What sadist put an S in lisp?
English is a strange language.
Submitted 1 month ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/87c6e4fc-370f-4a57-ad9f-10182300262f.jpeg
Comments
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 month ago
toynbee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think I first saw this question on coolsig.com in the late nineties.
Also, I just discovered that site still exists. Fun!
Vespair@lemm.ee 1 month ago
This seems to apply to a number of speech impediments, as “rhotacism” is the term for people with difficulty saying R sounds and apparently “stutter” is a particularly difficult word for people with stutters.
lugal@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Wait, I thought it’s a th?
levzzz@lemmy.world 1 month ago
List Processing, ya know?
Pregnenolone@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The hyphen has long been killed by the Internet. It suffered a worse fate than “literally”; it faded into nothingness without even so much as a “where is it?”
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
!hyphenated.
Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Important hyphenated.
CSS is a strange language too
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That’s one of the syntax usages that irritates me the most in any language.
Willy@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
hyphen-ated
ReginaPhalange@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Was it delicious?
lemmus@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Unhyphenated. Also, nonhyphenated is correct in multiple style manuals.
pyre@lemmy.world 1 month ago
hyphenated words are on their way out. not much use for the hyphen in most cases.
lugal@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
It’s more an in-between-state what words go through and when they are done, new ones follow
Enkers@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
There’s actually a whole class of these words. They’re called heterological words.
Their opposite, autological (or homological) words are words that do describe themselves. Autological is an autological word because it describes itself.
Here’s a fun question, though: is “heterological” a heterological word? If you say yes, then that means it does not describe itself and therefore it is not heterological. If you say no, then it does describe itself therefore it is heterological. Bit of a head scratcher.
This is the Grelling-Nelson paradox.
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
My favorite homological word:
Sesquipedalian:
An unnecessarily long word, or a person who uses unnecessarily long words.
Sesquipedalian is a sesquipedalian word.
Enkers@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Oooh, that’s a good one! Its use also makes its user described by itself. Neat!
pyre@lemmy.world 1 month ago
the new administration has banned the use of homological words so be careful.
Quicky@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I used to be really interested in paradoxes, but I decided in my old age that they’re all just bloody annoying and pointless. 99% of paradoxes are just linguistics. All these philosophers who spent their lives debating them are infuriating bastards. “Oh you’ve come up with another unsolvable word puzzle have you? Well that’s language for you - an abstraction developed by the fallible. Congratulations mate, great use of everyone’s time.”
Enkers@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
OK, Grandpa, back to bed. j/k j/k :)
We have multiple industries (movie/tv/gaming/sports) whose main focus is “wasting” time. Finding some enjoyment in linguistics and logic certainly isn’t any more of a waste.
RandomVideos@programming.dev 1 month ago
Why is autological an autological word?
blujan@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Because it refers to itself, it’s like the trivial case
ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Isn’t there a mistake in your first statement about the word heterological? If I say yes the word heterological is heterological it means that it doesn’t fall into the class of words that it describes and so it is heterological, because as you’ve defined heterological words do not describe themselves
Enkers@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You’re correct. I had an extra not in there! Good catch.
jaybone@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You’re the substitute teacher who wouldn’t let us play Heads Up Seven Up.