Not signed in (Sign In)
Categories
- Main Junction
- CROSSED
- London Zoo
- Freakangels
- Music
- Printheads
- Culturegasm
- Web Nuggets
- WorldWeird
- Blogs
Welcome, Guest
Vanilla is a product of Lussumo:
Documentation and Support.
Web Nuggets: [Closed] J. Michael Straczynski invites you to a verbal conspiracy
Bottom of Page-
@penguins - don't applaud me just yet. PC or not, I still cling desperately to "retarded" due to the fact that it actually does mean "bad" insofar as something is ineffective or a hindrance. The fact that it developed disparaging connotations regarding the mentally disabled doesn't change what it actually means.
I love fortnight. It's a simple, clear unit of time.
Yeah, but what the hell ever happens every two weeks? -
Well, some of us get paid. That's definitely something
-
@SteadyUP - regarding "retarded", I would say that their diagnosis is a hindrance in some ways, but not necessarily in others. It depends on what your evaluation criteria are. *shrug*
-
About the jury-rig/jerry-rig thing: They both sound good to me because either one is better than the version I used to hear.
When I was a kid, everybody always said that as, well...I'll post an example with the offensive part bleeped out. I'm pretty sure you'll know what I'm talking about.
Billy Bob: You fix that radiator hose yet?
Bubba: It's gonna have to be replaced tomorrow when the garage opens, but I n*****-rigged it with some duct tape so you can make it home.
I hate to admit it, but where I grew up, people really did say it just like that. After that, anything's an improvement. -
What about phenomenons like singlish or when people who can speak at least five languages slip in and out of them singlish style while they're talking. I always wished I could do that.
-
-
CommentAuthordoclivingston
- CommentTimeMar 25th 2009
I unfortunately have had a lengthy struggle killing "gay"-as-pejorative from my vocab, but a huge part of the problem is that gay relatives and gay friends of mine regularly use "gay" in the exact same way around me without hesitation and really don't give a crap when I follow suit. It's hard to remember that it's actually a usage people get bothered by.
Regarding "voila", the biggest thing I always see that pisses me off about that particular word is that nine times out of ten, I see it spelled "viola", as in the fucking instrument. People are dumb.
As to my earlier note about defending usages people might disagree with, I'm half a semester into studying the entire breadth of varieties of English across the world, and if you ever spend any time at all doing that sorta thing, you realize how ridiculous people sound when they go around declaring their particular manner of speech/vocab/grammar/pronunciation/spelling the emphatically "correct" way of going about things. You're pretty much guaranteed to be in the minority no matter what you're talking about, because the variation is just that prevalent. -
-
You guys are gay.
-
- CommentAuthorLee Matthews
- CommentTimeMar 25th 2009
Balderdash! Possibly the coolest but most underused word ever -
-
CommentAuthorLabyrinthine
- CommentTimeMar 25th 2009
lol tubular! That's a hilarious word. Have we mentioned "yonder" yet? -
-
I've never stopped using some of these.
-
-
CommentAuthororwellseyes
- CommentTimeMar 25th 2009
@steadyup
I get paid. It's a good metric for planning projects ("I'd like this within a fortnight")
The problem with "week" is the fuckery of capitalism. A week is seven days. But there are only 5 business days. Even though most businesses work on the weekend in some capacity. I deal with suppliers and contractors who pull this shit all the time to buy a couple days on an order, or fuck us on shipping.
Fortnight, 14 days. Two proper weeks. That's solid. -
-
Agreed. 'A week' can be pulled out to mean nine days, all too often.
-
@ oga: you live in Singapore?
-
Paychecks - of course. I'm dumb.
@penguins-I would say that their diagnosis is a hindrance in some ways, but not necessarily in others.
No, that's not it at all. The word "retarded" has no inherent connection to mentally disabled people, it just means "slowed down" or "impeded". It came to be used to describe them, accurately or otherwise, but all I'm saying is that I'm not going to stop using a word accurately because of un-PC connotations that aren't my doing. -
@Steady - I think might be talking about different things. I'm talking about when people say things like "Oh, you all look like a bunch of retards!" or "That movie was seriously retarded." That usage frustrates me. Using it according to the dictionary definition of slowed down is appropriate, and I didn't mean to imply that I thought it wasn't.
-
"Boxing" as an adjective/amplifier, as in the Placebo song Pure Morning:
"...and when she's pressed she will undress and then she's boxing clever..." -
- CommentAuthorDon Hilliard
- CommentTimeMar 25th 2009
Wonder where [fortnight] came from, though? Are nights longer in forts or somesuch?
Two weeks = fourteen nights = a "fourteen-night" > "fourt'-night" > fortnight.
The complementary term for a single week was "sennight" (still in the dictionary but tagged as archaic. I only know it from its use by the late Rex Stout in one novel.) -
- CommentAuthormybrainhurts
- CommentTimeMar 25th 2009
@Lazarus99: 'Boxing clever' is an idiom, they're not using 'boxing' as an adjective/amplifier, I fully support you if you want to try and make it that though. -
-
CommentAuthormister hex
- CommentTimeMar 25th 2009
... And a hearty Whitechapel welcome to the one and only Don Hilliard*!
And yes. Ever spent a night in a fort? Bloody uncomfortable.
*Seriously, mate. Welcome. -
-
Muck-raking.
Rictus has never raked muck.