If you think those are bad, try French. They have a word for everything, like panneton meaning a tooth on a key....Serafín wrote:I recently learned how "spew" and "primp" are actually used in English. I kinda had an idea of what they meant but not quite. It's always seemed to me like there's a never ending parade of little monosyllabic Germanic verbs I don't really know. It wasn't too many months ago that I learned "snoop" and "slouch".
Nope, Wiktionary has it, too, with two citations from very different time periods.linguoboy wrote:Within the last hour I learned condemnable, though that may be acceptable only in Indian English.
Philistine that I am, I've never heard of Charles McGrath, so I googled him and found this: http://www.mhpbooks.com/charles-mcgrath ... upid-book/.Vijay wrote:Nope, Wiktionary has it, too, with two citations from very different time periods.linguoboy wrote:Within the last hour I learned condemnable, though that may be acceptable only in Indian English.
Un sous-verre in French. It's one of the few French words that's actually logical.linguoboy wrote:Earlier today I learned the name for "[beverage] coaster" in several languages, including Welsh (mata diod), Catalan (sotagot or rodal), Spanish (posavasos), and Limey (beer mat).
In my house, we used to get all these CDs as part of our junk mail, but instead of throwing them away, my dad keeps them for us to use as coasters. I have a mug of water that's almost always sitting on one such CD (for Macy's Men's Store. There's another one for America Online (yeah, these are old CDs) on my desk, too).clawgrip wrote:I've got a can of beer on a coaster right now.
OMG! I know each of those kanjis. But the word itself is just kanji salad.clawgrip wrote:I recently learned 法定調書合計表 hōteichōshogōkeihyō "legal record total table"
I don't really know what it is though, but I have to get one from my company.
You might not want it to be, but it is. English is not my L1, but use the language daily in a variety of contexts, and I'm pretty sure I've never come across 'inculcate'. If I had, I would have looked it up. So it's pretty safe to say that, even if it is still in active use at all, it's pretty obscure.Salmoneus wrote:... dear lord, people now feel that "inculcate" is an obscure word? [I'll grant you inanition].
It must be a very old borrowing to have that spelling.din wrote:Then again, I only just bothered to look up what 'furlough' means exactly, so I'm not sure if the above means anything. Turns out it comes from Dutch 'verlof'. Funny that it lost the /-f/
Ah, ok. Is it Flemish at all?din wrote:You can, but you can't just go around replacing ik by ikke.
It can be used for extra emphasis and contrast, but it may come across as childish.
A 'normal' context could be:
A: "Je ruimt ook nooit je papieren op!"
B: "Ikke?! Je moet eens naar je eigen buro kijken"
^Salmoneus wrote:... dear lord, people now feel that "inculcate" is an obscure word? [I'll grant you inanition].
