One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meanings
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
I've never heard of a gorse or a furze, but I have heard of a vole.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
Funny. It's such a common plant here. I mean we've all heard of cactuses and acacias...
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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."
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.
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.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
Way to cherrypick. Not that, but mouse xDSalmoneus wrote:Gorse vs vole? The former's certainly more common around here.Thry wrote:cos less rare I guess
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
It's not common around here at all but I knew about it when I was 12 because literature.Astraios wrote:Funny. It's such a common plant here.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
Yeah, that's why I was surprised. If you've read any book set in British countryside it probably mentions gorse.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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...
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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.Astraios wrote:Yeah, that's why I was surprised. If you've read any book set in British countryside it probably mentions gorse.
aulaga is the word here.
say it over and over and it becomes weird
[aw.ˈla.ɣa]
gwaw.ˈlwaw.ɣwaw
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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
ngrams link
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
Alas, both easily beat "forb."
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.
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.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
How is that a rare meaning?
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
Qat or Khat:
A plant used a recreational psychoactive drug in Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Israel.
A plant used a recreational psychoactive drug in Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Israel.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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
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
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"!Terra wrote: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?CatDoom wrote:"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."Matrix wrote:In video games, usually MMORPGs, 'adds' are mobs spawned in the middle of a boss fight.
"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
– The Gospel of Thomas
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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).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"!
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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
Lime, plane, fir, birch, yew...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.
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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!
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!
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
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.
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.
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
Also kay, meg, gig. Though I don't know about ter; I usually hear people say tera.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).
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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
Iff you mean the "if and only if" logical operator.Richard W wrote:Do we allow if [Ifː]?
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Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
In which case presumably we need orr as well...KathTheDragon wrote:Iff you mean the "if and only if" logical operator.Richard W wrote:Do we allow if [Ifː]?
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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!
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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- Location: Brittania
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
What's that?Salmoneus wrote:In which case presumably we need orr as well...KathTheDragon wrote:Iff you mean the "if and only if" logical operator.Richard W wrote:Do we allow if [Ifː]?
Re: One-syllable words with specific technical or rare meani
/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
– The Gospel of Thomas