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favourite words... in any language

2456

Comments

  • possibilitiespossibilities PNW, WA State Veteran


    hyperbole. (which i used to think, as a child, was pronounced 'hyperbowl'....:D )

    OH? LOL I just looked up the proper pronunciation ..... (thanks!)
    vinlyn
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    these are weird....

    Calumny

    Ignominy
  • sagacious

    mugwamp

    festoon

    blandishment

    azimuth

    flabbergasted

    unctuous

    what in sam hill ?!

    semaphore
  • 'Sillage'...pronounced 'see-yahj'. French for the trail of scent left by someone wearing perfume.

    *sigh*

    ;)
  • zidanguszidangus Veteran
    edited March 2012
    Well for me you cannot beat a bit of "Aalreet",

    which means "Hello" or "are you alright" in my mother tongue Geordie :D

    There is a funny translator if any one is interested. I think they are missing a lot of words though !

    http://www.geordie.org.uk/cgi-bin/dialect_convert.pl

    here is an example of the difference between English and Geordie, pure class :D

    English

    Please mother don't embarass me.
    Do you know what I mean?
    OK, I have had enough, I am going to the bar.
    Who's in the lavatory?
    Be carefull or we will crash into something.

    Geordie

    How man mutha man.
    Ye knaa what ah mean leik.
    Eeeh man, ahm gannin te the booza.
    Whees i' the netty?
    Gan canny or we'll dunsh summick.






  • verklempt

    meshugganah

    chutzpa

  • ToshTosh Veteran
    edited March 2012
    Well for me you cannot beat a bit of "Aalreet",

    which means "Hello" or "are you alright" in my mother tongue Geordie :D

    There is a funny translator if any one is interested. I think they are missing a lot of words though !

    http://www.geordie.org.uk/cgi-bin/dialect_convert.pl

    here is an example of the difference between English and Geordie, pure class :D

    English

    Please mother don't embarass me.
    Do you know what I mean?
    OK, I have had enough, I am going to the bar.
    Who's in the lavatory?
    Be carefull or we will crash into something.

    Geordie

    How man mutha man.
    Ye knaa what ah mean leik.
    Eeeh man, ahm gannin te the booza.
    Whees i' the netty?
    Gan canny or we'll dunsh summick.




    Hoy the hamma ower here man! (Please pass me the hammer).

    Divint hockle on the flair. (No spitting on the floor)

    Thatsa canny ballgoon your lass is gorron (The dress your young lady is wearing is delightful).

    From a fellow Geordie!

    American guy tries to speak Geordie:



    :D
  • DakiniDakini Veteran
    I use 'whence' a lot....
    I have a question about this. How do you (I mean, you, personally) use it? A lot of people say "from whence". But isn't that redundant? "From" is built in to "whence".

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    Precisely so.
    Glad you pointed that out, I should have included it in my 'gripes' post....
    It's -
    "Begone, whence you came!"
    NOT -
    "Begone from whence you came!"
  • @Tosh haha, it just goes to show that it takes years and years of practice to be able to speak with the best accent in the world :thumbsup:
  • zombiegirlzombiegirl beating the drum of the lifeless in a dry wasteland Veteran
    edited March 2012
    I have this theory that every author loves the word "clandestine" (or clandestinely)
    You will see it one time in almost every book, I swear. But just once... because more than that and it sounds like you're just trying to sound smart.

    I really really like the word "dichotomy"
    Sometimes I feel like I'm still that AP Lit nerd deep down because I get excited when I can work the perfect vocab word into conversation.
  • zombiegirlzombiegirl beating the drum of the lifeless in a dry wasteland Veteran
    Okay, I will probably regret posting this as well, but I really like the word "cunt"
    In fact, I read an entire book on the topic of cunt and what a great word it is (Cunt: The Declaration of Independence by Inga Musico).
    Eve Ensler has an entire skit devoted to the word cunt in The Vagina Monologues.

    It's a great word and it doesn't mean quite what you think. Like other things in history, it is a word claimed and made negative in order to give a demeaning meaning to what the word originally stood for.
    "Cuneiform", the most ancient form of writing, derives from "kunta" meaning "female genitalia" in Sumerian of ancient Iraq. "Kunta" is "woman" in several Near Eastern and African languages and a Mother Tongue that is being compiled by linguists today. It was also spelled "quna," which is the root of "queen." Since priestesses were known to be accountants/administrators of Temple of Inanna in Sumeria c.3100 B.C. when Cuneiform was first used, it is highly likely that cuneiform was "the sign of the kunta" who kept the books (clay tablets) for the temple economy/redistribution of wealth that evolved from communal economics of ancient mother-cultures.

    So when an abuser calls a woman a "cunt" he is actually calling her a "queen who invented writing and numerals."
  • Apropos

    Ergo

  • @zombiegirl thanks now I have anew name for lady female parts.

    "My kunta, your kunta,her kunta, our kunta "
  • "Hypnertomachia portofilio"

    By an over sexed monk

    Nebuchadnezzar ...I think I'm going to name my first child that.


  • I like "thee " and a bit less I like , "thou"; but I like both and wish there was a place outside a Menonite community I might work them into the conversation.

  • I like "heart's content"
    and "longing."
  • I like "balm "
  • Free
  • possibilitiespossibilities PNW, WA State Veteran
    lamaramadingdong
    MaryAnne
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    Trust a woman to lower the tone....... :rolleyes: :D

    Eponymous

    Ubiquitous

    (why can't the letter 'Q' ever be used on its own, without the 'U'...?? The only time I've ever seen it on its own, is in the name of the city - Qatar!)
  • Schizophrenia ... Such a fun word that starts off sharp and edgy, but finishes smooth and sexy. I don't like when people just say "schizo" , it's like flying a kite with no tail.
  • zenffzenff Veteran
    “Warempel!”
    When I looked out the window of the apartment where I lived years ago; first thing I would see was a big sign saying “Warempel”.
    Google translates it as “sure enough”.
    As a single word it’s an exclamation of surprise.
    But I’d say the expression is “oubollig”.
    I looked for the translation of that adjective; jocular, waggish, corny?

    I just know a few hundred English words. This thread makes me painfully aware.
    :(
  • ToshTosh Veteran
    Okay, I will probably regret posting this as well, but I really like the word "cunt"
    In fact, I read an entire book on the topic of cunt and what a great word it is (Cunt: The Declaration of Independence by Inga Musico).
    Eve Ensler has an entire skit devoted to the word cunt in The Vagina Monologues.

    It's a great word and it doesn't mean quite what you think. Like other things in history, it is a word claimed and made negative in order to give a demeaning meaning to what the word originally stood for.
    "Cuneiform", the most ancient form of writing, derives from "kunta" meaning "female genitalia" in Sumerian of ancient Iraq. "Kunta" is "woman" in several Near Eastern and African languages and a Mother Tongue that is being compiled by linguists today. It was also spelled "quna," which is the root of "queen." Since priestesses were known to be accountants/administrators of Temple of Inanna in Sumeria c.3100 B.C. when Cuneiform was first used, it is highly likely that cuneiform was "the sign of the kunta" who kept the books (clay tablets) for the temple economy/redistribution of wealth that evolved from communal economics of ancient mother-cultures.

    So when an abuser calls a woman a "cunt" he is actually calling her a "queen who invented writing and numerals."
    That word isn't just used for females. A sergeant once explained to me in training, after he mistakenly called me the 'C word', that I was in fact not one of those. He said 'Cs' were useful and performed a function, whereas I was useless and a waste of rations.

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    @zenff, don't worry....check this out....
    The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).

    This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    Okay, I will probably regret posting this as well, but I really like the word "cunt"
    In fact, I read an entire book on the topic of cunt and what a great word it is (Cunt: The Declaration of Independence by Inga Musico).
    Eve Ensler has an entire skit devoted to the word cunt in The Vagina Monologues.

    It's a great word and it doesn't mean quite what you think. Like other things in history, it is a word claimed and made negative in order to give a demeaning meaning to what the word originally stood for.
    "Cuneiform", the most ancient form of writing, derives from "kunta" meaning "female genitalia" in Sumerian of ancient Iraq. "Kunta" is "woman" in several Near Eastern and African languages and a Mother Tongue that is being compiled by linguists today. It was also spelled "quna," which is the root of "queen." Since priestesses were known to be accountants/administrators of Temple of Inanna in Sumeria c.3100 B.C. when Cuneiform was first used, it is highly likely that cuneiform was "the sign of the kunta" who kept the books (clay tablets) for the temple economy/redistribution of wealth that evolved from communal economics of ancient mother-cultures.

    So when an abuser calls a woman a "cunt" he is actually calling her a "queen who invented writing and numerals."
    could you give us a source, @zombiegirl, because i have a different source/origin....

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    edited March 2012
    I HATE:

    burglarized -

    FYI:
    The already long-term existing word 'burgled', has been perfectly adequate up to now - why suddenly create a new word for something that's already taken care of?

    Expiration date:

    FYI:
    The word is 'expiry' .... "expiry date" - is on everything with an expiry date, in the UK...what the hell does 'expiration' have to do with it?

    We don't say - the ticket expirationed on the 10th....
    We say it expired on the 10th.... !

    Jeesh, USA - if it ain't broke - don't fix it!!

    :screwy: :lol:
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    Lugubrious.
    Does exactly what it says on the tin.

    Eponymous.

    doesn't.
  • zombiegirlzombiegirl beating the drum of the lifeless in a dry wasteland Veteran
    edited March 2012


    could you give us a source, @zombiegirl, because i have a different source/origin....

    It's actually from a book called "Stone Age Divas" by Gloria Bertonis. I wish I still had my copy of Cunt: A Declaration of Independence because they talk about it in there as well.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    edited March 2012
    Well, it's possible they're wrong.
    I have found that the word Kunta is an acient norse word, meaning.... what you said. :o:D
    this also came up in a search:
    The Kounta people are a Berber-Arab ethnic group of Sahrawi (of Sahara) Bedouins....
    http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=kunta&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=6H5cT86pGubE0QXD7KDECQ&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=eca6a646aa0fe0a2&biw=1092&bih=541

    but nowhere can i find reference to the peoples mentioned in the extract.

    the origin of the word 'cuneiform' originates from the shape of the reed first used to make literal shapes....

    http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=cuneiform&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=fIBcT9-OBoGo8QOsnPTaDg&sqi=2&ved=0CCsQkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=eca6a646aa0fe0a2&biw=1092&bih=541

    it's like the word 'misadrist'. it sounds archaic, scholarly and learned, but is actually as recent as this century.....
  • Invincible_summerInvincible_summer Heavy Metal Dhamma We(s)t coast, Canada Veteran
    Oh I remember another one... in Mandarin, the word for "immediately" is "mǎshàng" (Trad: 馬上 / Simp: 马上). Mǎ means "horse," and shàng means "on top of." "Getting on top of a horse" is the equivalent of "immediately!" I think that's really cool/funny!
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    there are dozens of sayings in the UK associated with equestrianism and the Navy - both activities we are hugely proud of....

    but i think English is the language with the most idioms... i have not come across another language that is as lyrical or poetic...
    even though 'classic Italian is beautiful, it's got more to do with the way literature is phrased.
  • zenffzenff Veteran
    Tax audit.
    I just love those words!
  • I DON'T! :sawed:
    Tax audit.
    I just love those words!
  • far-fetched isn't used that much anymore. I use to like the word 'quench' as well. That is sometimes used however.
  • genkakugenkaku Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
    Caterwauling.
  • Willy- Nilly!

    over younder.

    Howdy!

    Gig 'em
  • wench, hither, dither, wainscotting
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    edited March 2012
    I love the difference between 'wether' and whether'....
    so many people get it wrong, and it makes me smile.....

    (No, look it up. Consider it English Language homework.....) ;)
  • Guilty!

    Can you still say "my dog ate my homework? "
    I love the difference between 'wether' and whether'....
    so many people get it wrong, and it makes me smile.....

    (No, look it up. Consider it English Language homework.....) ;)
  • I like the way the British pronounce aluminum.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    Of course... providing you have a dog, and it did indeed eat your homework.
    otherwise it's wrong speech.
    so there. :orange:
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    "Aluminium" is the correct spelling and pronunciation. it came from a simple advertising blunder, where the second 'i' was omitted, in error, by an American sign writer....
  • personperson Don't believe everything you think The liminal space Veteran
    There was an English teacher in my highschool that really like the word goodly. Those of us in the know would try to work it into papers we had to do for him. He usually commented on the use of the word. We figured he gave us a better grade for it too, who knows if he actually did or not.
  • battleaxe and hag
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    There was an English teacher in my highschool that really like the word goodly. Those of us in the know would try to work it into papers we had to do for him. He usually commented on the use of the word. We figured he gave us a better grade for it too, who knows if he actually did or not.
    Conversely, our teacher hated the over-use of the word 'nice'....

    she said it was namby-pamby and neutrally descriptive. She wanted more 'meat on the bone'.....

    she was wonderful.....
  • There was an English teacher in my highschool that really like the word goodly. Those of us in the know would try to work it into papers we had to do for him. He usually commented on the use of the word. We figured he gave us a better grade for it too, who knows if he actually did or not.
    Conversely, our teacher hated the over-use of the word 'nice'....

    she said it was namby-pamby and neutrally descriptive. She wanted more 'meat on the bone'.....

    she was wonderful.....
    Aww, I bet that was nice
  • SileSile Veteran
    edited March 2012
    My first Russian teacher admitted he majored in the language after hearing word карандаш (ka-ran-DASH), "pencil."

    The word is actually Turkish in origin...go figure!!

    Personally, I always adored "plethora," which throughout youth I thought was pronounced ple-THOR-a. I have begrudgingly learnt to relove it despite the disappointing reality of PLETH-or-a.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    edited March 2012
    My first Russian teacher admitted he majored in the language after hearing word карандаш (ka-ran-DASH), "pencil."

    The word is actually Turkish in origin...go figure!!

    Personally, I always adored "plethora," which throughout youth I thought was pronounced ple-THOR-a. I have begrudgingly learnt to relove it despite the disappointing reality of PLETH-or-a.
    Why 'disappointing'?

    When you discover the origin of words, it's fascinating, and only right to pronounce them as originally introduced.... isn't it?

    I wondered where the Swiss got their 'Caran d'Ache' from!

    http://www.carandache.ch/m/index.lbl
  • What is that word in Spanish that refers to a boy or small boy beginning with 'P'? It is aso a name I think, I remember liking the sound of that word. Also said in a strong Italian accent pazzo!
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