Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with words

Nobody uses "queer" to mean "odd" anymore

cross_impact — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:05:50 -0800

What is the name of the phenomenon where words lose their original meaning once they take on an off-color meaning? For instance isn't it queer that nobody describes themselves as "gay" anymore unless they are homosexual or are deliberately being provocative? I know there's a term for that phenomenon because I had to learn it in my freshman linguistics class in college. But that was twenty-six years ago and my Google-Fu fails me. Help!

Bonus: Is there a complete list of those words somewhere? Or do you have a personal favorite?

serious business!

streetdreams — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:20:04 -0800

Is there a word for a person who has been subpoenaed? If two people are subpoenaed, they are called co-...? They're not co-defendants. Is there an equivalent?

Help me find a site that people list their favorite words on

debu — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:14:47 -0800

I bookmarked a site years ago that was all about people listing their favorite words - sort of like "delicious" but for word nerds. Does anyone have a clue what this is? thanks

Help me find a word

arcticwoman — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:01:28 -0800

Is there a term which people use to explain why people behave badly/differently in unfamiliar surroundings? For example, tourists behaving badly on vacations.

What's a good word for "a good thing before I'm ready for it?"

ferociouskitty — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:20:58 -0800

I'm looking for a somewhat poetic word or phrase (in any language) that describes "a good thing that's happening too soon" or "a good thing that happened before I was ready for it" or something like that. I'm making a gift for my friends' baby. They conceived before they'd planned, the baby is early, and she prompted several other changes that are good for both of them, but happened before they thought they'd have to make them. (Home remodeling, health stuff, etc.) So "a good thing before we're ready" has generally been the theme of the pregnancy. Are there any lovely turns of phrase that express this concisely?

Believe it or not, George isn't at home!

nomnomnom — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:19:07 -0800

I always hate my voicemail / answering machine message. I feel really lame whenever I say any of the little scripts I have heard or thought up. NEW VOICEMAIL MESSAGE SCRIPTS please! All ideas welcome, from simple to funny to irreverant. (Or even pre-recorded messages I could download, good songs, anything!)

Why is "win" often implicitly considered a conditional verb?

wackybrit — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 06:46:01 -0800

Grammarians: Is it OK to take liberties with the word "win" when publicizing a contest or draw? I see a lot of competitions that use phrases like these to get people's attention:

- Leave a comment on our blog and win an Amazon gift voucher.
- Design a logo and win $500
- Tell your friends about [store name] and win $100 in store credit

This "and win" wording bugs me because the "win" is speculative or conditional, but no words are stating this (for example, "Design a logo to be in with a chance to win $500" or "Leave a comment on our blog, you could win an Amazon gift voucher" make the speculation pretty clear). If you changed "and win" to "and get" in the above examples, people would be rightly peeved if they didn't get X for doing Y - so why is "win" implicitly considered conditional where "get" would not be?

I understand why in something like "Win $100" it's conditional because "win" is imperative, but when you say "do X and win Y," there's a "do X" and then "win Y" cause and effect (in my mind).

My interest in this is two fold. First, I'd like to run some contests and use this sort of snappy wording, but I'm worried about the ethics of it. Is this sort of wording ethical/legal? Second, I love the English language and am intrigued if this sort of implied conditionality is actually popular with other verbs (or has a name) and I'm just being obtuse! :-)

Is there a word for wondering if there's a word for something?

penciltopper — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:33:56 -0800

Is there a word for wondering if there's a word for things? I do that a lot. In the list I keep of potential AskMefi questions, I'm seeing a lot of "is there a word for..." items, and I find that I'm prone to that thought a lot.

I'd think with things like Urban Dictionary et al, that teh intertubes would be a good place to either source words or get consensus on calling something by a particular word.

The old thing of Sniglets, and the newer phenomenon of Santorum would seem to bear this out.

So I guess my question is
1) where to look for "yes, there is a word for that, and it is _____"
2) if there's a name for the behavior of wondering about / looking for / coining names or new words.

Less Than Total RecallFilter: What's the Word I'm Thinking Of?

foxy_hedgehog — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:37:27 -0800

Holy vocabulary crisis, Batman! My thirty-something brain has gone soft and I forgot a word I used to know. Can you help? It's a word for presenting or seeing something as better than it is. It's not optimistic, or pollyan-aish. It's in some tip-of-my-tongue classified department of my brain right now and I can't get it back. I have a feeling in may end in "istic" but I am not sure.

Oh god the agony. Thanks so much for any and all thoughts.

"I don't see my feelings changing anytime soon" - What does that mean, exactly?

thermonuclear.jive.turkey — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:15:22 -0800

"I don't see my feelings changing anytime soon" - What does that mean, exactly? I have a question on word useage...

What does the phrase, "I don't see my feelings changing anytime soon", actually mean?

1. my feelings won't change, ever - and this is simply a polite way of expressing it?

2. my feelings are as stated, but I'm leaving the door open they might change at some later date?

3. related to #2, if I said this ("I don't see...") would you take it that there's a hint of doubt in my mind, that my feelings indeed aren't necessarily final?

4. something else?

And might this depend on the speaker, and the situation, and not have an absolute context?

(I think it was a character in Alice in Wonderland who said he could make a word mean whatever he wanted it to mean. Is this one of those things?)

Is there some sort of service that will tell you how long it will take to read a certain number of words?

rileyray3000 — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:49:41 -0800

Giving a speech filter: IS there any online service or program that you can put in a block of text and it will tell approximately you how long it'll take to read it out loud? So I'm giving a speech next week that's got to be five minutes long. I'm usually better at writing these things out ahead of time. And I have no problem with the public speaking. I just want to know how many words I should shoot for with five minutes.

I realize I could just record myself and then trim but I really don't want to put in that much effort. It's not a super important speech. Just one that's supposed to go a pretty set time.

So is there any online service that estimates these things? I realize I could always put it in a speech synthesizer and time it but I'm hoping there's something little more cut and paste.

Does this exist?

Detailed etymological dictionary?

Tchad — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:01:45 -0800

Does a comprehensive etymological dictionary exist that crosses languages? I am looking for an etymological dictionary, but one that spans multiple languages.

Of the two I own now, one of them is very straightforward. It gives the word, then one or two roots. Sometimes it gives a third root or a proposed theoretical root. The other defines the word, and then gives a short story about the word's origin.

What I am looking for is something like the two of them combined but also with derivations in other languages.

So maybe the root for English "x" is in Latin "y", but Russian and German used "y" to form this other word "z" which means "n". Even better if it were to detail the structure of the root from which it was taken - as in "When Russian borrowed "y" to form "z" they used the ablative case, where the English borrowed the nominative".

I guess I am looking for an etymological dictionary that goes back a step or two, then turns and comes forward again in another place with lots of detail.

I know it would be a tall order, but does something like this exist? I have Googled, but cannot find anything this broad.

What's the word for the pithy retort thought of later?

swlabr — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:14:22 -0800

What's the word for the response, or phrase, or comeback, that you wish you had only thought of at the time?

Why can't I count the Fs?

doublehappy — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:52:25 -0800

I have lots of questions about an email FW: I have received many, many times. How many times does the letter F appear in the following sentence?

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

This is ridiculous. There are 6. Even when I know there are 6, I struggle to recount them. The email suggests that only the super-intelligent will count 6, and the rest of us are idiots. I am of, perhaps, slightly above average intelligence, at best, so this may be true.

Being of only slightly above average intelligence, I have lots of questions. Why? Why does our (forgive the simplification, for I don't know how brains work) language brain override our shape recognition brain? (When did language become more important to survival than shape recognition? Are they in fact the same thing?) Wouldn't this also mean that the more intelligent you are, the less Fs you will count, (if we accept language skills are a good measure of intelligence). I take it that this obviously doesn't work in languages where the pronunciation of F and V differs from English, among others (a couple of google searches suggest that the brain perceives'of' as 'ov'). The text is often presented with non-standard line breaks, and I haven't seen this online with different sentences. Is this a phenomenon that can be seen in other texts, or is specific to this particular sentence? Does this phenomenon have a name?

What is the best way to pluralise letters? It seems common to use an apostrophe, and according to a lecturer I had four years ago, this is okay with decades, for example, the 1980's, but it just feels wrong next to a single letter. It's a proper noun, right? So the pluralisation should just be a simple 's'.

Is language even the best tool to talk about language? (See how I accidentally used the word 'talk' in there, presupposing that the only way to have discourse about language is to use language? What's that, post-structuralism?) It seems strange to me that we would, as a species, have reached the best form of communication so early in our existence. Is language the killer app for Humans, alongside thought? (Are they the same thing in some ways?) You can talk about dancing, but you can't dance about it. You can think about talking, and you can talk about thinking.

Sorry - got a bit carried away there... I'll settle for an answer to 'Why can't I identify the Fs in 'OF'?

I have two B's, an S, a A, a C, and an E ... what do I do now?

anastasiav — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:12:30 -0800

How do I become a better Scrabble player? On my vacation, I got my ass handed to me by a really expert Scrabble player. Her tip for me was to play on a specific on-line site, which I've started doing. But my problem is still the same: I see the letters but can't make words out of them. The website offers me one hint per game, and that's all. And so I'm getting frustrated and not really any better.

Other than memorizing the list of two letter words, what can I do to become a better scrabble player?

Bash scripting problem

sbutler — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:29:56 -0800

Please hope me with a bash scripting problem. Involves: command substitution and word splitting. In my script I'm trying to wrap the curl command to give it a global retry value. So I have this.

When I call it like this, things seem to work:

retry_curl "http://example.org/file1.txt"

But I have one place where I want to call it like this:

LOCAL_CURLOPTS="--time-cond \"Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:12:12 -0500\""

retry_curl $LOCAL_CURLOPTS "http://example.org/file1.txt

And what I get on the console is:

curl: option -0500: is unknown

curl: try 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' for more information

So somewhere bash is breaking apart my LOCAL_CURLOPTS as words, and then using that in the command substitution. What I can't figure out is how to get it to stop.

I.T. Lingo

jasondigitized — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:57:08 -0800

Give me your best I.T. related words, phrases, and aphorisms. I have worked in a variety of companies, all of which seem to have some interesting lingo and vernacular. I am not looking for stuff like 'cookie', and 'firewall'. More along the lines of: 'Going Dark' - when developers grab a requirements document and disappear for months, 'Snowflake' - a server that has been modified to the point of being unique, fragile, and unrepeatable. Phrases would include things like 'The problem is between the chair and the keyboard', 'XYZ consulting is just a body shop', or 'Those legacy systems are sunsetting'. Help me collect colorful I.T. lingo and proverbs.

Wit in Romeo and Juliet

Non Prosequitur — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:50:21 -0800

Romeo & Juliet: I seem to remember a portion in the play where someone exhorts "wit" to help them out, or says they're running out of wit—but I can never find it when look through the stuff. Is it just a false memory, or maybe something mentioned very much in passing? I searched through the text again and maybe Romeo saying, "But 'tis no wit to go" is supposed to have a double meaning (we shouldn't go to the event, I have no wit remaining?)

Mercutio saying, "Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits faint": this just seems very straightforward; I'm looking for an exhortation, or a request of sorts ("help me out, Wit!")

What does "pea green pink Irish Catholic" mean?

MaudB — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:42:14 -0800

"Pea green pink Irish Catholic" - what, if anything, does this phrase mean and/or refer to? I'm editing the transcription of an interview with someone wherein he's talking about his relationship with his wife, an Irish Catholic. At one point he says, "she grew up in a very pea green pink Irish Catholic family, where everything is very dour and there isn’t a lot of adventure."

Has anyone ever heard that phrase, and if so, do you know what it means? I can't tell if it's a mistake in the transcript, or just something I don't know. Googling revealed nothing.

Struggle To Remember Exact Word Trick Helpers

ambient2 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:07:13 -0800

Was relating a couple mnemonics to a friend, words or common abbreviations that are spelled by using the first letters of a group of things. Those that came to mind: HOMES for the Great Lakes, A PAIL for types of wounds and ETC for people who attend religious services on Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Possibly shoddy Google-fu leaves me unable to find more (not the ROY G BIV variety), but here's hoping the Hive Mind can share some.

How do you pronounce "Gebeta"?

hdh — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:12:43 -0800

I'm a storyteller learning a story about a game that uses a Gebeta board. The game is similar to Mancala. I need to know how to pronounce the word "Gebeta", so I can be true to the story and its origins. Any ideas?

Deceptively Synonymous

Saxon Kane — Sun, 17 May 2009 11:40:16 -0800

Is there a term for words that seem like they should be antonyms but are actually synonymous? For example: Caregiver & Caretaker. I've seen words that contain opposite meanings (like 'cleave' or 'dust') referred to as contronyms, autoantonyms, and antagonyms.

But I can't find a name for words that should be opposites but actually mean the same thing. Please let me know if there is a specific grammatical term for it, or if you have a suggestion (I was thinking "Deceptive Synonyms"). Also, other examples besides "caregiver" and "caretaker"?

What's the word for...

mooreeasyvibe — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:02:39 -0800

Is there a word or term for someone who exaggerates things? Is there a word for someone who craves/needs sympathy? Hope you can help, I'm stumped on these.

Help Me Find The Words, They Mean Nothing!

ThaBombShelterSmith — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:11:22 -0800

SongFilter: My Superintendent Father-in-Law is putting together a program for his school's "Right to Read" Week and asked if I could help come up with some songs that incorporate "Words". I've come up with some, but I need some more help! Here is the email he sent me:

We're putting together a program at one of our schools during "Right to Read" week and want to have a one of our district performers play/sing covers of songs about WORDS!

So far, the list is pretty thin, including "Words," by the Bee Gees, "Across the Universe," by the Beatles, and "Conjunction Junction," we believe by Rockapella.

So if you have any 'Word" songs that come to mind from the last 2 1/2 decades and feel so inclined, let us know!

This is the list I sent him so far (just from searching my iTunes Library)

-"The Word" The Beatles (Rubber Soul)
-"Words" Guillemots (Red)
-"Words" Doves (The Last Broadcast)
-"All My Little Words" The Magnetic Fields (69 Love Songs Disc 1)
-"No Words" Neil Diamond
-"Land of a Thousand Words" Scissor Sisters (Ta-Dah)
-All of "Here Come the ABC's" by They Might Be Giants
-"Please Read the Letter" Robert Plant/Alison Krause (Raising Sand)
-"Put the Book Back on the Shelf" Belle and Sebastian (Push Barman to Open Old Wounds)
-"Wrapped Up In Books" Belle and Sebastian (Dear Catastrophe Waitress)
-"Picture Book" The Kinks
-"The Book I Write" Spoon (Stranger Than Fiction Soundtrack)
-"Open Book" Cake (Fashion Nugget)
-"A Book Unfinished" Iron and Wine
-"You Could Write a Book" Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (Pershing)
-"Six and Seven Books" Toots and the Maytals (Reggae Got Soul)

Since this is for a school function, language is a factor, but otherwise, what songs does the Hive Mind know that deal with words, reading, letters, and all things literary?

New Slang

god particle — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:25:08 -0800

I love slang and colloquialisms. Where can I go to pick up more? I'm very into slang and colloquialisms and will often make up my own in the middle of conversation. I'm interested in exposing myself to more via the internet. Where are some places I can go to pick up more? Urban Dictionary is alright, but I don't like its browsing system. I am less interested in non-American slang (including British slang). I remember there being some other sites kind of similar to Urban Dictionary where people would coin new words and vote on them, or something like that.
Also, slang dictionaries (the ones you buy in bookstores) are generally extremely outdated and contain phrases that I don't even consider to be slang anymore.