One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meanings

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
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Matrix
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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Matrix »

I've never heard of a gorse or a furze, but I have heard of a vole.
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Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Astraios »

Funny. It's such a common plant here. I mean we've all heard of cactuses and acacias...

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by CatDoom »

I'd never heard the term "gorse" before either, though they're apparently an invasive species here in California. Then again, my vocabulary of plant terms isn't particularly large; I've probably just been calling them "bushes." :P

Speaking of which, has "forb" been mentioned yet? According to Wiktionary its a term used primarily in Ecology to refer to "any non-woody flowing plant that is not a grass." I knew I'd encountered the word before, probably when I was doing some reading about native plants a little while back, but I had to look up what it meant. Somehow the word sounds to me like it should refer to some kind of bean... not sure why.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Thry »

Salmoneus wrote:
Thry wrote:cos less rare I guess
Gorse vs vole? The former's certainly more common around here.
Way to cherrypick. Not that, but mouse xD

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by linguoboy »

Astraios wrote:Funny. It's such a common plant here.
It's not common around here at all but I knew about it when I was 12 because literature.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Astraios »

Yeah, that's why I was surprised. If you've read any book set in British countryside it probably mentions gorse.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by CatDoom »

Hmm... I bet I encountered the word in Return of the Native in high school, but I've done my best to suppress my memories of that book...

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Thry »

Astraios wrote:Yeah, that's why I was surprised. If you've read any book set in British countryside it probably mentions gorse.
xDDD very true. I'm Spanish and I've read the equivalent in (translated) British books as a child, yeah, now that I think about it. Had no idea it was gorse.

aulaga is the word here.

say it over and over and it becomes weird

[aw.ˈla.ɣa]

gwaw.ˈlwaw.ɣwaw

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by gmalivuk »

Looks like 'gorse' was more common in books through the first part of the 20th, but 'vole' beats it in more recent material.

ngrams link

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by CatDoom »

Alas, both easily beat "forb." :P

Oh, here's another word that might apply:

Morgue [mɔɹɡ]: a facility for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification or removal for autopsy or disposal.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Shm Jay »

How is that a rare meaning?

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by CatDoom »

It's not; I figured it qualified as "technical," however. It's not a word most people need to describe the events of their day-to-day lives.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Shemtov »

Qat or Khat:
A plant used a recreational psychoactive drug in Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Israel.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Xephyr »

Sorry if these have been posted before. This thread is kinda getting long and hard to keep track of all the words.

eft - the terrestrial intermediate life stage of a salamander (cognate with "newt")
sling - a juvenile spider (abbreviated from "spiderling")
milt - fish sperm
roe - fish eggs
frass - the solid waste of arthropods
Terra wrote:
CatDoom wrote:
Matrix wrote:In video games, usually MMORPGs, 'adds' are mobs spawned in the middle of a boss fight.
"Mob" itself may fit the topic, in the sense of (to quote Wiktionary) "A non-player character [in a video game] that exists to be fought or killed to further the progression of the story or game."
Speaking of "mob", is it a shortening/corruption of "monster"? Or maybe it's from the usual word "mob", but got corrupted to mean "a member of a mob", instead of the mob itself?
If we're using MMORPG slang, I might add "deeps", "dot", "hot", "rez", "farm", "pot", "wipe", "tank", "pull", "pat", "threat", "nerf", and "buff". There's also the FPS slang terms "gib", "camp", and "frag". And forget not "zerg"!
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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by zompist »

Xephyr wrote:If we're using MMORPG slang, I might add "deeps", "dot", "hot", "rez", "farm", "pot", "wipe", "tank", "pull", "pat", "threat", "nerf", and "buff". There's also the FPS slang terms "gib", "camp", and "frag". And forget not "zerg"!
Many of these are used in MOBAs too, and we might also add gank, feed, mid, sup, creep, drag, lane (as a verb). Bot has two meanings (bottom or robot).

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Viktor77 »

I must've mentioned the French word if? It's one of my favourites. It means a yew tree. I suppose we could include yew too.
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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by CatDoom »

To be fair, English has quite a few monosyllabic names for trees: ash, beech, elm, oak, peach, pear, pine, plum... I'm sure there are more that have slipped my mind.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Šọ̈́gala »

When I saw the subject of this thread, the first thing I thought of was surd, "voiceless consonant".

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Salmoneus »

CatDoom wrote:To be fair, English has quite a few monosyllabic names for trees: ash, beech, elm, oak, peach, pear, pine, plum... I'm sure there are more that have slipped my mind.
Lime, plane, fir, birch, yew...
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But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Richard W »

A few more mathematical functions: cosh, sinh and tanh, variously pronounced. I think coth and sech are too rare to be properly quoted. Do we allow if [Ifː]?

Do we allow loanwords like ix, or is that too contrived ('some who cannot explain what a hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse 7')?

We have of course one quite well with new units of measure - amp, volt, dyne, erg, mill (the angle - 6,400 mills to the circle), click (= km).

Foreign animals have some snappy names - yak and its offspring the z(h)o. Squab for baby pigeon always struck me as amazingly specific.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Neon Fox »

Richard W wrote: We have of course one quite well with new units of measure - amp, volt, dyne, erg, mill (the angle - 6,400 mills to the circle), click (= km).
Also kay, meg, gig. Though I don't know about ter; I usually hear people say tera.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by KathTheDragon »

Richard W wrote:Do we allow if [Ifː]?
Iff you mean the "if and only if" logical operator.

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Salmoneus »

KathTheDragon wrote:
Richard W wrote:Do we allow if [Ifː]?
Iff you mean the "if and only if" logical operator.
In which case presumably we need orr as well...
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But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
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I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by KathTheDragon »

Salmoneus wrote:
KathTheDragon wrote:
Richard W wrote:Do we allow if [Ifː]?
Iff you mean the "if and only if" logical operator.
In which case presumably we need orr as well...
What's that?

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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani

Post by Xephyr »

/klɪk/ when referring to kilometers is usually spelled "klick".
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
The Gospel of Thomas

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