Interesting Words (moved from Games)

E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

You have a Bulgarian boss with whom you speak a sort of Slavic mush?
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

That reminds me that the Irish refer to grocery shopping as 'messages', which I can't believe isn't deliberately designed to confuse other anglophones. 'Have you got your messages?' 'What messages?' Minutes of endless fun.
 
 

Imperfacundus

Reprobatissimus

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patronus

Yes his English is decent but we have fun learning each other's language bit by bit. Pretty much a Slavic mush in practice.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
A French word that I like: outrecuidance. Just like the funny quaint sound of it. Not a word you hear much.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Hundseofontigseofonfeald.

Old English, meaning "seventy-seven-fold".
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
σκοταῖος, "in the dark", but as an adjective. As if when you said "I woke up in the dark", you had an adjective, like "beautiful" or whatever, instead of "in the dark", but with the meaning of "in the dark". I find it adorable to express that with an adjective. Greek, like Latin, uses adjectives in some situations where English would use an adverb or adverbial phrase. But Latin doesn't have this one.
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

'Darkling' is an English adverb, as in Keats' 'darkling I listen'. Even if most people think it's the gerund of the nonexistent 'darkle'.

Edit: yes, I know it's not an adjective. But it's not a typical adverb either.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
'Darkling' is an English adverb, as in Keats' 'darkling I listen'. Even if most people think it's the gerund of the nonexistent 'darkle'.

Edit: yes, I know it's not an adjective. But it's not a typical adverb either.
Oh, that's adorable too.

It seems to be a survival of a class of adverbs in -unga/-inga that used to be quite common back in Old English.
 
 

Imperfacundus

Reprobatissimus

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patronus

One of my all-time favorite Georgian words is chiamchvelachamia. It means 'anteater', where chhiamchvela is 'ant' and -chamia is the 'eater' part. But the word 'ant' itself literally means bug-eater (chia-mchvela). So an anteater is a bug-eater-eater.

Another one is virtxa meaning 'rat'. It really, really sounds like a combination of viri 'donkey' and txa, 'goat'. I can only assume it's a coincidence, but one wonders at the medieval georgian conception of biology.
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

The OED says that 'grapefruit' is so called because it grows in clusters, which sounds dubious, but its first quotation says the name comes from the similar taste of the two fruits, which is even more so.

Any excuse to mention niedźwiedź again.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Irrumabiliter.

Cute adverb found in a Pompeian graffito. Meaning "face-fuckingly", if you will.
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

Bears are clever animals indeed. It's a good thing that their pursuits are mainly limited to fish and honey.
And tearing irritating children to bits.

Bill Bryson says somewhere that you're supposed to play dead if you encounter a black bear, but climb a tree if it's a brown one. He also says that you're probably not going to remember this when it becomes critical, and more worryingly, the bears themselves sometimes forget the script as well.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
I also quite like the Greek verb θαρρεῖν, "to have/take courage". It's nice to express that with simply one verb.
 
Top