Thread for words you never bothered to look up & one day you realized "I still don't know what that means"

thought 'eclectic' meant 'obscure'.

actually, in my mind, 'callow' does have the same yucky yellowish color of unrendered animal fat.

tallow is unrendered fat

atavism is great imo. i have a bunch of favourite words which are favourite because they feel relevant right now, cf multivalent, anomic, atavistic or maybe revanchist.

at the slight tangent that people have mentioned of looking up and forgetting things; spend a lot of time using the dictionary trying to differentiate between similar words; dour/sour, parallel/adjacent, etc.

also lol:

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Modding of I love TMI
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If ILTMI is not a place where this can happen, the inexhaustibly foolhardy transaction of insaniacked and deviant ideas (along with the ...

^^^we need to use that word more

'recidivist' had me confused for ages

great thread!

in quiet moments i have turned to ilx for words to websterise & learn online, it's good to have another depository for them

I thought sallow meant pale in a way that could be complimentary. O shi.

this reminds me, when I went to apply for chinese courses at my uni, I wanted to explain to them that I was illiterate (couldn't read or write but could speak and hear pretty well). so I told them I was a 流氓 when I meant to say 文盲 - the former means bastard or hoodlum. ;_;

We must spread the word 'insaniacked' all over the interweb. I will do my part.

obdurate

learning new meanings for words you thought you knew is also key too for this thread. for example 'the standards obtain' etc.

i tried following the whole "hauntology" thing a few years ago and never really figured it out.

that's made up tho

http://www.dailypuppy.com/media/dogs/anonymous/pepper_pug.jpg

whiney always assumed "hauntology" was a red flag for "i'm a hackademic windbag" and unsubscribed all those blogs from my RSS reader

what bugs me are those phrases that are used in fancy-like writing that everybody seems to accept even tho they make no sense. like "must needs". what the fuck is that about.

xp lol well "hackademic" isn't that much better

yeah, jargon. bleh.

jargon is the opposite of copacetic in my experience

also very relieved to confirm that callow meant what I thought it meant, this thread had me hardcore second-guessing

?? jargon is great, wtf

gimme a bona fide colloquialism over corporate jargon any day of the week

jargon tends to be unnecessarily obfuscatory, it's basically like "this knowledge is all that makes me special, ergo I will make up a language for it so that I look prettier"

totes^^^

also lingo > > jargon

hauntology was late derrida's poisonouse gift to the english langauge, latterly revivified as terrible hackademic crit theory meme & silly english chillwave analog

poisonouse

sometimes jargon is a good and necessary thing, other times you have things like the medical profession's predilection towards turning everything under the sun into an acronym (commonly referred to by doctors as "TEUTSIAN").

hahaha derridas is trolling over in his grave

--for some reason had to always look up "self-aggrandizing" before deployment---could never remember if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

--embarrassingly misused "effete" once in HS but can't really remember the details

leave me out of this, HI DERE

haha sorry, I could throw daggers at the computer profession as well but instead of being funny it would just be sad and pathetic

"shop talk" >>> technical argot >>> lingo >>>>>>>>> jargon

by the way, I never knew what excelsior was until I came here, and even now I'm still mystified as to why it means what it currently means on this board

itt...wood shavings

i really, really love listening to professionals talkin in their secret pro twin talk

hantavirus intrauterine diuretically excreted relapse emissions, apparently

'quincunx'

i love acronyms

whoah had no idea about excelsior---always associated it with stan lee, tbh

language evolves because people want to express things easily. people who are engaged in a specific activity necessarily end up in their own linguistic sub-world. i don't think anyone comes up with jargon for the hell of it.

excelsior means higher and somebody used to shout it on a mtn? r something, dunno why it means what it means on ilx either

"excelsior" as used on this board means "that witty bon-mot so amused me that I spat tea onto my keyboard and shorted it out, giving myself enough of a shock in the process that I have also soiled myself and now have to explain to my boss why I need to buy emergency underwear and pants in the middle of the day without also tipping him/her to the fact that I waste all day making jokes on the internet instead of doing what they're paying me for"

idiolectal looool xenocentrism

Excelsior: also the motto of NY.

i don't think anyone comes up with jargon for the hell of it.

probably not, but some jargon can be used to conceal meaning from the uninitiated

language evolves because people wanna talk about the same shit in a different way

and i'm trying to think of an example of jargon that makes meaning "easier" for all involved

this thread is very informative btw

probably not, but some jargon can be used to conceal meaning from the uninitiated

boo hoo!

I think you meant "blood diamonds"