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CowperKettle
CowperKettle
02:24
Word of the day: doneness
AIQ
AIQ
02:53
strut your stuff: to dance in a confident and usually sexually exciting way, especially trying to be noticed by other people
 
3 hours later…
Featured Questions
Featured Questions
06:19
1
Q: "I would say I didn't/don't want to join his team if I were you." - didn't or don't?

vincentlinI am wondering what tense I should use in a noun clause appearing in a conditional sentence. What I am not sure about: If she wanted to please me, she would pretend that she were/was/is happy. If I were you, I would imagine I were/was/am going to pass the exam. If I were you, I wou...

grammar tense subjunctives sequence-of-tenses conditionals
 
5 hours later…
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
11:11
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly punctuation marks in title (27): __________ Time ________ time he worries ___________ his future by Ayyan on ell.SE
 
3 hours later…
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
13:44
Word of the day from me: Frumicate
Frumicate: put on airs, act as if you're important and others are not.
I checked about 7 dictionaries and 3 corpuses but didn't find a single entry of this word. Nor am I able to find its origin and etymology.
ColleenV
ColleenV
14:11
It's a dead word with uncertain origins. Sometimes dictionaries make up fake words to track if someone steals their work (newyorker.com/magazine/2005/08/29/not-a-word) It might be one of those.
phrontistery.info/index.html doesn't seem to have it, so I'm leaning toward fake word.
ooo second word of the day though : fugacious : inclined to run away or flee
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
14:40
@ColleenV, Thanks.
It's a nice word, though.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Fugue state
Dissociative fugue, formerly fugue state or psychogenic fugue, is a dissociative disorder and a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state can last days, months or longer. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. It is a facet of dissociative amnesia, according to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). After recovery...
A cognate word.
I have read several times news reports about people who were in such condition.
A couple of times it was due to a failed exam.
 
1 hour later…
ColleenV
ColleenV
16:05
@DecapitatedSoul I'm going to ask the person who runs the Phrontistery site and see if he knows anything about it. Maybe he has dictionaries that are older
ColleenV
ColleenV
16:48
@DecapitatedSoul I got a response - "probably fake".
twitter.com/schrisomalis/status/1255898522899091461
> That's a weird one. All the references I can find are to the Grandiloquent Dictionary @GrandiloquentWo which posted it back in 2013, but I can't find it in any dictionary, it's not an obvious Latin word, and I also can't find it 'in the wild' in any text. My guess: it's not real.
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
@ColleenV, I first saw it on 'Grandiloquent WOTD' FB page. I didn't find it anywhere else. Thank you so much :)
ColleenV
ColleenV
Maybe we should ask Grandiloquent WOTD where they found it...
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
Whoa
Why didn't this idea spring to my mind??? :D I've been racking my brain, searching dictionaries, asking here and there but didn't think of asking Grandiloquent
ColleenV
ColleenV
17:04
@DecapitatedSoul Well you didn't really know they were the only ones likely to have the answer until you did the research
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
Exactly
ColleenV
ColleenV
And, bonus, if they try to brush you off and say it is in some dictionary you already checked, you can call them on it :)
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
Of course... they wasted a lot of my time :)
By the way, the 'mountweazel' thing is interesting!
ColleenV
ColleenV
@DecapitatedSoul there's also a fake place that was placed on a map for the same sort of purpose that ended up being a real place for a while because people went looking for it... I'll see if I can dig up the article later
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
:)
user image
ColleenV
ColleenV
17:23
Nice!
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
Did you get it?
ColleenV
ColleenV
It's a very symmetrical alphabet
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
An ambigram of English alphabets.
ColleenV
ColleenV
That's the word I was looking for, ambigram
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
user image
It's an ambigram of 'decapitated'.
ColleenV
ColleenV
17:26
It's kind of annoying that "flipscript" didn't use an ambigram for "do not copy" - what if you're looking at it from the other side?
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
Some of the words can't be generated...
I can remove the background
ColleenV
ColleenV
I'm a bit sad no-one has nominated themselves for moderator
No, I was trying to make a joke
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
But I haven't been able to edit it.
Ah
I've just made another one
user image
ColleenV
ColleenV
Neat!
ColleenV
ColleenV
18:20
Here's an article about "Agloe" and other traps set by cartographers for people stealing their work... gizmodo.com/…
 
2 hours later…
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
20:27
Interesting... Thanks Colleen. :)
Gleaming, glittering, glinting and glimmering: Do these words elicit a particular emotion?
The way they sound the same.
:D
Another example: snarl, snout, snicker, snack, sneeze. Without looking them up, do they provoke any kind of emotion? Like any kind of relationship...??
Jeez....
Without looking hem up, can you tell me whether they provoke any kind of emotion*******
AIQ
AIQ
21:11
Sorry, but I don't think those authors are being cute or "spicing things up". – J.R.
lol savage
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
21:29
Another typo... looking them up*
lmao
ColleenV
ColleenV
21:46
I tweeted at the Grandiloquent account - hopefully they will get back to me about Frumicate
twitter.com/PiedViper/status/1255952486906691584
@AIQ Why haven't you nominated yourself for moderator yet?
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
I've also sent a message to their FB about 'frumicate'...
ColleenV
ColleenV
22:05
I would bug @CowperKettle about nominating for moderator too, but he seems pretty busy lately...
Decapitated Soul
Decapitated Soul
22:34
The most active member on ELL is James K. Does he not want to be a mod?

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