The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: side_show on May 27, 2012, 05:42:19 pm
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Ever have that experience where you know there should be a word or term for something, but there just isn't? Let's have a thread where we discuss the need for certain words, create words and/or refute that the appropriate word already exists.
I'll start us off:
The experience of waiting on a cellphone or other portable electronic device to complete charging so you can leave. I think there needs to be a word or term for that.
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Oh, yeah, I put one of those questions last week on Facebook: There ought to be a word for that modern feeling of disappointment when your blog gets linked to at a site with much more traffic and yet it doesn't end up making you famous.
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wombles: memeblocked?
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This is the job that sMets was born for.
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The experience of waiting on a cellphone or other portable electronic device to complete charging so you can leave. I think there needs to be a word or term for that.
Cell-sitting?
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Wired has "Jargon Watch," so if you come up with a term for something like that, maybe send it to them and see if it catches on.
The one I'd like to send it but haven't is "Facebook triangulation." That is when two people you are FB friends with through different channels turn out to be FB friends through a separate, third channel. For example, a high school friend and a co-worker turn out to have gone to college together.
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I don't know if I think there should be a word for this, but I think there is one in some other language. I don't know how to explain this without using an example:
so I just got a text message from my newly ex-GF's best friend telling me that she is reading 50 Shades of Grey in public and feels embarrassed. This conversation is two things:
-- we had talked about how weird it is that people are reading porn in public. Really intense porn.
-- Hey, dude, we are still friends even though you and my friend broke up
I often think of this kind of message as a thing men do who are not into emotions.
My two favorite words that English doesn't have are Kummerspeck (fat gained due to emotional eating-- literally "grief-bacon") and an Inuit word I can't remember. The second one is a word for when you are waiting for someone to arrive, and you can't get anything else done because you keep going to check the door.
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maybe she wants a ride on the inev train
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This thread is locked.
I'm afraid Rich Hall is going to sue.
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and an Inuit word I can't remember. The second one is a word for when you are waiting for someone to arrive, and you can't get anything else done because you keep going to check the door.
This is one of the worst things. The guy I play guitar with is usually 15 min-2 hours late, so, like, yeah, I am really bad at just sitting in my house waiting for him to show up and shit. Then he gets there and I am worn out from waiting.
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This is one of the worst things. The guy I play guitar with is usually 15 min-2 hours late, so, like, yeah, I am really bad at just sitting in my house waiting for him to show up and shit. Then he gets there and I am worn out from waiting.
Sounds like my in-laws. Ho!
Speaking of in-laws, what do you call two people who are vaguely related, but by two degrees of marital separation? So, like, my husband's sister's husband is my brother-in-law, and my brother's sister is my sister-in-law, but what are they to each other? Or what about my husband's brother's wife's brother, AKA my brother-in-law's brother-in-law? This is a Thing that Comes Up, because some of the extended extended family lives locally and often shows up at some point on Thanksgiving.
For a more commonplace example, what about the relationship between my parents and Pedro's parents? They share the same grandchildren, but there is no word for the familial relationship there. Not in English, anyway -- my FIL has told me the word they use for it in Argentina but I cannot for the life of me remember it right now.
Anyway, all these people who are incidentally-related-but-not-really...I call them "outlaws." But it doesn't seem to have caught on.
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The Indians I work with solved this problem pretty straight forward. Everyone outside of the main dad-mom-sister-brother-grandparents club is either an uncle or an auntie. The who is what to whom is kept in mind, but the title part is really simple.
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Anyway, all these people who are incidentally-related-but-not-really...I call them "outlaws." But it doesn't seem to have caught on.
When the in-laws get stretched out far enough like you're describing I start calling them outlaws.
Guess I spoke too soon.
The Indians I work with solved this problem pretty straight forward. Everyone outside of the main dad-mom-sister-brother-grandparents club is either an uncle or an auntie. The who is what to whom is kept in mind, but the title part is really simple.
I think that's what the do in Mexico, too. But doesn't that only apply to people who are a generation (or more) older? I think (in Mexico at least) they use "cousin" for anyone of the same generation or younger. IIRC.
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I think that's what the do in Mexico, too. But doesn't that only apply to people who are a generation (or more) older? I think (in Mexico at least) they use "cousin" for anyone of the same generation or younger. IIRC.
Yeah, cousin is the catch all for your generation and younger
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...that feeling of knowing the end has begun, especially applied to the life of a creature or person. Premourning? That doesn't seem poetic enough.
My elderly cat is showing signs of moving towards his end. He expelled his anal gland in a small pool on the couch and my leg. These terrible portends, these sad signs, mark the fact we are moving towards that situation where I have to make a sad decision.
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Denouement?
This seems like a situation where an existing word could be applied in a new way, to great effect.
Also, I'm so sorry, Smells. How sad for you. I hope you can find peace before the denouement reaches its conclusion.
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... when you are at a bar, and every time you have to break the seal, you see the same guy in the bathroom. Not that he's always there; just that his bladder is in time with yours. You are drinkronized.
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... when you are at a bar, and every time you have to break the seal, you see the same guy in the bathroom. Not that he's always there; just that his bladder is in time with yours. You are drinkronized.
But this happens in a non-bar environment too, like at work, which is extra creepy. How about pissaligned?
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Bladder buddies? Potty Pals? Co-Citizens of the Urine Nation?
Nah, my vote goes to drinkronized. Less of a catchall than smells', but catchier.
Pissaligned sounds a little new-agey for my taste.
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Pissaligned sounds a little new-agey for my taste.
"After Bikram class, Sage and I went for wheat grass smoothies and realized we're not only karmically balance, but also pissaligned, so we're totally going to do a cleanse together start on the next full moon."
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Hm. Maybe we need a word for the phenomenon where women who spend a lot of time together sometimes synchronize menstrual cycles, too. Hormonaligned?
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Hm. Maybe we need a word for the phenomenon where women who spend a lot of time together sometimes synchronize menstrual cycles, too. Hormonaligned?
There are already a couple of terms for that, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_synchrony) although, among my lady friends we just called is "synching-up." When I worked in sexual health all my coworkers and I ended up synching, and because I was the only one who was on the birth control pill, my cycle didn't change, but all four of their did to match mine. I fell pretty powerful for being the leader in that way.
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Mel, I am really sorry to hear about your kitty.
As far as words, I feel there should be a new set of words devoted to fuck*ng stupid email lists. Like the conflicted feeling of annoyance and obligation when one of your friends is selling something, and you subscribe to her email list, but the stuff she is selling is expensive and you are already living on a shoestring, and the emails are obnoxious yet you don't want to unsubscribe because you like her and don't want to hurt her feelings because she is so nice.
Conversely, you want to unsubscribe from the knitting store email updates that you always get; however, when you scroll to the bottom to find the "unsubscribe" like, your jaundiced eye happens to rest on the "subscriber since September 7, 2005" and you realize that it has been a constant in your life longer than any relationship you have ever had.
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Aw, that is the saddest thing... but I hope it's OK that it also made me giggle.
I'm waiting for the milestone where I've been on this board for longer than I've ever managed to stay in the same job. I think we've got about a year to go.
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Oh man, I am already so far ahead of that. Whoa.
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FLAMING CHEETAH FUCKS
I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
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Hey it turns out it isn't my elderly cat who leaked stinky anal fluid on me and the couch, but my young pup. The confusion arrose because both were on my lap, then on the couch. Today though the dog was alone and oozed a bit more of the stink. Apparently some dogs just need their anal sacks expessed from time to time? Especially if they're stumpy legged? Anyway, I'm about to make a fairly gross visit to the vet to find out for sure.
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I was wondering about that, because I know dogs have anal glands, but I didn't know whether cats did. My mom gets her poodles groomed about 4x a year, and the groomer expresses their anal glands as a part of that routine.
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One of my dogs needs it done once a month. I have implemented all the diet advice that is supposed to minimize this problem and it hasn't made a damn bit of difference.
I could do it myself, but the Tech Staff is not a good vet tech and it takes two people. Fortunately the pugs love to visit the vet.
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Well, this was one of those things where the mystery of a rescue dog comes into play, because that dog of ours, based on his non-reaction, appeared to have had his sacs cleaned before. He was totally fine with the vet getting all up in his business, and primarily focused on the little treat I was holding. The vet said he was full, but not the worst he's seen, and he's got a clean bill of health. Now that I know he doesn't have an infection or cyst or anything, if this comes up again, the vet gave me the green card to take him to a groomer to get it done in the future. We have a really good vet who is amazingly inexpensive because he runs his practice out of love after retiring as a large and wild animal vet. Considering how inexpensive and gross dealing with this is (it got all over the floor and took two pairs of gloves and many a paper towel for the vet to clean), I'm more than happy to have him or a groomer deal with it.
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whats the word for a sad thing that ended up just being a gross thing?
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whats the word for a sad thing that ended up just being a gross thing?
I don't know, but hubby and I keep apologizing to the cat.
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whats the word for a sad thing that ended up just being a gross thing?
Nastastrophe?
Hm, probably not.
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The experience when you are talking about someone in one chat window, and directly TO that person in the other window.
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The experience when you are talking about someone in one chat window, and directly TO that person in the other window.
Referential mulltiplexing.
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This is sort of the opposite of this thread, but I've submitted a couple words to The Oxford English Fictionary (http://oefictionary.tumblr.com/)