“Pipe down?”
...when the writer means to say 'exacerbate' - drives me nuts. Saw this today on a nursing web site while trying to research something about coronavirus ad closed the tab in disgust
“Pipe down?”
That's hilarious. Worst fake southern accent I've ever heard.
fomites-"objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture."
("Early 19th century from Latin, plural of fomes, literally ‘touchwood, tinder’.")
[redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.
A great word when pronounced properly (Foam-ih-tees, not Foh-mights).
The improper singular (Foh-might) annoys me. The proper singular (Foe-mees) is almost never used. I may be the only person in our institution who uses it. English speakers have a real problem with the idea that a word that ends in "s" could be singular.
Along those lines, nares (Nair-ease) is the proper pronunciation of the medical word that means "nostrils." It's singular, naris (Nair-iss) also ends in "s."
I absolutely cannot stand it when doctors just remove the "s" from the plural and use "nare." There is no such thing as a nare. If you can't say it correctly, why not just say nostril?
OK, now the coronavirus pandemic has unearthed (or created) another word that I have grown to loathe in a very short amount of time.
Granularity.
Oh, and granular.
The way these words are being tossed about in the press briefings you would think they were either being paid for each use or perhaps that they had a side bet on about who could say them the most times. Blech!
I have no problem with the word granular in its traditional meaning; viz., "resembling or consisting of small grains or particles."
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
got a new one the other day, which surprised me: graupel.
I follow the weather closely, like to geek out on the National Weather Service discussions, but I had no clue what they were talking about when they issued a Hazardous Weather statement for graupel...huh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel
Once I looked it up, I knew what they were talking about...also called "soft hail" or snow pellets...just had another graupel flurry moments ago, tiny little balls that look like styrofoam...graupel is evidently German for sleet, but it's nothing like sleet...
If you're a weather geek, check out the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang. Even if you don't care about DC weather, they look at a lot of other areas and weather phenomena.
-jk
^ good stuff. I don't know if it's even possible any more, but our National Weather Service office in our airport was happy to have people pop in and see what they do...really interesting people...getting by, in many cases, with equipment that is absolutely ancient...
Reading Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" (if you are an old-timer, you might know it better as "Remembrance of Things Past"). In any case, I have found several great words over the past couple of weeks. Here I report just two of these:
1) crapulous. I had never heard this before, but apparently it is well known enough that there are t-shirts with this word on it. If you are among the uninitiated, it means "caused by or showing the effects of alcohol." From the Latin crapulosus meaning excessive drinking, inebriation, intoxication. This seems too good to be true, but it is actually true. You could look it up.
2) gimcrack. "Flimsy or poorly made but deceptively attractive." As a noun, it means "a cheap and showy ornament; a knickknack."
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
Learned a new word today, so time to bump the thread.
Pareidoliac, who is someone prone to pareidolia, which is the tendency for incorrect perception of a stimulus as an object, pattern or meaning known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music. Beatles fans take note.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
It is a subcategory of apophenia (another new word), which is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. See a lot of that nowadays.
Credit to the article that brought this new word to my universe:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ucg?li=BBnb7Kz
I still like “ Ya’ll “..."or “Y’all” or “You all”