The Language Geek Out Thread!

[dig]

Literally talk and share anything to do with languages; odd words, quirks in rules, whatever. Just keep it clean!

I'm really fascinated by autological words, these are words that describe the word themselves, like:

common - it is a commonly used word.
real - its a real word
harmless - its unlikely that 'harmless' will stab you
legible - you can clearly read that
yellow - but only if it is yellow.
buzzword - is a buzzword in of itself
lingo - is lingo


But this thread isn't just for those, it can be about anything! Word etymology, interesting old words, strangely spelt words, whatever!

 

[Olive]

Here's a phenomenon that fascinates me.

Price and Worth are synonyms. Yet when you place the suffix -less on them, they become... Priceless and Worthless. Complete antonyms.

One meaning: something so valuable that a monetary price could never be put on it, and the other meaning: so useless that it has no monetary value whatsoever.

 

[Life]

I saw something I thought was quite interesting the other day. The sentence "I never said she stole my money." has 7 different meanings depending on the word you emphasize.

Pretty neat.

 

[jackatlasred]

I find comas and columns fascinating. Just the phrase "a women without her man, is nothing", but if we add comas we get a very different sentence. "A woman, without her, man is nothing."

Also I am fascinated by mentality in spacing winningforgettingeverything how would you space that out?.

 

[dig]

I really like how some languages can describe experiences much better than we can in English. Like, when we describe smells, we're usally comparing it to something, like it smells like ammonia, whilst Filipino's have panghi which means something directly smells of ammonia, there is no comparison involved. I also like words that describe experinces that English simply doesn't have a unique word for, like Japan's boketto - the act of gazing vacantly into space.

 

[Zexy]

"English can be strange. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though."
When I first read this line it amused me. It's really English in a nutshell