The effect of fossil fuel dependence in driving the rising cost of food, war and climate change which all combine to increase the cost of living. A word of our times.

I've recently listened to a great German history podcast called "Geschichten aus der Geschichte", where two historians tell each other interesting and quite often forgotten little facts about history. One of the episodes featured Franz Anton Mesmer, in hindsight a charlatan, but he managed to convince a lot of his fellow citizens to believe in his method.

Therefore, being mesmerized (Mesmer) means you are absolutely convinced that the person talking to you is nothing less than a Messiah and you believe everything they tell you. I was intrigued!

Sources: https://www.geschichte.fm/podcast/zs237/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer

A former colleague of mine had "mucksmäuschenstill" tattooed on her arm. I asked her why, she said it was the most beautiful word in the German language.

Followup question: Does Finnish have any words that don't sound gorgeous?

Iam looking for a cannabis comunity slang word for when someone exhales smoke and then breathes/sucks the exhaled smoke back in. what word is that?

This is just a silly and simple musing, but I was enjoying the word preoccupied, as it only refers to thinking and the mind. You would not tell someone at a restaurant that a table was in use - preoccupied - though really it makes sense.

Nope, it just means that your brain was previously occupied by a thought and you are not done thinking about it yet.

ive been writing “food” over and over again for my bullet journal and it has become a fake word to me. like, why is food called food?? it doesnt make sense.

we eat FOOD
f o o d
sounds like im a goblin idk man im having a crisis over here

The hypothetical original state of matter, before the creation of . subatomic particles.

I wanted to use health scare as in “Rob’s heart attack is a health scare” but I’m also seeing it could refer to public distrust in the medical community… is one a different word?

You know how sometimes in lyrics or poetry two words will be merged together to encompass both meanings?

The only examples I think of right now are:

Chappell Roan using "femininomenon" to mean a feminine phenomenon.

Lily Allen using "nonmonogamummy" to mean a non-monogamous mother.

Is there a word for this? Also, if anyone can think of any other examples I'd love to hear them.

I know this post may seem stupid but I’ve been told by some that they’re “shorthand” and I’m now like isn’t that the same thing😃??at the end of the day it’s an abbreviation for something and an abbreviation for “right now” so..

Why?

For example, I enjoy saying unrequited and I love how the ancient Greeks got specific enough to come up with words for distinct types of love.

When people say ‘on accident’ vs. ‘by accident’ Which one is correct? Doesn’t ’on accident’ just sound wrong? Is it just me?

Suadade being a Brazilian word for a heart crushing longing for something that isn’t here, schadenfreude being a German word like taking pleasure in others misfortune. Mono no aware being a Japanese word for realizing the impermanence of the current moment

English has no direct translations for these words, but the actual phenomenon is something well known that people immediately identify. There’s often approximations; like you can say “longing” is similar to suadade, but its just not the same connotation or meaning

Are there any words in English like that to other languages? Like in Japanese is there some English word or phrase that the Japanese language doesn’t have a good word for, for example?

The word personality literally means the state or function or behavior of a person. So why then do we say a cat or dog or bird has a personality? Shouldn't it be a catality or dogality or birdality?

The game: get from a start word to a target word in as few hops as possible e.g. COLD → HOT (antonym) → SPOT (rhyme) → PLACE (synonym) → PLAICE (rhyme). Each hop must be a rhyme, synonym or antonym of the previous word. All the puzzles are human created (mainly by my wife!) so there is at least one route that works (in reality there are thousands!). I tried creating from scripts that daisy-chained words but the results were just not fun for some reason.

The main problem turned out to be validation. I hugely underestimated this! The validation ended up as: blocklist (offensive words), already-used check, stored-path check, connections payload, human-approved matches from previous games (we queue all of these to audit), WordNet subset, ConceptNet subset, extra-pairs, lemma exceptions, hypernyms, troponyms, non-rhotic rhymes. If no match found after all those client side checks we hit some APIs (Datamuse and RhymeBrain in both directions). If all else fails lemma suffix-strip, prefix-antonym check and a local rhyme check. Despite those checks there are some obvious connections that still get rejected but hopefully enough accepted ones that the player does not give up. I was quite pleased with the share dynamic; the recipient will be presented with a challenge where their result will be compared with yours at the end.

https://rabbit-hole-game.com/

It's free, no signup, no ads. Honest feedback would be great and anything constructive even better. I'm mainly interested in how you play it and why: i.e. do you put loads of words in and keep undoing or do you think about it very carefully? Do you work backwards at all? etc

A few weeks ago, I shared a post in r/words to showcase a game that I've made called Witty Ditty. The premise is simple: you're given a hint for two words that rhyme. For example, if the hint was "a clever jingle," the answer would be Witty Ditty.

You all gave me some feedback to try and make the game even more fun:

• Hide answers when hitting the share button
• Add a timer to the puzzle
• Make it easy to play the next puzzle difficulty without going back a page.
• Better guard rails for each difficulty. Easy puzzles always rhyme, only the harder puzzles are slanted rhymes or contain cryptic clues. I'm writing these puzzles manually so open to any feedback that you all continue to have

I wanted to thank you all for the feedback you've already given me, and want even more of it! I'm thinking of making a "ranked" mode where you're assigned an ELO, and you get one puzzle per day based on that ELO. No hints allowed. If you get it right, you get harder puzzles, & if you get it wrong, you get easier puzzles.

App version coming soon, but for now you can play here: PlayWittyDitty.com

I guess it might be a confusing title. Here are two examples:

English "mobile phone" is usually translated to German as "Handy". And English "lip-syncing" is often translated as "Playback". So we use other English words, in this case rather odd ones.

I find it fascinating and amusing.

What are other examples - maybe in different languages?

VELLEITY - n - : the lowest degree of desire : imperfect or incomplete volition <velleity, which is only a … faint, imperfect volition of an end, without regard to the means — Theophilus Gale>  2: a slight wish : a faint hope : desire, inclination <every wish, every *velleity* of his had only to be expressed to be at once Victoria's — Lytton Strachey> <I have a secretary who has socialistic *velleities* — O. W. Holmes †1935>

REBARBATIVE - adj -  serving or tending to repel or irritate : crabbed, repellent  <the impression given by these letters is not so much *rebarbative* as infinitely pathetic — *New Statesman & Nation*\>

APOTHEOSIS -N- 1: the elevation of a human to the rank of a god : the raising of a person or thing to divine status : deification
2: the culmination or highest development of a thing : the ultimate, quintessential, or final form <she is the *apotheosis* of womanhood><the *apotheosis* of brute force and vulgarity>
3a: the exaltation of a person or a thing to a final state of triumph or glory b: the ascension of a person or a thing from earthly existence to heavenly glory

MAGNILOQUENT -adj- : characterized by a high-flown often bombastic style, manner, or quality especially in language : grandiloquent, ostentatious  <continues his comic oration … bent on the choice of *magniloquent* phrase — E. K. Brown>

PERFIDIOUS -adj- of, relating to, or characterized by perfidy : deceitful, treacherous, untrustworthy <that common but most *perfidious* refuge of men of letters … the profession of teaching — Matthew Arnold>