I’ve changed the tumblr layout — to a more boring templated one but the old one was falling apart and I couldn’t be bothered to do a custom design this time. It’s also a comeback for disqus and whatnots. But! I know what you want, you want to know a word that’s silly and awfully precise in it’s meaning.
Giddhom. n. a frantic galloping movement made by cows when plagued with flies.
It’s a real word. Look it up. And here’s some non-related doodles.
I hate the word franchise. It feels icky even when used about fast food restaurants, so when someone says it about a creative endeavour I throw up a little.
QI: Ronni Ancona on Obscurity (by gudbuytjane)
Poor Obscurity, such a hard time growing up.
Source: youtube.com
Oh, while I was expecting a high number, I didn’t think it was quite that high.
Thanks for taking the test! Based on over 200,000 participations so far, we’ve got some initial statistics already. Most Native English adult speakers who have taken the test fall in the range 20,000–35,000 words.
And for foreign learners of English, we’ve found that the most common vocabulary size is from 2,500–9,000 words.”
I’m a bit sceptical to that low number for non-native speakers. I think we’ve got far bigger problems with English grammar than with understanding the words. I call shenanigans!
Source: testyourvocab.com
By popular demand (hell, two people makes it popular to me!): more Swedish words that lead to unfounded conclusions and make the brain imagine wonderful things.
Rymd = volume or space.
Rymde = escaped or eloped if one’s in that mood.
So to truly escape, we need to go into space — or at least other spaces, but that option a bit boring unless one sees it as parallel realities.
On content
I.
I sure wish we could get rid of that word “content” to refer to writing, photography, drawing, and design online. The very word breathes indifference — why would one bother about the quality of work when it’s referred to as “content”?
I’m sorry to respond to your good question with a cranky diatribe, but this word has crept from New Media over to Radio Broadcasting where I live in my little cave and now my Show has become Content and is sent around to stations in a nice digital package that squashes the sound. Public radio, which holds itself up as a believer in quality, is cutting corners on all sides and I see this perfidious word “content” as part of the downward slide. I loathe the word. It’s like referring to Omaha Beach as a development.
— Garrison Keillor in British Journal of Photography (via photographsonthebrain)
II.
When I hear “content” I think of grey slop poured through indifferent devices. You’d never call a masterpiece “content.”
— Molly Crabapple on Twitter
A masterpiece, most often no. Several, yes. Especially if they’re inside a museum or somesuch. While it might have the unfortunate side-effect of being used to ignore the idividual pieces, that’s not the word’s fault. Fuck, a magazine of fine arts would call masterpieces no matter how many for content.
With it, one can talk about lots and lots of cross-disciplinary works that are presented in the same way on the same place without having to be bogged down with specificity. It’s like soup. You don’t mention everything you have in it, the word soup does that for you. And if you, as in 1, can’t be bothered with quality because of that word being used — what the fuck does that say about you?
I don’t blame decline in popular literature on the fact that it sometimes has a table of content. Or magazines for that matter. That would just be stupid.
Attack when people use it in a bad way that has nothing to do with it — ad agencies and economic pencil pushers do come to mind because to them good content is an enemy — otherwise I think it comes of as a “what I do is too precious for the likes of you” whine.
The word itself is neutral in value. The content of this is delicious (blackberry jam is amazing on the right bread). Just as the content of a blog, web page, whatever channel used in the Internet can be delicious. At the same time, as with the pineapple, the content might not be delicious. There are all kinds. You can leaf through the contents of a magazine or you can devour the contents of a magazine. See? Other words are needed to say what one thinks about it.
I do agree with the first part of what Molly wrote though: content as a word does sound like “grey slop poured through indifferent devices.” I just think that unless it’s poetry, what the word means is more important than how it sounds.
Source: bjp-online.com
Two words.
- opsablepsia. n. not looking into another’s eyes.
- rakehelly. adj. disolute, debauched.
I like words.
Yesterday I asked what’s your favourite word, so it’s only fair I give you mine.
- Philistine
- Monepic
- Fascicle
- Apostrophe — I like this one so much it I will use it as a name for a pet in the future.
And please read the original post and people’s answers, they’re rather good ones. I’m glad Martin remembered Monty Python.
About the tl;dr — when used sincerely
I don’t like it. Blogs are, mostly, about communication. If you can’t be arsed to read a few paragraphs, why the fuck do you bother to follow?
tl;dr is the equivalent of “books? nah, i read one in school ten years ago. it was boring.” I don’t want to come off as judgemental but it is stupidity put on a pedistal. Ok, I lied, I did actually want to sound as an arrogant bastard, I don’t think this invalidates the argument though. When someone has a lot to say about something, that probably mean it’s heartfelt and something the writer has a passion for. That’s the best kind of writing! And to proudly proclaim you didn’t read it?!
I’d love to be able to write long about stuff, mostly I can’t though because I seem to have some sort of block, but really, long stuff, it’s the best there is. Not to say that most of the things that get tl;dr is long, five to ten paragraphs isn’t long. Not even in the best or worst of worlds is that long. 4000 words in blogform can be considered as that, but sadly few people write that length.
Take time to read. Please. All these short notices — of which I admit I too am guilty — is what’s killing the medium. A slow, insubstantial death. And if you really don’t want to read anything that takes more than three seconds: fuck the fuck off. Get a vasectomy. Stop contaminating the gene pool.
Word of the day: spree. It’s far too seldom used with other less obvious things. “I was on a napping spree this weekend.”
