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[side_show]

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.

[wombat]

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.

[littlefallsmets]

wombles: memeblocked?

[pmcd9]

This is the job that sMets was born for.

[dejavroom]

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?

[Carlos del Vaca]

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.

[theinevitable]

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.

[Choop]

maybe she wants a ride on the inev train

[AugustWest]

This thread is locked.

I'm afraid Rich Hall is going to sue.

[KeithHernandez]

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.

[jay-ell]

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.

[Arachno-capitalist]

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.

[jay-ell]

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.

[Arachno-capitalist]

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

[side_show]

...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.