper report of 1 September featured in the comments suggests that Annie Anderson may have been involved in prostitution. This is made more explicit in a report of a later arrest in the Shields Daily Gazette for 21 July 1904, 'disorderly house' being a euphemism for brothel.

    "At North Shields Annie Anderson (34) was charged with keeping a disorderly house in Liddell Street on July 1st. Sergt. G. Scougal proved the case. Chief Constable Huish said that the prisoner was convicted for a similar offence on March 28th of this year, and committed for one month. Immediately she came out of prison she went back to the room and continued to carry on the house in the same manner as before. The complaints received by the police about it were serious. Defendant, who pleaded not guilty, was committed for three months with hard labour".

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/29295370@N07/6628772201

    December 17, 2019

  • So you're a medieval landlord, collecting property rent from your peasants in eels. How do you measure them?

    Eels were usually counted in units called sticks (25 eels) -- likely from the number of eels you can smoke on a stick at one time. 10 sticks of eels was called a bind.

    --https://twitter.com/greenleejw

    December 13, 2019

  • ‘clickership’ is no one's favorite word yet, has no comments yet, and is not a valid Scrabble word.

    Ah, what a sad and lonely word!

    December 2, 2019

  • The killer was Colonel Mustard in the scriptorium!

    December 2, 2019

  • The plot thickens...

    necker's knob: A knob attached to the steering wheel of an automobile, especially before the widespread availability of power steering, helping the driver steer with one arm and leaving the other arm free to provide romantic attention to a companion.

    November 25, 2019

  • The plot thickens... "leaving the other arm free to provide romantic attention to a companion."

    A knob attached to the steering wheel of an automobile, especially before the widespread availability of power steering, helping the driver steer with one arm and leaving the other arm free to provide romantic attention to a companion.

    See Brodie knob.

    November 25, 2019

  • A few examples here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodie_knob

    I remember seeing this thingamajig but I never knew it had a name.

    November 21, 2019

  • The opihi, or Cellana exarata, is an edible shellfish of the limpet species of molluscs. There are 3 types in Hawaii. The opihi alinalina or yellowfoot is one. The opihi makaiauli or blackfoot is the second. And the opihi ko`ele or giant opihi is the third. Most say they prefer the taste of the opihi alinalina or yellowfoot.

    According to local researchers, the opihis are probably the most expensive seafood in Hawaii. In terms of cost of the delicacy (including the shell), one can value it in the range of $150 a gallon. A long time ago, pickers were selling over 140,000 pounds annually. Today, there are only 13,000 pounds harvested annually. This due to diminished stock and over harvesting. Despite this, demand for opihis remains very high.

    November 17, 2019

  • See also marionette.

    November 17, 2019

  • In Eastern Christianity, a passion bearer (Russian: страстотéрпец, tr. strastoterpets, IPA: strəstɐˈtʲɛrpʲɪts) is one of the various customary titles for saints used in commemoration at divine services when honouring their feast on the Church Calendar; it is not generally used in the Latin Church.

    The term can be defined as a person who faces his or her death in a Christ-like manner. Unlike martyrs, passion bearers are not explicitly killed for their faith.

    Notable passion bearers include the brothers Boris and Gleb, Alexander Schmorell (member of the White Rose resistance movement), and the entire Imperial Family of Russia, executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

    November 17, 2019

  • noun An airtight full-body suit intended to protect wearer from biologically hazardous persons, serums, materials, or lifeforms.

    What's an example of a hazardous lifeform? An alien from Mars maybe?

    November 12, 2019

  • Really?

    November 11, 2019

  • BIG from “Biological Isolation Garment” + suit.

    November 11, 2019

  • How can a value change because of its locality?

    November 11, 2019

  • Misread puddling-furnace. Thought I saw pudding-furnace. Like pudding-furnace better.

    November 11, 2019

  • I'm afraid to find out what a donkey-boiler is.

    November 11, 2019

  • A podium sweep is when one team wins all available medals in a single event in a sporting event.

    November 5, 2019

  • Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression "stay woke", whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.

    November 2, 2019

  • This term describes a form of boycott in which someone (usually a celebrity) who has shared a questionable or unpopular opinion, or has had behavior that is perceived to be either offensive or problematic called out on social media is "canceled"; they are completely boycotted by many of their followers or supporters, often leading to massive declines in celebrities' (almost always social media personalities) careers and fanbase.

    November 2, 2019

  • Call-out culture (also known as outrage culture) is a form of public shaming that aims to hold individuals and groups accountable for their actions by calling attention to behavior that is perceived to be problematic, usually on social media. A variant of the term, cancel culture, describes a form of boycott in which someone (usually a celebrity) who has shared a questionable or unpopular opinion, or has had behavior that is perceived to be either offensive or problematic called out on social media is "canceled"; they are completely boycotted by many of their followers or supporters, often leading to massive declines in celebrities' (almost always social media personalities) careers and fanbase.

    November 2, 2019

  • Fox, Paramount, Avon, Alameda, Plaza, Majestic, Repertory, Regent, Imperial, Jewelbox, Mayfair, Garden, Savoy, ShowRoom, Apollo, Beach, Capitol, Colonial, Hollywood, Embassy, Empress, Exposition, Globe, Palace, Park, Roxy, Century, Victory, Alpha, Union, Bourbon, Glacier, Memorial, Prism, Auburn, Village, Frontier, Moonlight, Crescent, Stadium, Ruby, Spectrum, Sunland, Ritz, Crestview, Arcade, Boulevard, Old Mill, Colony, Rainbow, Classic, Cascade, Thunderbird, Westgate, Starlite, Suburban, Venture, Liberty, Sunset, International, Gateway, Clover Leaf, Bengal, Philmore, Uptown, State, Dixie, Rivoli, Casino, Vogue, Cottage, Radio City, Folly, Star, Fremont, Renaissance, Midway, Heritage, Capri, Carousel, Tower, Medallion, Varsity, King, Holiday, Jubilee, Studio...

    November 1, 2019

  • strangling, smothering...

    October 30, 2019

  • I like the three Ls: wallless, cowbellless...

    October 28, 2019

  • Steal This Book is a book written by Abbie Hoffman. Written in 1970 and published in 1971, the book exemplified the counterculture of the sixties. The book sold more than a quarter of a million copies between April and November 1971.

    The book is, in the style of the counterculture, mainly focused on ways to fight the government, and against corporations in any way possible. The book is written in the form of a guide to the youth. Hoffman, a political and social activist himself, used many of his own activities as the inspiration for some of his advice in Steal This Book.

    October 28, 2019

  • Culture jamming (sometimes guerrilla communication) is a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It attempts to "expose the methods of domination" of a mass society to foster progressive change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_jamming

    October 28, 2019

  • Timber mafia refers to organized crime in the field of illegal logging in timber. Not to be confused with lumber cartel.

    October 28, 2019

  • Anonymous Christian is the controversial notion introduced by the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner (1904–1984) that declares that people who have never heard the Christian Gospel might be saved through Christ. Non-Christians could have "in their basic orientation and fundamental decision," Rahner wrote, "accepted the salvific grace of God, through Christ, although they may never have heard of the Christian revelation.

    October 28, 2019

  • Black dog syndrome or big black dog syndrome is a phenomenon in which black dogs are passed over for adoption in favor of lighter-colored animals. Animal shelters often use the term BBD, or big black dog, to describe the type of larger dark-colored mixed-breed said to be typically passed over by adopters. Black cats suffer the same problem in shelters, being passed over for adoption in favor of other coat colors.

    October 28, 2019

  • A titman in the 19th century could mean a small or stunted person, as Henry David Thoreau indicates when he calls his generation “a race of tit-men.”

    October 28, 2019

  • double obelus rolls off the tongue much nicer than double dagger.

    October 27, 2019

  • Wow. eeeee.

    October 24, 2019

  • My new favorite word.

    October 23, 2019

  • Example: nasutus: One of a caste of termites in which the head is prolonged into a point like a long nose. A duct opens at the extremity of the point and from it issues a fluid used as a cement in. constructing the nest.

    October 16, 2019

  • In entomology, any one of the distinct forms found among the polymorphic social insects, especially the true ants and the white ants or termites.

    October 16, 2019

  • Smith Volcano, also known as Mount Babuyan, is a cinder cone on Babuyan Island, the northernmost of the Babuyan group of islands on Luzon Strait, north of the main island of Luzon in the Philippines. The mountain is one of the active volcanoes in the Philippines, which last erupted in 1924.

    October 16, 2019

  • A 1940 United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.

    October 16, 2019

  • A new term for me. Some sample sentences:

    Nike's Air Max line of running shoes is a prime example in which a single model of a shoe is often produced for years, but the color and material combination ( " colorway " ) is changed every few months, or different colorways are offered in different markets.

    Yarn with multiple shades of the same hue are called " omber ", while a yarn with multiple hues may be known as a given " colorway "  a green, red and yellow yarn might be dubbed the " Parrot Colorway " by its manufacturer, for example . " Heathered " yarns contain small amounts of fiber of different colors, while " tweed " yarns may have greater amounts of different colored fibers.

    The firm made wallpaper by block printing, where blocks of wood are carved and printed for each colorway of a design, and fabrics were produced using the indigo-discharge dyeing method, where cloth is stained a deep indigo, then designs are bleached out so that they can be dyed other colors.

    October 16, 2019

  • Anti-circumcision activists.

    October 12, 2019

  • But I want to pay the registration fee! I demand the opportunity to pay the registration fee in order to be initiated into the Illuminati ScamHood. Why are you depriving me of this great opportunity, wesleybrandon? I have money to burn and a hole in my pocket.

    I am not interested in owning a Lamborghini, though. I'd love an adult tricycle instead (yellow and with a basket.)

    TESTIMONY! TESTIMONY!! TESTIMONY!!!

    October 11, 2019

  • Often sold in small country stores run by Amish or Mennonite communities.

    October 9, 2019

  • yokefellow, yokemate, yoke bone, yoke elm, yoke-footed, yokelry, yoke riveter.

    October 6, 2019

  • See raincoater.

    October 6, 2019

  • noun A hatters' brushing-pad.

    October 5, 2019

  • Coordinated inauthentic behavior is a Facebook cybersecurity term defined as “when groups of pages or people work together to mislead others about who they are or what they’re doing.”

    Accounts with CIB were based on their behavior and not the content posted. Activity was coordinated and used fake accounts to misrepresent. For example, accounts from China were removed for what was described as a "disinformation campaign against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong."

    October 5, 2019

  • See survivorship bias.

    September 29, 2019

  • The logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and then overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias.

    September 29, 2019

  • It seems me more handy than others, too -- except when it not handy, in such cases it less or not more handy.

    September 29, 2019

  • Refers to the film industry of the state of Assam in India. The industry was born in 1935 when Jyoti Prasad Agarwala released his movie "Joymoti".

    September 29, 2019

  • Refers to the Malayalam film industry based in the state of Kerala, India.

    September 29, 2019

  • Refers to the Nepali film industry based in Kathmandu, Nepal.

    September 29, 2019

  • Refers to the film industry of Sri Lanka.

    September 29, 2019

  • refers to the Bangladeshi film industry (based in the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh.) See also Dhallywood.

    September 29, 2019

  • Refers to the Bangladeshi film industry (based in the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh.) See also Dhaliwood.

    September 29, 2019

  • More specifically refers to the Punjabi films of Pakistan based in Lahore, Pakistan.

    September 29, 2019

  • 1. The cinema of Punjab, India.

    2. The Pashto language movie industry in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

    September 29, 2019

  • Wellywood is an informal name for the city of Wellington, New Zealand. The name—a conflation of Wellington and Hollywood—is a reference to the film production business established in the city.

    September 29, 2019

  • The snares collected by the anti-poaching units of (PaintedDog.org) who turn them into animal sculptures. Through sales of these snares and other crafts they spread the conversation message of the painted dogs both to their own community and internationally.

    September 11, 2019

  • Combining the definitions above: A poor person that poops.

    September 10, 2019

  • Scheele's Green was used as a color for paper, e.g. for wallpapers and paper hangings, and in paints, wax candles, and even on some children's toys. It was also used to dye cotton and linen. 

    Despite evidence of its high toxicity, Scheele's Green was also used as a food dye for sweets such as green blancmange, a fondness of traders in 19th-century Greenock; this led to a long-standing Scottish prejudice against green sweets.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheele%27s_Green

    September 10, 2019

  • "The Poison Dress", or "Embalmed Alive" features a dress that has in some way been poisoned.

    Also contributing to the poison-dress theme is the prevalence of smallpox-contaminated blankets, which were given to native Americans.

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

    September 7, 2019

  • "Harm reduction refers to policies, programmes and practices that aim to minimise negative health, social and legal impacts associated with drug use, drug policies and drug laws. Harm reduction is grounded in justice and human rights - it focuses on positive change and on working with people without judgement, coercion, discrimination, or requiring that they stop using drugs as a precondition of support.

    Harm reduction encompasses a range of health and social services and practices that apply to illicit and licit drugs. These include, but are not limited to, drug consumption rooms, needle and syringe programmes, non-abstinence-based housing and employment initiatives, drug checking, overdose prevention and reversal, psychosocial support, and the provision of information on safer drug use. Approaches such as these are cost-effective, evidence-based and have a positive impact on individual and community health."

    https://www.hri.global/what-is-harm-reduction

    September 2, 2019

  • NIce! Thanks.

    August 29, 2019

  • I thought it might be jealousy (green-eyed monster) with a hint of cruelty added.

    August 28, 2019

  • A straw bed? Not the definition I expected. I assumed it meant someone who empties a pail.

    August 28, 2019

  • See flanchard.

    August 27, 2019

  • Is there no list pertaining to armory or knights, etc?

    August 27, 2019

  • This reminds me of the Medieval dunking ordeal to find out if a woman is a witch. If she drowns and dies, she's innocent. In this case, vomiting poison determines your innocence... but it could STILL kill you in the process. See tanghin.


    "In Madagascar, one way of determining guilt is to poison you, and see if you spew."

    August 27, 2019

  • Lunky and lanky sound like their meanings.

    August 27, 2019

  • I like this version because it emphasizes the speed spoken and its informality. I'm not a fan of tysm, for example.

    August 27, 2019

  • Glitch poetry is the practice of introducing orthographic anomalies in poems.

    https://medium.com/@massimo.franceschet/glitch-poetry-75e2247bfc43

    August 27, 2019

  • Good find, alexz.

    August 26, 2019

  • A word used only in the following phrase. That's the definition of orthosilicic?

    August 25, 2019

  • Today the dialect is highly endangered, with only a few elderly native speakers. It is thought that any remaining speakers live in or around Old Mines, Missouri.

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

    August 24, 2019

  • Why is this named 43? Trump is, sadly, the 45th POTUS.

    August 24, 2019

  • Which is worse... being parasitic fungi or belonging to the smut family?

    August 17, 2019

  • At first glance, I thought I read tadpole pie.

    August 17, 2019

  • Hey, what happened to my list (created under a different user identity): https://www.wordnik.com/lists/wordniks-who-proudly-contribute-worthless-stuff--a-lot-of-dumb-comments--and-useless-words-to-the-zeitgeist-page

    August 14, 2019

  • A message popped up warning me that I was being directed to the site above for possibly nefarious reasons.

    August 14, 2019

  • Grouping plants with similar watering requirements together on a landscape.

    August 3, 2019

  • Hardscape refers to hard landscape materials in the built environment structures that are incorporated into a landscape. This can include paved areas, driveways, retaining walls, sleeper walls, stairs, walkways, and any other landscaping made up of hard-wearing materials such as wood, stone, and concrete, as opposed to softscape, the horticultural elements of a landscape.

    August 3, 2019

  • Axillary Falcon - This bird has also been identified as a black-shouldered kite, Elanus notatus.

    June 15, 2019

  • In the canon law of the Catholic Church, the loss of the clerical state (commonly referred to as laicization or laicisation) is the removal of a bishop, priest or deacon from the status of being a member of the clergy.

    June 15, 2019

  • "Lists like this one arm citizens and thought leaders with the data to “help make important business and life decisions.”

    June 12, 2019

  • I'm still unclear on the meaning. Is being happy, dressed in black, and wearing rubber tips on one's fingers the only criteria for being a nickel thrower?

    June 11, 2019

  • Loogan (sometimes spelled loogin or lugan, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang) is no longer used to mean “a minor hoodlum,” though hood, recorded by Kendall, is still used to mean “a petty gangster.”

    I found LOOGAN in Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary of 1825 with a definition of “a rogue” and in a couple of prison slang lists online meaning “mentally ill prisoner."

    May 31, 2019

  • See also osage orange.

    May 15, 2019

  • My regional vocabulary refers to a horseapple as a hedgeapple. A horseapple sounds more interesting.

    May 15, 2019

  • receiver: In portable breech-loading firearms, the steel frame screwed to the breech end of the barrel, which receives the bolt or block, gives means of securing for firing, facilitates loading, and holds the ejector, cut-off, etc.

    May 10, 2019

  • mustard-seed: A very fine kind of shot used by ornithologists and taxidermists for shooting birds with least injury to the plumage; dust-shot. The name includes No. 10 shot and finer numbers.

    May 10, 2019

  • I'm content adding to hernesheir's list, if I'm lucky enough to find other words to add. Hernesheir is a creative and masterful listmaker.

    May 10, 2019

  • Is there a film/cinematography list? If so, this term is missing from it.

    May 9, 2019

  • Hey back, Tom.

    May 9, 2019

  • Also known a a hacktivist or ecoteur.


    .

    May 7, 2019

  • "He decided to cast her in The Last Picture Show as Jacy, a spoiled, snitty, small town high school heartbreaker."

    — Lloyd Shearer, The Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT), 16 Jul. 1972

    May 4, 2019

  • Ill-tempered; rough and violent.

    May 4, 2019

  • Disagreeably self-important.

    May 4, 2019

  • Disagreeably ill-tempered.

    May 4, 2019

  • A type of gender confirmation surgery in which a person's genitalia are altered to match their gender identity.

    May 4, 2019

  • A type of gender confirmation surgery in which a person's breasts are removed or augmented to match their gender identity.

    May 4, 2019

  • A plastic or paper cup used especially for taking a beverage off the premises of a bar, restaurant, etc.

    May 4, 2019

  • The final moments or minutes of a game in which one side has an insurmountable lead.

    May 4, 2019

  • An area of planetary orbit in which temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold to support life.

    May 4, 2019

  • an albino owl

    April 27, 2019

  • Leech houses were used to store the worms—often in special containers of moist earth—and keep them alive and fresh until they were needed by druggists or doctors.

    The UK's last-standing leech house: http://mentalfloss.com/article/518390/uks-last-standing-leech-house

    March 7, 2019

  • The rare red handfish from Tasmania doesn't really swim—it just walks slowly along the sea floor.

    March 3, 2019

  • Noun. malternative (plural malternatives) An alcoholic beverage, an alternative to beer, that contains some malt alcohol and may contain other types of alcohol.

    February 18, 2019

  • Noun. malternative (plural malternatives) An alcoholic beverage, an alternative to beer, that contains some malt alcohol and may contain other types of alcohol.

    February 18, 2019

  • PR Newswire coined the term “Social Echo” to describe “the powerful reverberation around brands that occurs through the millions of conversations in the social networks and communities where people gather today.”

    In PR Newswire’s view, “A brand’s Social Echo has enormous power to shape reputation, influence mass opinion and drive growth. Social Echo has equal – and perhaps even greater – power to stop a brand dead in its tracks.”

    They go on to say that…

    “Marketers and communicators who understand this are actively engaged in listening to their Social Echo and in finding ways to participate in the conversations that comprise their Social Echo. Importantly, they are also gleaning real-time insights to apply back to their brands in every area – customer care, product development, brand positioning and messaging, innovation and more.

    Read more at https://www.business2community.com/social-media/how-is-your-social-echo-0453783

    January 2, 2019

  • "An obscure hymn-writer, whose verses have been sung in all parts of the world, was Thomas Bilby, parish clerk of St. Mary's Church, Islington, between the years 1842 and 1872. He was the parish schoolmaster also, and thus maintained the traditions of his office handed down from mediæval times. Before the days of School Boards it was not unusual for the clerk to teach the children of the working classes the three R's and religious knowledge, charging a fee of twopence per week for each child. "

    December 20, 2018

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

    December 19, 2018

  • See nangka (In Guam, Artocarpus communis) and langka (In the Philippine Islands, Artocarpus integrifolia).

    December 17, 2018

  • Thanks for the reverso story, sionnach.

    November 6, 2018

  • A person or character on social media that appears to be endearing at first, but is found to have an unappealing backstory.

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

    November 4, 2018

  • An interwoven series of poetic monologues set to music.

    Coined by Ntozake Shange, author of "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf," 1975.

    October 31, 2018

  • (The intimacy coordinator) will intervene in small but important ways, like giving a performer something to cover their private parts, knee pads, mouth spray or flavored lubricant, etc.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hbo-hires-intimacy-coordinator-sex-scenes_us_5bd35c64e4b0a8f17ef7690e

    October 29, 2018

  • v. To manipulate someone psychologically such that they question their own sanity.

    (I've watched the movie several times so this meaning is, uh, MEANINGFUL!)

    October 18, 2018

  • Fun list.

    October 18, 2018

  • n. An outdoor hobby in which participants attempt to locate small boxes hidden in public places.

    When was this a thing?! Imagine finding a small box with a little, baby bilby inside.

    October 18, 2018

  • Tsundoku (Japanese: 積ん読) is acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them.

    The term originated in the Meiji era (1868–1912) as Japanese slang. It combines elements of tsunde-oku (積んでおく, to pile things up ready for later and leave) and dokusho (読書, reading books). It is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf. As currently written, the word combines the characters for "pile up" (積) and the character for "read" (読).

    October 15, 2018

  • Suggesting that two wrongs equal a right. For example, suggesting that a particular CEO can mislead shareholders because some other CEO mislead shareholders even more.

    October 15, 2018

  • A logical fallacy in which two completely opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency.

    False equivalence arguments are often used in journalism and in politics, where the minor flaws of one candidate may be compared to major flaws of another.

    October 15, 2018

  • “ 'Mis-carriage,' in an insidious way, suggests fault for the mother - as if she dropped something, or failed to 'carry.' ”

    Using the hashtags #WeNeedANewName and #MoreCommonThanYouHearAbout, Vmiscarriage happens far more frequently than some might think and that, ultimately, changing its name might help conversations about miscarriage flow more freely, as couples will no longer feel like they're being judged for the biological event over which they have little to no control.

    '"So many women feel shame about losing a baby even though there is nothing shameful about it. But nevertheless, this often stops them from talking openly about their loss..."

    Any suggestions for a new term? Leave suggestion(s) at hashtags above.

    October 14, 2018

  • "Asian Americans argue that racial considerations have made them a victim of their own academic success. They tend to get better grades and score higher on standardized tests than other races but claim they are frequently rejected as a result of “racial balancing,” which is akin to racial quotas and has been ruled unconstitutional."

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-harvard-asians-affirmative-action-2018-story.html

    October 13, 2018

  • ╔┓┏╦━━╦┓╔┓╔━━╗

    ║┗┛║┗━╣┃║┃║ 0 0 ║

    ║┏┓║┏━╣┗╣┗╣╰╯║

    ╚┛┗╩━━╩━╩━╩━━

    October 13, 2018

  • Icelandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • Icelandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • Icelandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • Icelandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • Icelandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • Icelandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • celandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • celandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • celandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • celandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • celandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • celandic terms of endearment

    Icelandic words that used with partners, children and other loved ones.

    Key to abbreviations: >m = said to males, >f = said to females.

    kærasti = Darling, loved one (>m), boyfriend.

    kærasta = Darling, loved one (>f), girlfriend

    ástvinur = Darling, beloved (“love friend”)

    sæti (>m), sæta (>f) = Sweetie, cutie

    elskan (mín) = My love, my darling

    ástin (mín) = My love, my darling

    krútt (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie (used for children, animals, and between lovers)

    krúttið (mitt) = Sweetie, cutie, honey

    dúlla(n) (mín) = Sweetie (often used by girls for friends)

    elsku dúllan mín = My dear sweetie

    yndið mítt = My sweetie

    bumbubúi = "belly dweller" (used for an unborn baby)

    October 12, 2018

  • A term used to express endearment and affection in Indonesian. It can be equated to 'dear’, 'darling’ or 'sweetheart’ when referring to a person.

    October 12, 2018

  • In Latvian, your favorite person is your sirds puķīte, a.k.a. “the little flower of your heart.” Another endearment for a loved one is sirsniņa: “little heart” (this is a noun with a feminine ending) or sometimes just sirds.

    October 12, 2018

  • The person you love most is described in English as “the apple of your eye.” The phrase originates in Old English and means the pupil of the eye, which reflects the image of the one you’re looking at. In Latvian, your favorite person is your sirds puķīte, a.k.a. “the little flower of your heart.” Another endearment for a loved one is sirsniņa: “little heart” (this is a noun with a feminine ending) or sometimes just sirds.

    October 12, 2018

  • In Latvian, your closest friend is your sirdsdraugs or “the friend of your heart.”

    October 12, 2018

  • Bloom syydrome (sp?). Who knew that a little chocolate bloom would inspire our dearest ru with a list. Good job.

    October 12, 2018

  • Chocolate bloom refers two types of whitish coating that can appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.

    October 9, 2018

  • Chocolate bloom refers two types of whitish coating that can appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.

    October 9, 2018

  • Chocolate bloom refers to two types of whitish coating that appear on the surface of chocolate: fat bloom, caused by changes in the fat crystals in the chocolate; and sugar bloom, due to crystals formed by the action of moisture on the sugar. Chocolate that has "bloomed" remains edible but may have an unappetizing appearance and texture.

    October 9, 2018

  • A sample of a film's concept or highlights; a prototype.

    October 2, 2018

  • TV trope. The last character left alive to confront the killer. The character is almost ALWAYS female, a virgin, fully clothed, avoids death by sex, doesn't drink, smoke or take drugs.

    The term was coined by Carol J. Colver in her 1992 book, Men, Women, And Chain Saws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film.

    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalGirl

    September 25, 2018

  • Twitter: Autocorrect just changed the word “explodes” to “expoodles”. Saw it do it with my own eyes. Is that even a WORD??

    September 22, 2018

  • For ruzuzu:

    Kad pūcei aste ziedēs ("When an owl's tail blooms")

    September 21, 2018

  • The Popular Theatre by George Jean Nathan (1918)

    "I drank two cocktails, three glasses of sherry, a quart of champagne and several ponies of Cointreau. The show seemed to get better and better as it went ...


    1. pony a small drinking glass or the drink contained in it.

    September 21, 2018

  • British verb (transitive) to bury together

    September 21, 2018

  • dialectal, British

    : a sheep, ox, or horse that has lived through two winters.

    September 21, 2018

  • chiefly southern Africa

    : a gait in which the horse moves both near and both off legs alternately and which somewhat resembles the amble

    September 21, 2018

  • To reduce the staff numbers of a company to such low levels that work can no longer be carried out effectively.

    September 21, 2018

  • "The term psychogeography was invented by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955. Inspired by the French nineteenth-century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur – an urban wanderer – Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment in order to examine its architecture and spaces.


    The reimagining of the city proposed by psychogeography has its roots in dadaism and surrealism, art movements which explored ways of unleashing the subconscious imagination. Tristam Hillier’s paintings such as La Route des Alpes 1937 could be described as an early example of the concept.

    Psychogeography gained popularity in the 1990s when artists, writers, and filmmakers such as Iain Sinclair and Patrick Keiller began using the idea to create works based on exploring locations by walking."

    -https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/psychogeography

    September 21, 2018

  • An elite unit of the Norwegian police that investigates organized crime and missing persons, for example. They have specialized technical and forensic expertise. They are currently investigating the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis, a Dutch cybersecurity expert for Wikileaks. "Arjen Kamphuis is a Digital Self Defence professional. Every day he helps people keep their secrets safe in the digital world. He has seen firsthand how government-funded spying, hacking and security programs fall into the wrong hands and cause more harm than good. He argues that it is time we all start keeping ourselves safe by taking responsibility for our own digital defenses and letting go of the idea that we’re just not smart enough to adapt."

    September 20, 2018

  • https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/03/15/new-in-pointlessly-gendered-products/

    Men's Bread, Fairy Hearts Turkey Pork Sausage, boys walking rein and harness (blue), girls walking rein and harness (pink), pet shampoo (for him, for her).

    Pinterest collection: https://www.pinterest.com/socimages/pointlessly-gendered-products/

    lip balm engineered for men, water for men, etc.

    September 20, 2018

  • cultural tropes (like pointlessly gendered products)

    September 20, 2018

  • "In 1966, the late sociologist Robert Bellah presented a now-classic essay, “Civil Religion in America.” The essay is about religion in public life, and how American politicians created a sense of shared national identity around general religious claims. Since then, sociologists and political theorists have argued about how inclusive civil religion really is (Does it include atheists or other minority groups who aren’t Christian? Lots of Americans don’t seem to think so.), but the theory is useful for highlighting how much of American political life takes on a religious tone."

    --https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2018/07/

    September 20, 2018

  • "The ad blocker should not be seen as a selfish technology. It is a socialist cudgel—something that forces otherwise lazy capitalists to find new and inventive ways to make their creations sustainable. Ad blockers are one of the few tools users have to fight against the need to monetize fast and big because it troubles the predictability of readily traceable attention."

    --https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2015/09/23/full-communism-is-the-ultimate-ad-blocker/

    September 20, 2018

  • "Based on observations of three technology-rich Bay Area middle schools, Rafalow examined whether the skills students develop through digital play are considered cultural capital — skills, habits, and dispositions that that can be traded for success in school and work."

    --https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2018/09/12/schools-selective-screening/

    September 20, 2018

  • Jenny Edkins (Trauma and memory politics) explores how we remember traumatic events such as wars, famines, genocides and terrorism. She argues that remembrance does not have to be nationalistic but can instead challenge the political systems that produced the violence. Using examples from the World Wars, Vietnam, the Holocaust, Kosovo and September 11th, Edkins analyzes the practices of memory rituals through memorials, museums and remembrance ceremonies. This wide-ranging study embraces literature, history, politics and international relations, in an original contribution to the study of memory.

    September 20, 2018

  • "Ukraine’s memory politics do not exclude women entirely. In 2016, the UINM chose to focus on women when commemorating the anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The title of the institute’s project was “War makes no exceptions. Female history of the Second World War”. The intention to focus on women’s experiences in order to “reveal the criminal nature of war” seems admirable. But the 12 stories of both military and civilian women chosen by the UINM simply replicate a male pantheon rather than challenge the very tradition of glorifying the war through its heroes. The difference is that the male heroes are celebrated every year, whereas the female figures only once in a while, as part of a special project."

    --What place for women in Ukraine's memory politics? https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/olesya-khromeychuk/what-place-for-women-in-ukraine-s-memory-politics

    September 20, 2018

  • Such laws, however, do not have to pass to have a chilling effect. In 2014, I met Kyrgyz LGBTQI organisation Labrys, who said that lesbians and trans men already faced corrective rape, and gay men and trans women were often beaten and sometimes killed. Such attacks have since intensified. Soon after I went back to London, Labrys shut down their Facebook page, and had to sell the house where I first met them after it was subjected to an arson attack in 2015. They resurfaced last year, and in March I returned to Bishkek to meet a new generation of activists who, amidst the confusion and hostility, are fighting to make Kyrgyzstan more open to diversity of gender and sexuality.

    --https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/juliet-jacques/fear-and-loathing-in-kyrgyzstan

    September 20, 2018

  • At the Pasteur Institute in Paris Mechnikov was engaged in work associated with the establishment of his theory of cellular immunity, which, like many great advances in science, encountered considerable hostility. He published, during this period, several papers and two volumes on the comparative pathology of inflammation (1892), and his treatise entitled L’Immunité dans les Maladies Infectieuses (Immunity in infectious diseases, 1901). In 1908 he was awarded, together with Paul Ehrlich, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

    He coined the word gerontology in 1903.

    September 15, 2018

  • Gerontology is the study of the social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, and biological aspects of aging. The word was coined by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1903. The field is distinguished from geriatrics, which is the branch of medicine that specializes in the treatment of existing disease in older adults. Gerontologists include researchers and practitioners in the fields of biology, nursing, medicine, criminology, dentistry, social work, physical therapy, occupational therapy, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, economics, [political science, architecture, geography, pharmacy, public health, housing, and anthropology.

    September 15, 2018

  • Biomedical gerontology, also known as experimental gerontology and life extension, is a sub-discipline of biogerontology that endeavors to slow, prevent, and even reverse aging in both humans and animals. Most "life extensionists" believe the human life span can be increased within the next century, if not sooner. biogerontologists vary in the degree to which they focus on the study of the aging process as a means of mitigating the diseases of aging or extending lifespan, although most agree that extension of lifespan will necessarily flow from reductions in age-related disease and frailty, although some argue that maximum life span cannot be altered or that it is undesirable to try. The area of geroscience is a recently formulated interdisciplinary field that embraces biomedical gerontology as the center of preventing diseases of aging through science emerging at the interface of the biology of aging and age-related disease.

    September 14, 2018

  • "...so-called sneaker waves sometimes claim lives of the unwary along the coast of the Pacific Northwest.

    Tuba Ozkan-Haller, a wave researcher at Oregon State University, recommends that when people go to the beach in Northern California, Oregon and Washington state — which because of the nature of the coastline are susceptible to sneaker waves — they study the wave action and ensure escape routes aren’t blocked by rocks or cliffs."

    September 12, 2018

  • = murder

    September 11, 2018

  • An odd insult found on Twitter:

    "Wow #Uganda under the repulsive and primitive cow #Musevi is like a zoo...chei! Just like #Cameroon under our own piece of wet diarrhea president..."

    Isn't diarrhea always wet? Is there such a thing as dry diarrhea?

    September 11, 2018

  • The term “calendering” refers to any of several processes in which fabric is subjected to great pressure and/or heat, in a type of ironing using large rollers.

    September 5, 2018

  • For the study and collection of beetles, see coleopterology.

    Beetling is the pounding of linen or cotton fabric to give a flat, lustrous effect. The process by which fabrics, etc. are beetled, or beaten with a mallet. Within Ireland, beetling was first introduced by Hamilton Maxwell in 1725. Beetling is part of the finishing of the linen cloth. The hammering tightens the weave and gives the cloth a smooth feel. The process was gradually phased out, in lieu of calendering. A similarity is the compression; however, with calendering, the finish does not remain for the life of the cloth. This distinguishes it from beetling.

    Beetling eyebrows are thick and stick out from the face: He glared at me under beetling brows.

    September 5, 2018

  • A fear of being disconnected from social media in general.

    September 2, 2018

  • Mud volcanoes occur when gases push hot water and dirt from deep in the ground up to the surface. https://twitter.com/ScienceAlert/status/1036068618805682176

    September 2, 2018

  • Make up your own!

    1. the bilby's bilirubin

    2. the walrus's wallet

    3. the kiwi's coinpurse

    ABC animals, http://www.skyenimals.com/alph_index.cgi?letter=A

    September 1, 2018

  • "When a dog crouches forward with its elbows on the ground and its rear end in the air, wagging tail and all, that's a play bow. The position is the ultimate sign of playfulness, which is important for a species that often uses playtime as practice for attacking prey.

    The play bow first evolved in canids as a form of communication. When a dog sees another dog it wants to play with, it extends its front paws forward and lifts up its behind as a visual invitation to engage in a friendly play session. Dogs will "bow" in the middle of playtime to show that they're having fun and wish to continue, or when a session has paused to signal they want to pick it back up. Play bows can also be a sort of apology: When the roughhousing gets too rough, a bow says, “I’m sorry I hurt you. Can we keep playing?' "

    Mental Floss, http://mentalfloss.com/article/544112/why-do-dogs-crouch-forward-play-bow

    September 1, 2018

  • Amnesty International on Thursday accused Nigeria's government of carrying out unlawful arrests and practicing "enforced disappearance" -- detention without trial -- to suppress dissent.

    August 30, 2018

  • "Countries are increasingly copying the marketing tactics that companies use to raise their profiles, and let people know that they are open for business. Welcome to the world of nation branding.

    A strong country brand should encourage tourists, trading partners and investors all at once. But having a snazzy logo, and an advertising budget won't sell a product that people don't want."

    The best way to improve a country's image is for it to contribute to the well-being of the world beyond its borders rather than spending money on advertising.

    "If you really want to earn a better reputation, the best thing you can do is stop chasing after it."

    August 30, 2018

  • Among the Ga, the people who are indigenous to Ghana's capital, Accra, a woman is entitled to a live sheep on the delivery of her 10th child. The word for it is "nyongmato".

    August 30, 2018

  • The first time I heard this word I was watching "To Kill a Mockingbird".

    Mayella Ewell in the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962): "I was sittin' on the porch, and he come along. Uh, there's this old chifforobe in the yard, and I-I said, 'You come in here, boy, and bust up this chifforobe, and I'll give you a nickel.'"

    August 30, 2018

  • Yes! This is the list I remember using.

    August 30, 2018

  • Thanks!

    August 30, 2018

  • I forgot who had the list of "problem" entries... alexz? madmouth?

    August 29, 2018

  • On Twitter: "Today I asked my class to come up with a pair of terms that share a denotative meaning but whose connotative meanings differ and one student offered BUTT DIAL and BOOTY CALL."

    August 27, 2018

  • Erin is the perfect name for a pet hedgehog.

    August 23, 2018

  • Lucky! Such a cute word, too.

    August 23, 2018

  • "I've met a few hunters who studied fewmet."

    August 21, 2018

  • "pak" means pure in Urdu. Land of the pure.

    August 20, 2018

  • or, even better: Englishish.

    August 20, 2018

  • "Make America Great Again" Americans (from Donald Trump's political slogan). As described on fivethirtyeight.com:

    "Right Trolls behave like “bread-and-butter MAGA Americans, only all they do is talk about politics all day long.” 

    "Left Trolls often adopt the personae of Black Lives Matter activists, typically expressing support for Bernie Sanders and derision for Hillary Clinton, along with “clearly trying to divide the Democratic Party and lower voter turnout."

    August 13, 2018

  • A different way to say hair transplantation. I found a doctor's practice listed as Advanced Dermatology and Dermaesthetics.

    What is so advanced about a hair transplant?

    August 7, 2018

  • Sounds like a note brought to school as an excuse for something. "Dear Mrs. Frye: I couldn't finish my homework. We had a grasshopper escapement at home. You do believe me, don't you?'

    July 31, 2018

  • Shadow banning isn't a new concept; it's frequently used in forums and on other social networks as an alternative to banning someone outright.

    Instead of kicking someone off, shadow banning makes a person's post visible only to the user who created it. The idea is to protect others from harmful content while eventually prompting the shadow-banned user to voluntarily leave a forum due to a lack of engagement.

    If a user is banned outright, the thinking goes, the person is aware of it and will likely just set up another account and continue the offending behavior.

    Shadow banning is typically used to stop bots and trolls and is effective in combating bots where 'bot herders' who maintain these accounts don't necessarily know whether or not their bots are actually being seen by other people.

    "Shadow banning: What it is -- and what it isn't", Alfred Ng, cnet.com, 26 July 2018

    Also known as stealth banning, ghost banning or comment banning

    July 27, 2018

  • dolmens: dolls for men (Stonehenge)

    lichened dolmens = dolls for men covered with lichens.

    July 27, 2018

  • How does one add 110,098 words to a list? For me, and even if I managed to copy and paste hundreds or thousands of words, I'd still have to insert a semi-colon between those words. Is there a shortcut? An easier method I’m not using?

    July 26, 2018

  • People are not defined by their diseases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language

    July 25, 2018

  • Is hieratica okay?

    July 25, 2018

  • Here's the tree-free paper alternatives list. I tried before but I couldn't get my link to work, even with single curly braces. Okay, great. It works now.

    July 25, 2018

  • This word is looking for a forever list home about paper.

    July 25, 2018

  • I have a list called tree-free paper alternatives.

    July 25, 2018

  • qms: I'm looking for plant-based milks, so, yes, poppy milk qualifies. When I looked it up, I discovered that poppy milk (aguonų pienas) is a traditional Lithuanian drink or soup, one of the 12-dishes Christmas Eve Supper Kūčios. Usually, it is eaten together with kūčiukai, another traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve dish. Thank you.

    I will open this list with the understanding that only plant-based milks are added. Thank you.

    July 25, 2018

  • I've been on a silly quest to sample many of these "milks". Just yesterday, I tried macadamia milk. I doubt if I'll be able to even find any candlenut milk, but is does exist! I'm also particularly interested in trying some black walnut milk. Will it have the unique flavor of black walnuts?

    BTW, the dairy industry is trying relentlessly to force manufacturers of these non-dairy products from using the word "milk" when marketing their products. They claim that milk comes from mammals, not plants. The non-dairy milk people insist this is not able semantics, but because their product is affecting the popularity of goat / cow milk.

    July 25, 2018

  • I thought this was paper made from the feces of an elephant. and not just "big" paper. I've read about paper made from elephant, rhino, and other herbivores.

    July 25, 2018

  • A chaotic commotion of activity, often compared to a hurricane.

    July 25, 2018

  • An invisible natural force possessed by all living and animate beings (humans, animals, fruits, vegetables).

    July 22, 2018

  • Trendy overpriced coffee.

    July 22, 2018

  • Spam weblogs that steal content from other sites in order to appear legitimate. Also known as an adfarm.

    July 13, 2018

  • Good old fist-law, the code of brute force. See also club-law.

    July 13, 2018

  • Among the list of Random Adoptions on Wordnik:

    bilby was adopted by Royal Secret Society of Bilbies

    July 7, 2018

  • A person who is unwilling or unable to learn how to use all but the most basic functions of the electronic appliances he or she possesses.

    July 7, 2018

  • Scottish. A football fan, esp of Rangers FC or Celtic FC, who exhibits religious bigotry at matches but does not consider him- or herself to be bigoted outside a football context.

    July 7, 2018

  • Any of a group of extinct carnivorous whales known as Phocodontia or Zeuglodonta.

    July 7, 2018

  • Denoting a term in a series that precedes the term otherwise regarded as the first term.

    July 7, 2018

  • A tool for cutting roof slate.

    July 7, 2018

  • Scottish. A soup made from a fowl boiled with leeks.

    July 7, 2018

  • Pertaining to any centipede of the family Scolopendridae, including some large and poisonous species.

    July 7, 2018

  • Any green gemstone, such as the emerald.

    July 7, 2018

  • A type of bagpipe.

    July 7, 2018

  • Of or relating to a tragelaph.

    July 7, 2018

  • An alkaloid, C46H56N4O10·H2SO4, obtained from the leaves of a periwinkle (Vinca rosea) and used as a drug in the treatment of leukemia.

    July 7, 2018

  • Pertaining to the thin flat bone forming part of the separation between the nasal passages in mammals.

    July 7, 2018

  • A soft lustrous wool fabric with mohair, alpaca, or camel's hair.

    July 7, 2018

  • pertaining to a family of moths (Zygaenidae) including the foresters, burnet moths, and related moths most of which are bright-colored and day-flying.

    July 7, 2018

  • relating to mosquitoes of the genus Aedes

    July 7, 2018

  • Another great -ine list!

    July 7, 2018

  • crotaline: having a rattle or pertaining to a rattlesnake

    July 7, 2018

  • I intended to start a list like this one, but after finding your impressive and thorough list, I figured: why bother? Love it. I've added it to my list of favorite lists.

    July 7, 2018

  • Yes, they are aware... but they don't care.

    June 28, 2018

  • Jet lag.

    June 25, 2018

  • Fear of crossing a threshold to embark on something new.

    What's with the potential customer in the definition from Wiki?

    June 5, 2018

  • ru: the day you started contributing to wordnik was--and continues to be!-- pure awesomeness. I love the way you think. You should be on a remarkable list yourself: a list of remarkable people! ♥♥♥♥

    June 4, 2018

  • There are many words for pass in the English-speaking world. In the United States, pass is very common in the West, the word gap is common in the southern Appalachians, notch in parts of New England, and saddle in northern Idaho. Scotland has the Gaelic term bealach (anglicised "balloch"), while Wales has the similar bwlch. In the Lake District of north-west England, the term hause is often used, although the term pass is also common—one distinction is that a pass can refer to a route, as well as the highest part thereof, while a hause is simply the highest part, often flattened somewhat into a high-level plateau.--Wikipedia

    June 1, 2018

  • In video games, and particularly eSports, commentators are often called shoutcasters; this term is derived from the free plugin for <i>Winamp</i> called <i>SHOUTcast</i>, which enabled users to live-stream audio-only feeds across the Internet.

    June 1, 2018

  • German: to chew with a full mouth.
    See also: mimpfeln to mumble while eating.

    May 31, 2018

  • See also mumpfen, to chew with a full mouth.

    May 31, 2018

  • Not to be confused with the fear of changing one's underwear.

    May 26, 2018

  • Mansplaining (a blend of the word man and the informal form splaining of the verb explaining) means "(of a man) to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner". Lily Rothman of "The Atlantic" defines it as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman". Author Rebecca Solnit ascribes the phenomenon to a combination of "overconfidence and cluelessness".

    In its original use, mansplaining differed from other forms of condescension in that it is rooted in the sexist assumption that a man is likely to be more knowledgeable than a woman. However, it has come to be used more broadly, often applied when a man takes a condescending tone in an explanation to anyone, regardless of the age or gender of the intended recipients: a "man 'splaining" can be delivered to any audience. In 2010 it was named by the New York Times as one of its "Words of the Year".

    A widespread phenomenon that "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.

    May 15, 2018

  • To measure the women’s biological age, the researchers looked at the length of telomeres in their white blood cells. Telomeres are the dangly bits at the end of chromosomes that shorten every time a cell divides. Their length is considered a measure of cellular age.

    Between three and five years later, 250 of the women came back so researchers could calculate their risk of developing heart disease in the next decade – known as their Framingham score. This takes account of risk factors such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure and body weight.

    As expected, the team found that women with lower egg counts had higher Framingham scores, but they also had shorter telomeres. Previous studies have suggested that shorter telomeres are linked with heart disease, dementia and cancer, and also with a shorter lifespan. So women with fewer eggs may also be at higher risk of other age-related diseases, although epidemiological studies will be needed to bolster this link."

    (The Framingham Risk Score is a gender-specific algorithm used to estimate the 10-year cardiovascular risk of an individual. The Framingham Risk Score was first developed based on data obtained from the Framingham Heart Study, to estimate the 10-year risk of developing coronary heart disease. In order to assess the 10-year cardiovascular disease risk, cerebrovascular events, peripheral artery disease and heart failure were subsequently added as disease outcomes for the 2008 Framingham Risk Score, on top of coronary heart disease.)

    May 15, 2018

  • subtitle: China's president-in-waiting turns to purple prose during populist speech aimed at top and bottom of Communist party

    May 11, 2018

  • (Noun) A private technology company that was formerly valued at $1bn or more (slang, vulg)

    Silicon Valley is nothing if not inventive, and that applies to language as much as product development. Three years ago, Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures, coined “unicorn” to capture the phenomenon of private technology companies achieving valuations of $1bn and more. She likened these desirable ventures to the mythical horned creature often represented in the shape of a horse.

    More recently, in response to the declines in value of some unicorns, Ms Lee has concocted a less mythological variant: the “unicorpse”. It is one of a number of unicorn-related neologisms, including “My Little Pony” (a start-up worth $10m or more), the “Centaur” ($100m start-up) and the impressive “quinquagintacorn” (you work it out*).

    --Financial TImes (article available for subscribers only)

    April 29, 2018

  • The ancient concept of animal guides, particularly prominent in some indigenous, especially Native American, religions and cultures, was adopted in Pagan and Wiccan spirituality in the 1990s. In these contexts, spirit animals are meant literally, referring to spiritual guides or totems that take the form of animals.

    April 25, 2018

  • No pronunciation available.

    April 24, 2018

  • An odd-looking word.

    April 23, 2018

  • Please do not kick or pound me if your pellets don't fall immediately. And don't press my buttons over and over. Be patient and you will receive your due reward.

    April 16, 2018

  • "Australia's iconic koala has a problem that keeps boomeranging back.

    Chlamydia, a type of sexually transmitted disease also found in humans, has hit wild koalas hard, with some wild populations seeing a 100 percent infection rate." --National Geographic, 14 April 2018

    April 15, 2018

  • Likewise, necropsy is also necropsied. Most users seem to prefer the noun form. "The pathologist decided to forego a necropsy of the dead bilby on the side of the road."

    April 13, 2018

  • A corruption, perhaps... but vulgar? Words have feelings, too. Down with word-shaming!

    April 12, 2018

  • Peter Haff coined the term technosphere (in 2014). He defines the technosphere as “the global, energy consuming techno-social system that is comprised of humans, technological artifacts, and technological systems, together with the links, protocols, and information that bind all these parts together.”

    Basically, the technosphere is the vast, sprawling combination of humanity and its technology. Haff argues that in our thousands of years of harnessing technology – including the first technologies like stone tools, wheels and crops – the technology itself has basically begun to act practically independently, creating a new sphere (i.e., like the biosphere or atmosphere or lithosphere), but like nothing the planet has ever seen before.

    “I would argue that domesticated animals and plants, as well as humans, are parts of the technosphere,” said Haff. “These are in effect manufactured by the technosphere for its own use on the basis of genetic blueprints appropriated from the biosphere.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2015/oct/20/the-four-horsemen-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction

    April 2, 2018

  • Blackbirding has continued to the present day in developing countries. One example is the kidnapping and coercion at gunpoint of indigenous people in Central America to work as plantation laborers in the region, where they are exposed to heavy pesticide loads and do backbreaking work for very little pay.

    April 1, 2018

  • Dog meat has been eaten in every major German crisis at least since the time of Frederick the Great, and is commonly referred to as "blockade mutton."

    --GERMANY: Dachshunds Are Tenderer, 25 November 1940. Time Magazine.

    To a war menu which already included fish-fed poultry, decrepit horses, goats, and numerous zoo animals, Germany last week added those of its dogs which had not been killed by an earlier decree to save food. A new law, effective January 1, 1940, states that dogs, wolves, foxes, bears, badgers and wild hogs have been legalized as meat. After being inspected for trichina, their carcasses will be dressed, stamped and distributed to butchers for rationing to general consumers.

    March 31, 2018

  • bilby: Have you ever visited Hastings Caves south of Hobart, or Mole Creek Karst National Park west of Launceston? I read somewhere that these sites have colonies of glowworms to see.

    March 30, 2018

  • 1. A little man with an unduly high opinion of himself. 2. The game leapfrog.

    "A cockalorum playing cockalorum."

    March 28, 2018

  • See also chittering-crust and chittering-piece.

    March 28, 2018

  • Mine aunt?

    March 26, 2018

  • The newest addition to the modern dating lexicon. Named after the fictional child phantom, Casper, it’s a friendly alternative to ghosting. Instead of ignoring someone, you’re honest about how you feel, and let them down gently before disappearing from their lives.

    March 26, 2018

  • Repeatedly checking one's phone and/or sending messages to others while on a date. Considered rude.

    March 26, 2018

  • A term that refers to the awkward situation in which an ex-partner gets in touch with their ex out of nowhere, such as at Christmas time.

    March 26, 2018

  • A dating term that refers to someone worrying that they're only attracted to a man because of his beard.

    March 26, 2018

  • A dating term that refers to leading someone on with no intention of getting serious.

    March 26, 2018

  • Splendid, qms! Rocky and Bullwinkle Effect.

    March 18, 2018

  • If it will keep your ears from convulsing, see flavour pairing.

    *insincere smirk*

    March 14, 2018

  • How about incorrect change and a swift kick?

    March 14, 2018

  • I had to resort to the pronunciation feature for this one.

    March 14, 2018

  • "...the idea that the more “aromatic” (i.e. smelly) organic compounds foods share, the better they will taste together."

    "...dishes whose ingredients share few compounds in common can also taste delicious; a 2011 analysis of more than 50,000 recipes found that while cuisines from Western Europe and North America tended to use ingredients with shared compounds, ingredients from East Asian recipes tended not to."

    --An Illustrated Guide to Matching Foods' Flavor Molecules, Wired, 6 March 2018, 

    https://www.wired.com/story/the-flavor-matrix/

    March 13, 2018

  • "On July 3, 2006, Amanda gave birth to fraternal twin girls, and the ecstatic parents gave their daughters intertwined names: One would be Millie Marcia Madge Biggs, the other Marcia Millie Madge Biggs."

    March 12, 2018

  • In Australia, the term "flogger" is sometimes used rather than "pom-pom". Floggers are very large, heavy pom-poms in the team's colors. They sometimes require more than one person to lift them, and they are waved about when a goal is scored.

    Floggers are an important part of Australian rules football culture and cheer-squads.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Richmond_Cheer_Squad_Rd_21_2006_closeup.jpg

    March 6, 2018

  • "This is the first time I've seen a willet chase-flying insects."

    March 5, 2018

  • See lantern-jawed

    March 5, 2018

  • Those crazy, non-explicit Australians.

    March 5, 2018

  • Any word that starts with pt is already more interesting.

    February 28, 2018

  • Umpolished has been looked up 393 times. Logical assumption: Umpolished has been selected by RANDOM WORD 393 times.

    February 27, 2018

  • How rude!


    Found among rude definitions: 
    • adj. Characterized by roughness; umpolished; raw; lacking delicacy or refinement; coarse.

    February 27, 2018

  • Hmm. I've only encountered this word used pejoratively.

    A scraggly growth of hair on a man's neck and chin, indicative of poor grooming.

    "I can picture myself wearing these clothes a week from now, bits of food caught in my overgrown neckbeard and man bun."

    February 25, 2018

  • "In an interview with GQ magazine, the "Mummy" star said the alleged incident took place during HFPA luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2003. He alleged that former HFPA president, Philip Berk, came to shake his hand when he was leaving the crowded room. "His left hand reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around," Fraser said, adding that in that moment he was overcome with panic and fear."I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry," Fraser added."

    February 23, 2018

  • I prefer to do my rangling and ranging in a regular manner.

    February 23, 2018

  • Information which is available and relevant to a decision or action, but which is undiscovered or ignored, bringing unnecessary risk to the decision or action.

    February 22, 2018

  • Australian and New Zealand slang:

    no rules at all

    February 22, 2018

  • If a leg-rope doesn't work, try an ear-rope.

    February 22, 2018

  • A certain frog makes up a simple word and it never goes away.

    February 22, 2018

  • Oh, my.

    February 20, 2018

  • I found a vintage stamp from India with NINE PIES inked across the stamp. Now I understand what it meant.

    pies: A former monetary unit of India and Pakistan, equal to one-twelfth of an anna.

    February 20, 2018

  • NZ, Australian

    1(in surfing) a rope attached to a surfboard and tied to the surfer's ankle to prevent the board being washed away by the surf.

    In order to relocate a pesky, trespassing bilby, a leg-rope expert was hired.

    February 20, 2018

  • Hence Petty

    February 17, 2018

  • What exactly is an appropriate manner?

    February 17, 2018

  • You're a creative genius, madmouth.

    February 2, 2018

  • COMMENT: she is nothing!. shes famous for a sex video and having lip injections and butt implants. Its too bad she breaths the same air as everyone else, such a waste. Well the whole clan is, from Bruce Jenner aka "caitlyn" to kylie and kendall Jenner. I know i should just skip over anything about them, but i had to see about her sending her haters stuff. I think its just for attention.

    REPLY: There was literally no need to deadname Caitlyn in your little rant. If you don't like the Kardashians then don't click on the articles.

    (I did not correct any of the punctuation, etc, even though it was tempting.)

    Would someone please define deadname? I'm a bit confused. The Twitter feed is all over the place with examples, but none nail it.

    February 2, 2018

  • At what point does one become coffin-overripe?

    January 27, 2018

  • Forgot about this! Thanks for reintroducing it.

    January 26, 2018

  • In cluttering, the breakdowns in clarity that accompany a perceived rapid and/or irregular speech rate are often characterized by deletion and/or collapsing of syllables (e.g., "I wanwatevision") and/or omission of word endings (e.g., "Turn the televisoff"). The breakdowns in fluency are often characterized by more typical disfluencies (e.g., revisions, interjections) and/or pauses in places in sentences not expected grammatically, such as "I will go to the/store and buy apples".--http://www.asha.org/

    January 26, 2018

  • A well-known example of a nurse name (from a surname) is "Chips" (Professor Arthur Chipping from the 1969 film "Good-bye, Mr. Chips".)

    Prior to Professor Chipping's marriage, however, and his subsequent personality change, his pupils called him "Ditchy," short for "dull as ditch-water."

    Not sure if "Ditchy" is a "nurse name" since it isn't a term of endearment, but it is a nickname of sorts.

    Ha, regarding your Great Aunt Lalla. My guess is that numerous "nurse names" found their origins via baby talk or a toddler's (temporary) fluency disorder.

    See also sobriquet.

    January 26, 2018

  • A nurse name is a hypocorism, a diminutive form of a name. Hypocorisms include pet names or calling names, often a diminutive or augmentative form of a word or a given name when used as a nickname or term of endearment.


    As described in some old texts, a nurse name is a contraction or an affectionate nickname. One example I found was HUBE, a "nurse name" for HUBERT. Other examples weren't shortened versions of one's given name but as terms of endearment, such as LITTLE ANGEL or DEAR ONE.

    January 24, 2018

  • "English teachers spent the bulk of year 10 teaching and marking coursework essays, and didn’t get on to doing mocks until year 11. I was really pleased when coursework was abolished as I felt it would free up so much more time for teachers to plan and teach, instead of mark and administer coursework. However, it does appear as though a lot of this gained time has now been replaced with equally time-consuming mock marking with mocks being introduced more and more in year 10. Many schools have three assessment points a year. If you were to do two mock papers three times a year in both year 10 and 11, then a teacher who taught one year 10 class and one year 11 class would spend 120 hours of the year marking GCSE mocks. That’s three normal working weeks, or nearly 10% of the contracted 1,265 annual hours of directed time."

    What are the definitions for mocks and mock marking in the context above?

    January 22, 2018

  • The retail store Target is sometimes referred to as TAR-zhay. It's supposed to sound French, and thus high-class. This unofficial name change, initiated by customers, took place around the time Target began using some well-known designer(s) to spiffy up their low-priced wares. The term has been used by The New York Times.

    January 22, 2018

  • Chaetoderma elegans is a species of glisten worm, a kind of shell-less, worm-like mollusk in the family Chaetodermidae. This species is found in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. --wikipedia

    January 21, 2018

  • Here's an archived copy of Clapin's Americanisms, 1902:

    https://archive.org/stream/cu31924104766328/cu31924104766328_djvu.txt

    January 16, 2018

  • The meaning I found was along the lines of frantically removing one's clothes (such as one's pajamas) during a feverish delirium.

    The Coxe meaning sounds like a disgruntled fashionista.

    January 14, 2018

  • An Icelandic tradition known as jólabókaflóð (Christmas book flood). Books are exchanged as Christmas Eve gifts and the rest of the night is spent reading and eating konfekt (filled chocolates) and sipping jólabland, an orange fizzy ale.

    Iceland sells the greatest number of books per capita in the world – and most of them are sold in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The book catalog Bókatíðindi is published each November and lists every published book available during the Christmas season.

    December 15, 2017

  • Heal your feelings by eating sheetcake.

    December 15, 2017

  • Wordnik is mentioned in this article about sheetcaking.

    "Sheetcaking: Seriously?" Chronicle of Higher Education.

    "It has made its way into discussions on Wordnik and more than a dozen tweets, though as yet without a definition."

    December 14, 2017

  • "Why them birds, bein' mostly nuts, is so nervous they can't read, nor work, nor do nothin' to ease the bugs that is bitin' their noodles. That's where this strongarm stuff comes in, and the flydicks knows it."

    --Them Was The Good Old Days, W.L. Purcell, 1922.

    November 1, 2017

  • ... a purple BLEE?

    October 22, 2017

  • In professional wrestling, a heel is a wrestler who is villainous or a "bad guy", who is booked (scripted) by the promotion to be in the position of being an antagonist. They are typically opposed by their polar opposites called faces (the heroic protagonist or "good guy" characters). In American wrestling, it was common for the faces to be American and the heels to be portrayed as foreign.

    In order to gain heat (with boos and jeers from the audience), heels are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner by breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the standards of the match. Others do not (or rarely) break rules, but instead exhibit unlikeable, appalling and deliberately offensive and demoralizing personality traits such as arrogance, cowardice or contempt for the audience. Many heels do both, cheating as well as behaving nastily. No matter the type of heel, the most important job is that of the antagonist role, as heels exist to provide a foil to the face wrestlers. If a given heel is cheered over the face, a promoter may opt to turn that heel to face or the other way around or to make the wrestler do something even more despicable to encourage heel heat.

    August 31, 2017

  • "Armed with theoretical microscopes, quantum physicists keep on magnifying, gazing deeper and deeper into empty space until out of nothing, they suddenly see something. That something is a roiling collection of virtual particles, collectively called quantum foam.... According to quantum physicists, virtual particles exist briefly as fleeting fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime, like bubbles in beer foam." "Is Space Full of Quantum Foam?", LiveScience, 5 August 2017.

    August 7, 2017

  • In molecular biology, housekeeping genes are typically constitutive genes that are required for the maintenance of basic cellular function and are expressed in all cells of an organism under normal and pathophysiological conditions.

    August 3, 2017

  • "The scientific study of hereditary disease in Jewish populations was initially hindered by scientific racism, which is based on racial supremacism."

    August 3, 2017

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