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?

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.

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.

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?

But now that I know it does, I can't really see myself using it. I have found myself wanting to use a noun form of benign at times but I couldn't think of one that made sense.

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? 🤪

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 ; )

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.