A Quite Interesting Post (in American English)

Last year there was a post on the MacMillan Dictionary Blog entitled The trickiest word in American. It wasn't exactly what I expected based on the title, but I

The post compares British English to American English. Following is an excerpt:

Quite: It’s such a common word. Americans use it, Brits use it, and it’s the same word, right? Well no, not quite. Have a look at these sentences. Both Americans and Brits could say them all. But two of them mean different things, depending on whether an American or a Brit says them. Which ones?

1. This is quite interesting.
2. Quite fascinating, in fact.
3. I’m usually quite good at this kind of exercise.
4. But you’re quite correct. This is tricky.

One common meaning of quite in both varieties is ‘completely’. See 2 and 4 above. These two sentences mean the same in American and British English.

Fascinating and correct are both ungradable adjectives, so things are either fascinating/correct or not. There’s no half way about it. But there are other adjectives that are gradable, so for example, there can be different degrees of good or interesting. And that’s where things get complicated and quite means different things. See 1 and 3 above.

If your American boss says your work is quite good, should you be pleased or a little concerned? In British English quite good only means pretty good or fairly good, but in American English it’s much more positive. Quite good means very good, so you can give yourself a pat on the back.

While I find this post quite interesting, I find it quite fascinating (in a positive way) as well. My American English lexical inventory lists the word "fascinating" as a gradable adjective that is synonomous with interesting.

Image credit here.

Word Up Weekly - Obloquy

obloquy

n pl -quies
1. defamatory or censorious statements, esp when directed against one person
2. disgrace brought about by public abuse
[from Latin obloquium contradiction, from ob- against + loqui to speak]

Definition from The Free Dictionary

Word submitted by reader korean translator


All readers are invited to submit words - any type of words. Words that are fun to say, words that are out of the ordinary, words that are ordinary but have weird definitions...you name it, they are all welcome. Please submit via the comments button.

Branding With Portmanteaus

According to the brand name and tagline in this advertisement -
camel toe + camouflage = the original visual privacy undergarment.

Creative portmanteau for sure, though I am still not sure why anyone would choose to wear such tight-fitting clothes in public.

A post on Fritinancy brought this brand name to my attention.

Words in "The Week" - Wiegle, Booty and Spoils

From the March 18 issue of The Week magazine -

Wiegle: The name of a young bald eagle that recovered from crashing through the windshield of a semi truck travelling over 60 mph. A portmanteau of "window eagle".

Booty: A connotation for "a portion of the body often shaken in time to music, rather than the spoils of war" according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Spoils: A euphemistic synonym for the word "booty" as used in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' new translation of the Bible.

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Also of note - A book with 200 blank pages became a best-seller in Great Britain based solely upon the book's title. The title: What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex

Word Up Weekly

What to do now that "Z" has come and gone...

I received so much positive feedback from this school year's weekly Unusual Words Defined: A - Z that I have decided to continue posting unusual word definitions on Mondays. To change it up a bit, I am not going to define words in any particular order (alphabetical, categorical or whatnot) and I would like to invite readers to submit words too - any type of word. Words that are fun to say, words that are out of the ordinary, words that are ordinary but have weird definitions...you name it, they are all welcome.





Let the fun begin.


Please submit words via the comment button.


Image credits.

Word Play - Sponsored by the German Porn Industry

Spotted this at TYWKIWDBI.







Witness the zaniness when the back door opens on a travel bus from reputable family business "Pommerntourist"[1]. The letters "m", "m" and "e" disappear leaving the dubious name "Porntourist.

BILD [2] contacted Pommerntourist. Owner Beatrice Springmann (38) laughed: "I already know why you're calling! We only noticed once our passengers pointed it out. We cannot stick anything different on the bus, so it will stay like this for now."

[1] lit: "Pomeranian Tourist" - Pommern = region in East Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomerania
[2] Largest (by far) German tabloid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild#Criticism


Explanation from BILD translated by TYWKIWDBI reader Dirac.

Hand Language

Could this be the reason Michiganders talk with their hands so frequently?

Thank you Mike Ridley - musician, comedian and friend.

Unusual Words Defined: A - Z (Part Z)

A continuation of the series.

zymurgy

zymurgy refers to the art or practice of fermentation. Unsurprisingly, it is best known within the fields of winemaking and brewing. The journal of the American Homebrewers Association has that title and its readers may be called zymurgists. If you need a related adjective, there’s zymurgical. The related word zymology (adjective zymologist), is employed for that part of chemistry dealing with the fermentation action of yeasts, especially products that are intended for human consumption. All these words come from Greek zume, meaning a leaven, typically a yeast, that’s added to make a substance ferment. It’s also the origin of enzyme.

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Definition from Michael Quinion's World Wide Words.

Image from http://www.zdwnet.org/tag/beer.

Linguistic Cartoon Favorites: I Think I Feel an Onomatopoeia Coming On

I absolutely love this cartoon that a reader recently shared with me.

Thank you again CK.

This is How They Verb Nouns

Seems to me that verbing of nouns has become one of the more popular methods of word creation these days. In linguistics this is called a functional shift. Here is an example from a billboard on I-75 in Michigan that advertises Avalanche Bay Waterpark.

THIS IS HOW WE WATERPARK!

Unusual Words Defined: A - Z (Part Y)

A continuation of the series.

yardang

A yardang is a Streamlined hill carved from bedrock or any consolidated or semiconsolidated material by the dual action of wind abrasion, dust and sand, and deflation. Yardangs are elongate features typically three or more times longer than they are wide, and when viewed from above, resemble the hull of a boat.

Etymology: The word itself is of Turkic origin, meaning ‘steep bank’, and was first introduced to the English-speaking world by the Swedish explorer Sven Anders Hedin in 1903.

Definition and image from thefreedictionary.com.

An Animated Steven Pinker

After seeing the Steven Pinker lecture I posted a few weeks ago, a reader shared this RSA Animate version of Pinker's "Language as a Window into Human Nature".

RSA is the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and they have been taking portions of lectures by well-known professionals in various fields and animating them with cartoon drawings to accompany the speakers.

Entertaining, informative, and well worth the watch.



Thank you Licia from Terminologia etc. for bringing this video and the series to my attention.

The Opposite of the Tip of the Tongue

And, no, I am not talking about the root of the tongue. I am referring to the linguistic phenomenon called "tip of the tongue syndrome" or TOT.

TOT is the name that is used to describe the phenomenon of knowing that you know something, whether it be word, phrase or name, but not being able to immediately retrieve that something from your memory.

What this boils down to linguistically is that a person knows the semantic identity of the lexical item which they are trying to recall, but they are unable to bring forth the phonetic representation of said (tee hee) item, even though they feel like it is right on the tip of their tongue.

A phenomenon that is quite the opposite of TOT occurs when the phonetic representation of a lexical item is repeated to the extent that the semantic identity is lost.

For those who watch Grey's Anatomy, recall the episode when Meredeth said the word spoon had lost all meaning to her.

And for those who don't watch Grey's Anatomy, this might help -

spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon.

Okay, I think that should give you the idea.

There have been many names proposed for this reversal of the TOT phenomenon over the years including the following:

Semantic Satiation

Verbal Satiation

Word Weirding

Inhibition

Refractory phase and mental fatigue

Lapse of meaning

Word decrement

Cortical inhibition

Adaptation

Extinction

Satiation

Reactive inhibition

Stimulus satiation

Verbal transformation

Inky Fool posted about this phenomenon and the names associated with it last fall, and Language Log posted about some of the research that has been done over the years regarding the phenomenon in December.

I would be interested to know if there has been any research directly comparing and contrasting TOT to semantic satiation (occurrences by age, gender, etc.). I can't seem to locate any. And how about EKGs and MRIs of brain activity during experiences of these phenomena.

Also, I will add one more potential name to the list - the phonetic repetition effect.