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Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts

September 10, 2015

mundane



mundane adjective [muhn-deyn, muhn-deyn]

1. common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative.
2. of or relating to this world or earth as contrasted with heaven; worldly; earthly: mundane affairs.
3. of or relating to the world, universe, or earth.


I probably should have named this blog "Mike's Mostly Mundane".  I DO have a few posts about space, though.

August 26, 2015

absquatulate


absquatulate verb [ab-skwoch-uh-leyt]

to flee

Seems to me that by the time you told everyone to absquatulate, you'd have been caught.

August 11, 2015

Backpfeifengesicht

Backpfeifengesicht (bokf-‘fIf-en-ge-zikt) noun; German compound word 

a person who needs to be slapped;  literally "a face that needs a fist in it".



July 30, 2015

No Repeat

Uncopyrightable is the longest word in the English language that doesn't repeat any letters.

(A word that doesn't repeat any letters is known as an isogram)

July 12, 2015

14 Punctuation Marks

There are fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar: period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses...which are my personal favorite.

July 8, 2015

Dysania

The state of finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning.


June 30, 2015

Shortest Complete Sentence

"Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

June 27, 2015

No Definitive Set Definition

At least not a single one.  Of all the words in the English language, the word "set" has the most definitions - over 400.

June 8, 2015

Word Hippo


From the website:


Find Similar or Opposite words at WordHippo!
Oh ... There's a bunch of other stuff you can do too.


June 4, 2015

floccinaucinihilipilification


floccinaucinihilipilification noun [ flok-suh-hany-hil-uh-pil-uh-fi-key-shuhn]

Rare. the estimation of something as valueless (encountered mainly as an example of one of the longest words in the English language).


It's a good thing this word is rare, otherwise it would cost a fortune in printer's ink if it was used more often...which would make it worth a lot more.

May 28, 2015

middling

Note: I haven't been doing many "Word of the Day" posts lately because the module quit working.  I still get them via my reader, but to be honest, I haven't felt like doing them and they were much easier to do before Dictionary.com changed their website layout.  Be that as it may, here's one that made me want to start them up again, or at least at the same pace as I did before...which is to say, only when I am not familiar with the word or think of something funny to say about it.  It would be more of a "Word of the Every Now and Then" in the latter case.


middling adjective [mid-ling]

1. mediocre; ordinary; commonplace; pedestrian: The restaurant's entrées are no better than middling.

2. medium, moderate, or average in size, quantity, or quality: The returns on such a large investment may be only middling.

Middling reminds of of when I first got online and found the chat rooms. I thought they were really cool, having the ability to talk with people from all over the world.   I popped in one day and was immediately greeted by several of the regulars.  Here's a part of one conversation:

Some person:  Hi, Mike!  How have ya been?
Me:  Oh, fair to middling.
Some person: LOL
Another person:  Actually, it's not "middling".
Me: Oh? What's it supposed to be? 
Same another person: It's MIDLAND, like the town in Texas.

The conversation went on for a good bit, me telling the other person that it was "middling", just like the definition - mediocre, ordinary.  The other person said it was an old saying by pilots trained in Texas during WWII;  they would ask on the radio how the weather was and the base would come back "Fair to Midland."

Sheesh.  Would they say that if there was a thunderstorm there?  Good grief.

March 16, 2015

anatidaephobia

Anatidaephobia is the fear that somewhere in the world there is a duck watching you.


March 13, 2015

triskaidekaphobia

Bump from 6/13. See following comment.


Another bump from 2010. Hope it's not unlucky to bring up old posts.

Another "bump" from a year ago.

At least I'm topical in my reruns.


triskaidekaphobia \tris-ky-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\ , noun:
1. Fear or a phobia concerning the number 13.


No pithy comment (not that my comments on these words are really ever pithy) on today's word, but it reminded me of a post about Friday the 13th.

It's not pithy, either. Like I said, I don't write much of anything that's pithy.

That might be because I'm constantly pithed off.

March 4, 2015

Why English is Such a Difficult Language

From the Photobucket archives:


1.) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France.

Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write  - but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?

One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?

Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.

That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.


P.S. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?

February 21, 2015

Longest Word in English

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

There are longer words, but that is the longest in a major dictionary.

January 5, 2015

rallentando



rallentando\ rah-luhn-TAHN-doh; It. rahl-len-TAHN-daw \ , adjective

1. slackening; becoming slower (used as a musical direction).


As I grow older, I'm more prone to rallentando.

I still like music, though.

January 3, 2015

niveous



niveous \ NIV-ee-uhs \ adjective

1. resembling snow, especially in whiteness; snowy.


It's cold here and we were supposed to get some frozen precipitation, but thank goodness there's nothing resembling snow on the ground.


December 27, 2014

No Words

Sorry, my Word of the Day module has disappeared from the right-hand column.  I went to the website to see if they had discontinued it or changed the code/script used to embed it, but it doesn't look like that's the case.  I used the contact form to ask about it but haven't heard back. (not surprising, since it's the holidays) 

If I can't get it back, then I'll try to find another one.  I really enjoy posting about unusual words or those I've never seen or heard.

December 26, 2014