Courtesy of Vampire Diaries, of all things... neb·bish /ˈnebiSH/ noun INFORMAL•NORTH AMERICAN a person, especially a man, who is regarded as pitifully ineffectual, timid, or submissive. "He's a nebbish. No money, no prestige, no future"
I learned there's a difference between fiancé and fiancée (engaged man and engaged woman respectively). Maybe it doesn't count as a new word per se, but I'll share it because it's good for writers to know the distinction, though for all I know it's perfectly common knowledge and I just wasn't aware because I'm foreign.
The think I hate about that is that I don't know my way around keyboard character set shortcuts well enough to do anything other than go to a dictionary and copy/paste the appropriate word when I need it.
I was forced to learn them when I began studying Italian, which has accents just all over the flipping place.
Windows sucks at this which is why I use AutoHotKey. Here's a quick reference, though, if you're not that technically inclined: â = ALT + 131 à = ALT + 133 ä = ALT + 132 ç = ALT + 135 é = ALT + 130 è = ALT + 138 ê = ALT + 136 ë = ALT + 137 î = ALT + 140 ï = ALT + 139 ô = ALT + 147 ù = ALT + 151 û =ALT + 150 ü = ALT + 129 œ = ALT + 0157
There's a Japanese word "instabae" (insta-bah-ay) which means something particularly photogenic for the purposes of one's Instagram account. "Instagrammable." But I was trying to squeeze in a little linguistic history lesson, so I taught them about "Kodak moment(s)" and then looked it up. The old definition, from an advertising campaign, was a photo of a moment in time that was particularly beautiful or memorable. So today's new definition for an old word, from the Urban Dictionary (this link is SFW, but UD is generally not) with all the caveats attached, is: Kodak moment: When your industry or business gets changed on its head because you didn't see or act in time to the changes coming (Kodak didn't react in time for digital cameras: and bang, went broke)
It was a reversal for me I discovered that at some point in my life I’d been lied to, or unwittingly given fake info. There’s no such botanical thing as a ‘nutkin’ ‘‘tis but a character’s name that’s all. Only catkins grow on trees. Nut trees DO NOT grow nutkins. A word then to be unlearnt today.
As far as I know, "affiance" is a verb. Joe was affianced to Mary. Unless you were being tongue-in-cheek.
So... You're saying we should all start speaking Anglish? All right, I have one here that I'm pretty sure isn't French. Yesterday I came across the word trews in a book. trews; plural noun \ ˈtrüz \ 1. chiefly British: pants especially: tight-fitting trousers usually of tartan 2: close-cut tartan shorts worn under the kilt in Highland dress Interestingly, it's pronounced quite like Norwegian trus, which is a dialect form of truse, meaning "underpants".
From the OE noun affidare: meaning an oath or trust derived from the Latin Vulgate. Used to denote those involved on rare occasion during the Late Middle Early Modern period.
From Merriam-Webster: affiance verb affianced; affiancing Definition of affiance (Entry 2 of 2) transitive verb : to solemnly promise (oneself or another) in marriage : BETROTH As far as I can see, the noun usage is both archaic and denotes the (marriage) contract itself.
I never knew that either. I thought that I'd invented the word 'nutkin.' In my universe, it is a tiny conker that young elves hollow out and use to tie braids in their hair. Damn you real world!
Flocculent - having or resembling tufts of wool. Been listening to the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast back catalogue. "Flocculent rain" was used to describe falling snow-like deposits on the sea bed. It immediately struck me as a great phrase.
Flocculent. Really? Did we really need that one? That's what I love about English. If you dig deep enough there's a stupidly specific word for Goddamned anything.
