geekhack Community > Other Geeky Stuff
Good words, and their definitions
fohat.digs:
Psithurism - the sound of wind in the trees and the rustling of leaves on the ground
jamster:
--- Quote from: EMC Labs on Thu, 04 July 2019, 23:17:36 ---
--- Quote from: rowdy on Thu, 04 July 2019, 23:09:09 ---anathema noun
anath·e·ma | ə-ˈna-thə-mə
Definition of anathema
1a : one that is cursed by ecclesiastical authority
1b : someone or something intensely disliked or loathed —usually used as a predicate nominative … this notion was anathema to most of his countrymen.— Stephen Jay Gould
2a : a ban or curse solemnly pronounced by ecclesiastical authority and accompanied by excommunication
2b : the denunciation of something as accursed
2c : a vigorous denunciation : curse
I also use this word from time to time. But I've only ever heard other people use it twice, and one of those times the word was used as an allegedly common word that few people would have been able to guess.
--- End quote ---
nice
--- End quote ---
Huh, I will be well impressed if after "anathema," that "nice" was a sly reference to the Neil Gamain and Terry Pratchett book, Good Omens.
"Nice" is a word that has had it's meaning changed significantly, more than once, over the course of last centuries.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/nice-guys/:
What’s the origin of nice?
Nice, it turns out, began as a negative term derived from the Latin nescius, meaning “unaware, ignorant.” This sense of “ignorant” was carried over into English when the word was first borrowed (via French) in the early 1300s. And for almost a century, nice was used to characterize a “stupid, ignorant, or foolish” person.
Starting in the late 1300s, nice began to refer to “conduct, a person, or clothing that was considered excessively luxurious or lascivious.” However, by the 1400s a new, more neutral sense of nice was emerging. At this time, nice began to refer to “a person who was finely dressed, someone who was scrupulous, or something that was precise or fussy.”
By the late 1500s, nice was further softening, describing something as “refined, culture,” especially used of polite society.
The high value placed on being coy, delicate, and reserved was instrumental in the semantic amelioration of the term nice in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Jane Austen, for instance, mocked this now-positive term in Northanger Abbey (1817) when Henry Tilney teases the naive Catherine Morland for her overuse of nice. He jokes: “… and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh, it is a very nice word, indeed!—it does for everything.”
treeleaf64:
I stumbled upon the word descry.
verb
a) to catch sight of
b) to find out, discover
I chose this word to post because my favorite thing in the world is to learn new things.
treeleaf64:
noisyturtle:
pluperfect adjective
Literally more than perfect : Utterly perfect/complete
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version