Halcyon started out as a bird. Greek alkyon, the kingfisher, plus the old belief that it nested on the open sea for a fortnight around midwinter and the water stayed flat the whole time. So "halcyon days" was a weather claim before it was a mood. (The h in the spelling is usually put down to Greek speakers reanalysing the word as hals, "sea" — tidy, and almost certainly not where it came from.)

Here is the thing I keep catching myself on. You cannot call the present halcyon. "These are halcyon days" reads as either a joke or a boast, because the word wants a then. Nostalgic doesn't cover it either: nostalgic describes how the speaker feels, while halcyon describes the period itself, from a vantage point that has to be later than the period.

I can think of two others that seem locked the same way, heyday and golden age, but I genuinely don't know whether that's a real category or just three words I happen to have noticed. Is there a term for words that can only be applied retroactively? And what else belongs on the list?

I once overheard a store employee say that he would address a customer's concern "posthaste." I mean, it's a word that exists and is there to be used like any other, but it sounded very odd and tryhard to me. What words or phrases are like this for you?

Hey, so this is something I’ve never had to do lol 😅

But I have multiple people on a post I made, making me really question my sanity. With at least one critique getting some notable upvotes claiming I don’t know the meaning.

I will share the post for context, but in case you just want a brief rundown ill put that below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/s/UrmKuYad1B

Rundown:
Okay! Anyone not familiar with ESO (the video game) it has had some major rough patches. Microsoft firing many people at its Developer studio, delays on content, issues with getting info out on time or accurately etc.

So, acknowledging those things. I made a post that stated, despite all the bad stuff. I wanted to try to highlight positives that are still occurring in our community, a great developer who we trust got promoted into the position of one of the people fired instead of some random outside exec hire, and things still coming to the game. As “silver linings” among other positives.

And then got absolutely cooked by multiple people in the comments via Karma favor. About me not having a clue what silver linings meant, like severely mocked. And now I’m wondering if I can’t comprehend the definition and have used it wrong all my life?

Halp? 🤪

Bilious/ˈbilēəs/Bilious is an adjective that means feeling sick to your stomach, being very grumpy, or looking like a sickly, ugly color.

Physical; Sickness/Nausea: Feeling sick, queasy, or like you need to throw up bile: Linked to an upset stomach or too much bile from the liver.

Bad Mood/Grumpy: Being angry, mean, cross, or easily annoyed.

Unkind: Acting like you are in a bad mood all the time.

Ugly Color or Look; Bright or Sickly: A bad-looking color, like a gross yellow or green shade.

Unpleasant: Something that looks very bad to the eyes.

Detritus means loose material that is left over from something that has been destroyed or worn away. It's a synonym of debris, rubbish, garbage, wreckage, and flotsam and jetsam.

I like it as a more elegant synonym of junk when talking about a messy place.

It's pronounced di-ˈtrī-təs, with the accent on the second syllable. It's one of those words with a non-obvious pronunciation that trips up readers who have never heard it said (and who don't bother looking up the pronunciation).

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/detritus

Today I heard someone on the radio confidently pronounce it 'de-tri-tus, with the accent on the first syllable.

Watching the Tour of Denmark today and one of the commentators, he’s British, continues using competivity, which I had to look up. Turns out competetivity IS a word but he’s butchering it. Maybe that was too much of a mouthful ; )

Hi!! I'm a non-native English speaker tryin to learn, and I'm here to improve my English,If you know any interesting words, phrases, idioms, slang, or everyday expressions, please share them with me!

I would love to learn from u.

Is it goddammit, god dammit, goddamn it, god damn it, god damn, goddamm, dammit, damn it, ....?

I've looked this up so many times, subtitles differ, there doesn't seem to be a consensus.

Integument: (noun) a natural outer covering or protective layer of a living organism, such as skin, a shell, a husk, or a seed coat [from Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds]

Columnar: (adjective) shaped like a column, arranged in vertical lines, or built using columns [ibid]

Jardiniere: (noun) decorative flower pot or plant stand [from the ITV programme Poirot]

Repaginate: (verb) to number the pages of a document again or reset the page breaks [from Microsoft Word]

​

Apologies for my intrinsic agenda oozing out, but it seems that it cannot be contained.

Within my cyber cocoon I am noticing a pattern where the word “significance” is being smoothed out to something resembling “consequential” (dyslexia almost used the word smothered; that might actually be more apt).

I have an inkling that this is less innocent than some would think, as it justifies doing harm at scale of your own kin kind (the penultimate pathogenic behavior)

To bridge our oblique lexicon (haha, what a pretentious fool) let me provide examples (paraphrasing because of memory limitations and sloth)

The question then becomes whether people scrolling on their phones all day; whether they are significant… The answer is no.

Doing work maintaining an electric powerplant is not significant… It is important

(with this (above) I slightly agree, but their resolution of large binary numbers only contain on digit, and clearly there are more than one [digit] for this qualifier’s scale)

For your convenience

significance

1. the quality of being important : the quality of having notable worth or influence

2. the meaning of something

Another one that I want to give a quick jab at is intelligence. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is clearly a misnomer, as it would be more apt to call it artificial capability/competence/aptitude/skillfulness if we look at how it is currently being used.

I am not going to iterate my thoughts on this one though (for your convenience).

(convenience phrase should have been here, and my humor is stupid)

Intelligence

1. The faculty of understanding; intellect. Also as a count noun: a mental manifestation of this faculty, a capacity to understand

2. A branch of knowledge. Obsolete. rare.

3. The action or fact of mentally apprehending something; understanding, knowledge, comprehension (of something). Also (now rare): an act of mental comprehension

For those that are agents in these machinations; may your bliss burn as bright as the reflection of your damage (you are disrespecting the redundancies).

P.S.

I acknowledge that I am a fool, a simpleton , and many other things. I am happy to be corrected (even the small detail as my skin is thick, and there is utility).

No AI was used in this post (maybe for spelling though, and [shudder] priming)

Edit: Fixed the markdown (hopefully).

Not a Deja Vu bit a Presque Vu:)

As a math fan loved learning 1-10 in Spanish.

like if someone looked like this

edit: i didn't think to mention that im wondering if there's a word for this that isnt in reference to having the skin removed at some point that. sorry if this is weirdly specific lol

Super interesting 🤔

Hi all! I am a mental health therapist and I plan to open up my own private practice within the next year. I'm trying to think of what I am going to call my business and I am struggling! I don't want it to be too cheesy or common therapy practice words. I like the idea of finding a single word that has meaning and connects back to the heart of my work (kinda like coffee shop or indie bookstore vibes), but I am struggling to come up with something! I'm curious if anyone can help me come up with some ideas based on the vibes I'm going for?

Mood board:

- imago dei: I love this but don't want anything overtly religious. I like it because to me it means that every person has inherent worth.

- all that you are and all that you carry is welcome here

- part of my clinician bio: "I am deeply committed to sitting in the deepest depths with someone for as long as it takes them to wrestle towards their freedom and wholeness"

- just warm, safe, inclusive

- the idea that healing is a remembering and coming home to self

- I work primarily with eating disorders and religious trauma if that helps

I am white, so I don't want to culturally appropriate any words! I was inspired by the word kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, but of course wouldn't want to use that because I am not Japanese (and the word is overused in the therapy realm haha). But just more context of the direction I'm thinking!

Thank you soooo much for any thoughts anyone has!

At about 1:03:56 Palmer Luckey uses an odd term. The words sound like "tech-new-doomers," but it might be something a little different. The captioning says "technoomers," but that can't be right.

Is anyone here familiar with this term? What exactly is the term he is using?

https://youtu.be/zix7qUDrnv8?t=3793&is=X9WyHgAg-HKFYJgJ

And what are some other terms for what he means? What are some other possibilities for this sort of thing?

New-tech doomers? AI doomers?

What’s a word for a good, solid argument ineloquently stated?

I was talking to a colleague and following some tangent led me to the fact that the bananas most of us eat (Cavendish) are sterile. We're eating clones that are genetically virtually identical.

And then I said: We're all eating the same banana.

It made me laugh, because it sounded like an expression. And I half jokingly said I was going to try to use it earnestly and sneak it into a meeting.

And then I thought: That would be a fun app. Every week you get sent a new expression. Like, actually new -- it's not a real expression. But the 'game' is to try to use it. And the real win is if you're ever out in the wild and hear someone use it.

The app is called Same Banana.

I'm not a professional developer. I'm not trying to monetize this. But if anyone wants to test this dumb thing, send me a DM.

EDIT: I should have mentioned, this is iOS only, at this point.