Words You Think Everyone Should Know

[Agarth]

No one I know has any idea what a Sherpa is... And they are therefor FOOLS! Some day, zombies will take over the world and the only survivors will be the Sherpas... And Alaskans, and other people who live in really cold places. Sorry for going a little off-topic.

 

[Thaluikhain]

"Theory", for obvious reasons.

 

[Kinpatsu]

Philtrum: the little dent between your nose and your upper lip.
Petrichor: the scent of rain on dry earth.
Sapiosexual: someone who finds intelligence to be extremely attractive.

I also put in a vote for "defenestration" as one of the most awesome words in the English language.

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

A friend of mine would go on about Sherpas' all the time. He and a buddy have done a bit of travelling into Nepal.

The post on opinion made me cringe. I keep running into discussion where opinion and generalisation are used as anti-thought words, to kill off discussion. To end thought is not the best expression of thought.

A word... reification, and it usage as a fallacy.
Reification (also known as concretism, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity.[1] In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_%28fallacy%29

Experts assume their abstractions are real so very often. The assumption of reality, to ponder and create a reality, is not the same as reality. It is a fun task to ask of the ideas that we encounter, is this a reification? Marxists used it quite a bit, but it holds.

 

[LiberalSquirrel]

Chilver. A female lamb and the only word to rhyme with silver

Next time I am writing poetry... I will find a way to work this in. Somehow. Unfortunately this means I have to write about sheep.

OT: Less "word that everyone should know" and more "difference everyone should know:" a farce vs. a satire. They are not the same thing.

Farce = slap-stick style buffoonery.
Satire = humor, irony, or sarcasm with a point.

 

[MisterM2402]

Irony.
i·ro·ny/ˈīrənē/
Noun: The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

No, no, no, you have it all wrong.
The correct definition is: "Consisting of, containing, or resembling iron."

OT: Perambulate - go for a nice little stroll

 

[Captain Booyah]

My favourite word is brouhaha; as in, causing a fuss. This thread also reminded me of an article on Cracked, that mentioned the German compound word Backpfeifengesicht. It's basically composed of the words "cheek", "pipe" and "face", and is what you use to describe one of those people who simply has a face that is crying out to be physically assaulted. We need this word to be adopted into the English language and taught in public schools, pronto.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

"Theory", for obvious reasons.

The two different versions of that word, the scientific definition and the word in common usage.

Ameliorate: to make better or more tolerable. It just sounds cool.

 

[Uber Evil]

Floccinaucinihilipilification: The estimation of something as valueless.
It is the longest word in the English language.

 

[ArcticFoxKit]

Traipse. "So there he was just *traipsing* around in my yard! The nerve!"
There are so many awesome words just floating outside the causal lexicon...

And about what LiberalSquirrel said, people need to understand what irony is. Cracked stabbed at it kind of nicely. It's not ironic that you forgot your grandma's birthday. It'd be ironic if you remembered it on the day she died.

 

[Twad]

That rogue and rouge are two different words.

 

[SulfuricDonut]

Good (adjective) - to be desired or approved of.
The birthday cake was very good.

Well (adverb) - in a satisfactory manner.
He did very well on his test.

These words may be much more simple than others in this thread but I feel they are just as important to know. Something can 'be' good, or 'do' well. Not the other way around (in most cases at least).

I cringe when people say they did 'really good on that test'. After hearing that, I often passive-aggressively use 'well' in the wrong context ('I think my marks are still well.' or something) and then smirk arrogantly when people try to correct me.

(Yes I am aware that there are some cases where these words can be used differently but I am only getting into a 'basic' grammar lesson here. Loads of people already can't figure this much out and it frustrates me.)

 

[DJ_DEnM]

Avant-garde cause it's french for bullshit.

Cookie for whoever tells me who I quoted.

 

[michiehoward]

Flibbertigibbet....yes best word in the English language.

is a Middle English word referring to a flighty or whimsical person

Avant-garde cause it's french for bullshit.

Cookie for whoever tells me who I quoted.

I think Lennon...

 

[Thaluikhain]

Floccinaucinihilipilification: The estimation of something as valueless.
It is the longest word in the English language.

Depends on who you ask. There's a number of "official" longest words, but most of them were created in order to be the longest word, rather than people might actually use them, which IMHO, goes some way to discounting them.

 

[Stealthygamer]

redonkulous

significantly more absurd than ridiculous to an almost impossible extreme; without possibility of serious consideration.

 

[jpblade666]

Twitterpated, my favorite word ever. Confused by affection or infatuation, like when you see hearts in the eyes of cartoon characters.

 

[fragmaster09]

The most important word ever is defenestration: "The action of throwing someone or something out of a window"

This is the truth, internet.

I learnt that in my European History class, it took a trip to Wikipedia for me to believe that my teacher wasn't trolling the class.

EDIT: Oh, I gotta contribute too, I guess:
Vorstadt: the term given to a populated area that surrounds an Altstadt (Inner city/center city).

isn't Altstadt german or OldTown?

and who has an entire class for european history, the 1st 1300 years of significance were africa/southern europe(greece), and until the 1700's it was the rest of Europe... so in 'non-european' history you will learn about:
-North America
-Canada
-South America
-prehistory

seeing as how the rest was european...

so why wouldn't you just have one class for everything?

 

[ChildofGallifrey]

Floccinaucinihilipilification: The estimation of something as valueless.
It is the longest word in the English language.

Just shy of it, actually. It's 12 syllables and 29 letters. The longest word (and the word I was going to throw into this discussion anyway) is pneumonoultrasilicovolcaniconiosis, clocking in at a rousing 17 syllables and 33 letters. It is a deadly disease of the lungs.

My favorite word to say would probably be 'indubitably'.

 

[Devin Parker]

Liminence - the sensation of being in love.

Verisimilitude - the quality of realism in something. Thus, when speaking of "realism" in a game or movie, you can use "versimilitude" so that trolls won't chime in with a hundred variations on "It's make-believe; of course it isn't real."