Words you think English should have or bring back.

[Quizatzhaderac]

http://alt-usage-english.org/humorousrules.html

The rules contradict themselves

22 - It behooves us all to avoid archaic expressions.
25 - To ignorantly split an infinitive is a practice to religiously avoid.

Whether to boldly split an infinitive, archaically to leave it atomic, to use pretentiously Latin grammar, or to alter the alteration arrangement, awkwardly.

[Monika]

The rules contradict themselves.

That appears to be the joke.

[Monika]

"The Meaning Of Tingo" book is full of words I'd like English to have.
(I ran a quick search and it seems like nobody mentioned it. Check it out, it's full of great words from around the world)

The word I personally miss the most when speaking English is an equivalent of the Hebrew word תתחדש. It's a super-common word you say to someone whenever they got something new (a haircut, a shirt, a gift, anything at all). It combines "I noticed you got something new", "I like your new thing" and "I hope you enjoy your new thing" in a very concise way.

I want this word in German and English now. How is it pronounced?

[ThirdParty]

The word I personally miss the most when speaking English is an equivalent of the Hebrew word תתחדש. It's a super-common word you say to someone whenever they got something new (a haircut, a shirt, a gift, anything at all). It combines "I noticed you got something new", "I like your new thing" and "I hope you enjoy your new thing" in a very concise way.

I want this word in German and English now. How is it pronounced?

Google says: /tit.ħäˈde̞ʃ/ when spoken to a male, /tit.ħädˈʃi/ when spoken to a female.

[buttered_cat_paradox]

Indeed. And tit-häd-shu when spoken to a group.

[Quizatzhaderac]

The rules contradict themselves.

That appears to be the joke.

I mean rules 22 and 25 contradict each other, entirely apart from the gag of each rule being an example of it's own undesirable behavior.

[Eebster the Great]

Not strictly speaking. There are pretty much always ways to avoid splitting infinitives without resorting to archaic or awkward constructions. It just might not always be the most obvious way. (Not that there is anything wrong with splitting infinitives, generally.)

[Quizatzhaderac]

The prescription itself archaic: "boldly to go" was the fading dominate form at the time the prescription was first commonly discussed. The original point of the rule was to preserve the form that is now archaic.

Alternate constructions themselves aren't always awkward, but the process restructuring a sentence because a certain verb tense doesn't take adverbs, is.

[Eebster the Great]

Literally fifteen minutes ago my evolution professor complained about misspelling "dominant."

[Copper Bezel]

So if this is the frequency illusion at work, we're all subjected to dozens of instances of "dominate" used as an adjective every day and don't even notice it. It's like the neutrino of usage errors.

[Grop]

Literally fifteen minutes ago my evolution professor complained about misspelling "dominant."

I would say its spelling is quite simple though . It is exactly spelled the way I say it.

But then what is an evolution professor?

[Copper Bezel]

Since I usually see it in writing, I have to ask - do people who use "dominate" as an adjective pronounce it with the reduced stress on the final syllable, like the stress pattern of "celibate"?

[Lazar]

I would guess so; I've never heard the adjective pronounced with a full vowel in the third syllable. But that said, I'm not sure we can assume an ironclad relationship between spelling and pronunciation on this point. For an example in somewhat the opposite direction, I hear a lot of people pronounce "pundit" as "pundant", but I've never seen it spelled that way.

[Copper Bezel]

Huh, I hadn't heard that one. But yeah, good point.

[Eebster the Great]

Yeah the usual pronunciation is /ˈdɒ.mɪ.nənt/ or /ˈdɑ.mɪ.nənt/, never /ˈdɑ.mɪˈnænt/. But there is still clearly a difference between that and /ˈdɒ.mɪ.nət/, missing the /n/. The difference is probably subtle enough so if you already think it's spelled the other way, you won't hear the distinction.

Etymologically speaking, you would expect the -ant ending for a present active participle and the -ate ending for a perfect passive participle. So something "dominant" would be dominating other things, while something "dominate" would be dominated by other things. Obviously this rule doesn't really work all of the time, but in this case it does.

But then what is an evolution professor?

A professor of evolution . . . I'm taking a class in Human Evolution and my professor made a point about the spelling of that word because I guess it annoys her.

[Derek]

I would guess so; I've never heard the adjective pronounced with a full vowel in the third syllable. But that said, I'm not sure we can assume an ironclad relationship between spelling and pronunciation on this point. For an example in somewhat the opposite direction, I hear a lot of people pronounce "pundit" as "pundant", but I've never seen it spelled that way.

And TIL that "pundant" isn't a word.

[gmalivuk]

Etymologically speaking, you would expect the -ant ending for a present active participle and the -ate ending for a perfect passive participle. So something "dominant" would be dominating other things, while something "dominate" would be dominated by other things. Obviously this rule doesn't really work all of the time, but in this case it does.

What do you mean in this case it does? "Dominate" isn't an adjective in standard English, and when it is used as one it is synonymous with "dominant".

Or do you just mean that etymology tells you it's the -ant ending because it has the active meaning? I suspect that's not a terribly helpful thing to notice, as people who know about verb forms in Latin is likely a group without much overlap with people who use "dominate" as an adjective.

[Eebster the Great]

It's not a reason you would expect an English speaker to know how to spell it (as you say, they would probably know the correct spelling before the Latin etymology in almost all cases), it's just a reason you could understand the spelling after the fact. Rereading my post, I realize it's not very clear.

[Mega85]

is "trypophobia" a word? i've seen in used online for the fear of holes. however no dictionaries recognize it.

[Flumble]

I'd say it certainly is a word, but there's no consensus about its meaning because it's not recognized as an actual phobia currently.

[Eebster the Great]

Is there an official list of "actual phobias"? As I understand it, if a real person somewhere presented with all the symptoms of a specific phobia for small holes, then it would be "actual." And there are a lot of people with strange phobias; it isn't common of course, but even rare disorders can affect tens of thousands of people. Given the nature of specific phobias, it seems like it would be impossible to create any kind of meaningfully comprehensive list.

That said, most people who claim to have trypophobia probably don't, since they likely don't understand the details of what a phobia is.

[Dzhayk]

Distinction between singular and plural in the 2nd person.

(If that hasn't already been posted)

[Quizatzhaderac]

Is there an official list of "actual phobias"? As I understand it, if a real person somewhere presented with all the symptoms of a specific phobia for small holes, then it would be "actual." And there are a lot of people with strange phobias; it isn't common of course, but even rare disorders can affect tens of thousands of people. Given the nature of specific phobias, it seems like it would be impossible to create any kind of meaningfully comprehensive list.

The American psychiatric association and the world health organization both publish such lists.

I think there's a distinction between legitimately having a specific phobic anxiety disorder, and the subject of that phobia warranting it's own diagnostic criteria.

For example Wikipedia [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_phobias]lists several names[/url ] for phobias of X color. For each of these if we wanted to discuss the impact to a patient and the appropriate treatments we could just write it out once and paste in the color again and again. Conversely, fear of injections does get it's own listing because it has it's own complications.

[Eebster the Great]

The Wikipedia list specifically states it is incomplete; however, it does list trypophobia. I'm not aware of the APA's list: is it available online anywhere? In either case, I doubt it would claim to be comprehensive.

[Quizatzhaderac]

They do, and it's in convenient tree form.

The Wikipedia list seems to largely be a product of people on Wikipedia loving words; which is fine.
Note the use of the term "condition", which is just as vague medically as it is in lay speech. Trypophobia is a condition, but not (as far as I know) one that meets the criteria for being a disorder.

As for being complete, it is in a specific sense. It doesn't cover things not confirmed by science. It also doesn't cover "trivial" variations of the same disorder.

I'm not a psychologist, but I get the sense from trying to look up literature on this that psychologists aren't very interested in the fine details of what the subject of a phobia is.

[gmalivuk]

Yeah, wiki editors and psychologists have different reasons for naming things, so it makes sense to have different resulting lists.

I liked discovering the word "trypophobia" not because I have a condition serious enough to talk to a doctor about, but because it's nice to know I'm not alone in having a minor revulsion reaction to a certain type of visual pattern. (Also it gave me a tag to use or blacklist back when I was more active on Tumblr.)

[speising]

Yeah, wiki editors and psychologists have different reasons for naming things, so it makes sense to have different resulting lists.

I liked discovering the word "trypophobia" not because I have a condition serious enough to talk to a doctor about, but because it's nice to know I'm not alone in having a minor revulsion reaction to a certain type of visual pattern. (Also it gave me a tag to use or blacklist back when I was more active on Tumblr.)

I'm somewhat annoyed by the pictures Google displays insensitively on top for an innocuous search for that word.

[Copper Bezel]

You could accuse the Wikipedia page of the same, and that's far more directly "curated" as a form of resource.

[Eebster the Great]

They do, and it's in convenient tree form.

The Wikipedia list seems to largely be a product of people on Wikipedia loving words; which is fine.
Note the use of the term "condition", which is just as vague medically as it is in lay speech. Trypophobia is a condition, but not (as far as I know) one that meets the criteria for being a disorder.

As for being complete, it is in a specific sense. It doesn't cover things not confirmed by science. It also doesn't cover "trivial" variations of the same disorder.

I'm not a psychologist, but I get the sense from trying to look up literature on this that psychologists aren't very interested in the fine details of what the subject of a phobia is.

It would be covered under either F40.228 "Other natural environment type phobia" or F40.298 "Other specified phobia" . My point was just that you can't say whether something can be, in principle, a "real phobia." You can just say whether or not it is common.

[Mega85]

Is "nibling" a word? Wiktionary has an entry for such https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nibling as being a word referring to a niece or nephew. However I've never heard of it until recently. It seems to be rare. If I heard someone use the word "nibling" I'd probably think they were referring to food, not to nieces and nephews.

[flicky1991]

I first heard of it a while ago. It's just a really rare word.

[eSOANEM]

I've heard it occasionally (but quite often in queer circles because they focus a lot more on gender-neutral language)

[poxic]

Coined in the '50s, I think? ... Yep.

The word nibling is neologism suggested by Samuel Martin in 1951 as a cover term for "nephew or niece"; it is uncommon outside of specialist literature.

[heuristically_alone]

Samuel Martin's legacy. It will go down in history.

I have never in my life heard the word "nibling" before, but I have so many niblings I know that I'm going to use it all the time.

[ThirdParty]

Speaking of "-ling", am the only one who thinks we should reclaim it as a suffix meaning "offspring of"?

For example, instead of "I swerved to avoid running over a leveret, and as a result accidentally hit one of Dan's children instead" you should be able to say "I swerved to avoid running over a hareling, and as a result accidentally hit a Danling instead." Because the listener might not know what a "leveret" even is, and the children don't really belong to Dan in the same way as Dan's car or Dan's poodle.

(We already have "spiderling", "duckling", "codling", "Atheling", and so on. So there's no reason we couldn't systematize.)

[Aiwendil]

Speaking of "-ling", am the only one who thinks we should reclaim it as a suffix meaning "offspring of"?

For example, instead of "I swerved to avoid running over a leveret, and as a result accidentally hit one of Dan's children instead" you should be able to say "I swerved to avoid running over a hareling, and as a result accidentally hit a Danling instead." Because the listener might not know what a "leveret" even is, and the children don't really belong to Dan in the same way as Dan's car or Dan's poodle.

(We already have "spiderling", "duckling", "codling", "Atheling", and so on. So there's no reason we couldn't systematize.)

I don't think that "-ling" (or the original "-ing") was ever strictly used to denote offspring of the main noun. In Old English, it certainly had a more general sense in words like "deorling" (darling), "ierðling" ("earthling", ploughman), "feorðing" (farthing, quarter), "stærling" (starling), and "underling" (underling).

[speising]

Speaking of "-ling", am the only one who thinks we should reclaim it as a suffix meaning "offspring of"?

For example, instead of "I swerved to avoid running over a leveret, and as a result accidentally hit one of Dan's children instead" you should be able to say "I swerved to avoid running over a hareling, and as a result accidentally hit a Danling instead." Because the listener might not know what a "leveret" even is, and the children don't really belong to Dan in the same way as Dan's car or Dan's poodle.

(We already have "spiderling", "duckling", "codling", "Atheling", and so on. So there's no reason we couldn't systematize.)

I don't think that "-ling" (or the original "-ing") was ever strictly used to denote offspring of the main noun. In Old English, it certainly had a more general sense in words like "deorling" (darling), "ierðling" ("earthling", ploughman), "feorðing" (farthing, quarter), "stærling" (starling), and "underling" (underling).

i would assume that it comes from "-thing". "Dear thing" etc.

[Copper Bezel]

Wiktionary suggests a combination of two suffixes in Proto-Germanic, one of which is indeed related to progeny.

[Aiwendil]

It comes from somewhat earlier -ing, of which the OED says:

A suffix forming derivative masculine ns., with the sense of ‘one belonging to’ or ‘of the kind of’, hence ‘one possessed of the quality of’, and also as a patronymic = ‘one descended from, a son of’, and as a diminutive. Found in the same form, or as -ung, in the other Teutonic langs. Old English examples are æþeling atheling n., cyning king n., lytling little one, child, flýming fugitive, hóring whoremonger; also the patronymics Æþelwulfing son of Æthelwulf, Ecgbrehting, Cerdicing, Wodening, etc. (Old English Chron. anno 855), Adaming, etc. ( Lindisf. Gosp. Luke iii. 38), and the gentile names Hoccingas, Iclingas, Centingas (men of Kent), with the Scriptural Gomorringas, Moabitingas, Idumingas, etc. This suffix also formed names of coins, as pending, penning penny n., scilling shilling n., and of fractional parts, as feorþing quarter, farthing n., teoðung, -ing tenth, tithing n.1: so ON. þriðjung-r third part, thriding riding n.2 (of Yorkshire).

[Monika]

In German it's for a variety of terms mostly for people
Zwilling twin
Drilling triplet
Flüchtling refugee
Lehrling apprentice
Sträfling/Häftling prisoner
and
Schmetterling butterfly

Did you know the forum does not support the unicode character for butterfly