I was thinking about how weird the English language is today and remembered the word cleave. Depending on how you use it, it either means "to stick together tightly" or "to split completely apart."

Another great example is sanction, which can mean to permit something, but can also mean to impose a penalty against something.

What are some of your favorite contronyms (or "auto-antonyms") that make you wonder how we ever successfully communicate with each other?

ive been writing “food” over and over again for my bullet journal and it has become a fake word to me. like, why is food called food?? it doesnt make sense.

we eat FOOD
f o o d
sounds like im a goblin idk man im having a crisis over here

You know how sometimes in lyrics or poetry two words will be merged together to encompass both meanings?

The only examples I think of right now are:

Chappell Roan using "femininomenon" to mean a feminine phenomenon.

Lily Allen using "nonmonogamummy" to mean a non-monogamous mother.

Is there a word for this? Also, if anyone can think of any other examples I'd love to hear them.

For example, I enjoy saying unrequited and I love how the ancient Greeks got specific enough to come up with words for distinct types of love.

When people say ‘on accident’ vs. ‘by accident’ Which one is correct? Doesn’t ’on accident’ just sound wrong? Is it just me?

Suadade being a Brazilian word for a heart crushing longing for something that isn’t here, schadenfreude being a German word like taking pleasure in others misfortune. Mono no aware being a Japanese word for realizing the impermanence of the current moment

English has no direct translations for these words, but the actual phenomenon is something well known that people immediately identify. There’s often approximations; like you can say “longing” is similar to suadade, but its just not the same connotation or meaning

Are there any words in English like that to other languages? Like in Japanese is there some English word or phrase that the Japanese language doesn’t have a good word for, for example?

The word personality literally means the state or function or behavior of a person. So why then do we say a cat or dog or bird has a personality? Shouldn't it be a catality or dogality or birdality?

The game: get from a start word to a target word in as few hops as possible e.g. COLD → HOT (antonym) → SPOT (rhyme) → PLACE (synonym) → PLAICE (rhyme). Each hop must be a rhyme, synonym or antonym of the previous word. All the puzzles are human created (mainly by my wife!) so there is at least one route that works (in reality there are thousands!). I tried creating from scripts that daisy-chained words but the results were just not fun for some reason.

The main problem turned out to be validation. I hugely underestimated this! The validation ended up as: blocklist (offensive words), already-used check, stored-path check, connections payload, human-approved matches from previous games (we queue all of these to audit), WordNet subset, ConceptNet subset, extra-pairs, lemma exceptions, hypernyms, troponyms, non-rhotic rhymes. If no match found after all those client side checks we hit some APIs (Datamuse and RhymeBrain in both directions). If all else fails lemma suffix-strip, prefix-antonym check and a local rhyme check. Despite those checks there are some obvious connections that still get rejected but hopefully enough accepted ones that the player does not give up. I was quite pleased with the share dynamic; the recipient will be presented with a challenge where their result will be compared with yours at the end.

https://rabbit-hole-game.com/

It's free, no signup, no ads. Honest feedback would be great and anything constructive even better. I'm mainly interested in how you play it and why: i.e. do you put loads of words in and keep undoing or do you think about it very carefully? Do you work backwards at all? etc

I guess it might be a confusing title. Here are two examples:

English "mobile phone" is usually translated to German as "Handy". And English "lip-syncing" is often translated as "Playback". So we use other English words, in this case rather odd ones.

I find it fascinating and amusing.

What are other examples - maybe in different languages?

A few weeks ago, I shared a post in r/words to showcase a game that I've made called Witty Ditty. The premise is simple: you're given a hint for two words that rhyme. For example, if the hint was "a clever jingle," the answer would be Witty Ditty.

You all gave me some feedback to try and make the game even more fun:

• Hide answers when hitting the share button
• Add a timer to the puzzle
• Make it easy to play the next puzzle difficulty without going back a page.
• Better guard rails for each difficulty. Easy puzzles always rhyme, only the harder puzzles are slanted rhymes or contain cryptic clues. I'm writing these puzzles manually so open to any feedback that you all continue to have

I wanted to thank you all for the feedback you've already given me, and want even more of it! I'm thinking of making a "ranked" mode where you're assigned an ELO, and you get one puzzle per day based on that ELO. No hints allowed. If you get it right, you get harder puzzles, & if you get it wrong, you get easier puzzles.

App version coming soon, but for now you can play here: PlayWittyDitty.com

VELLEITY - n - : the lowest degree of desire : imperfect or incomplete volition <velleity, which is only a … faint, imperfect volition of an end, without regard to the means — Theophilus Gale>  2: a slight wish : a faint hope : desire, inclination <every wish, every *velleity* of his had only to be expressed to be at once Victoria's — Lytton Strachey> <I have a secretary who has socialistic *velleities* — O. W. Holmes †1935>

REBARBATIVE - adj -  serving or tending to repel or irritate : crabbed, repellent  <the impression given by these letters is not so much *rebarbative* as infinitely pathetic — *New Statesman & Nation*\>

APOTHEOSIS -N- 1: the elevation of a human to the rank of a god : the raising of a person or thing to divine status : deification
2: the culmination or highest development of a thing : the ultimate, quintessential, or final form <she is the *apotheosis* of womanhood><the *apotheosis* of brute force and vulgarity>
3a: the exaltation of a person or a thing to a final state of triumph or glory b: the ascension of a person or a thing from earthly existence to heavenly glory

MAGNILOQUENT -adj- : characterized by a high-flown often bombastic style, manner, or quality especially in language : grandiloquent, ostentatious  <continues his comic oration … bent on the choice of *magniloquent* phrase — E. K. Brown>

PERFIDIOUS -adj- of, relating to, or characterized by perfidy : deceitful, treacherous, untrustworthy <that common but most *perfidious* refuge of men of letters … the profession of teaching — Matthew Arnold>  

Specifically, synonyms for "miscellany," or a grouping of a wide range of unrelated items. I'll share my current list below, vaguely ordered from slightly more commonly used to less common. I know there are plenty I am missing, so I can't think of a more appropriate group of linguistic nerds like myself to run it by to catch those stragglers 🖤

**My List:**

• Odds & ends/Oddments

• Grab-bag

• Mishmash

• Hodgepodge

• Hash

• Salad

• Stew/Brew

• Melting Pot

• Dog's Dinner

• Scramble

• Jumble

• Sampler

• Composite

• Mingling

• Array (or perhaps disarray, depending on which is more appropriate for the situation, lol)

• Multiplicity

• Convolution

• Potpourri

• Kaleidoscope

• Patchwork

• Menagerie

• Aggregation

• Mélange

• Pasticcio

• Gallimaufry

• Salmagundi

• Macédoine

• Farrago

• Agglomerate/ation

• Pastiche

• Omnium-gatherum

• Olla podrida

Can't wait to see what you all come up with! 😁

(Incidentally, I am definitely trying to focus on tbe more rare/unique ones - or what my Mom always referred to as the "million dollar words." Which is why you'll notice such obvious words like "variety," "medley," "assortment," etc, are conspicuously missing from the list... I'm not looking for the low hanging fruit, as it were haha)

My words is...

Syzygy: the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system.

If you are using FORTE to describe a specialty or strength, it's pronounced FORT. FOR-TAY is a musical term.

But people will usually think you're pronouncing it wrong, so oddly, depending on the company, it might be better to avoid the word .

Edit: This was the adamant voice of an English professor years ago, unfortunately unexamined by me. I stand before you better for the experience.

I was thinking maybe dog whistle? a contrarian? projecting?? but I'm not sure, wondering if there is a specific fallacy that describes what I mean.

You know when you mention something, and someone's first response is just so pointed and opinionated for no reason?? like lowkey just TRYING to find something to get mad at. and it was never the focal point of the discussion. alot of the internet is like this lol

kind of a bad example but I was watching world cup highlights with friends, we just skimmed through it, and went past bts and justin Bieber performances. we're just lightly watching it and then a friend goes "you can tell they have a backtrack, like theyre not fully singing." ..

ok? big surprise? I don't even know BTS like that but I was like why was that your first thought lol, and people like that always start to backtrack like "Oh well I didnt mean anything bad by it" then why, did you say it? like it's just so irrelevant, we know, whatever. type thing

or people where you could (terrible analogy but follow me) go to a grocery store and see they stocked up the bananas, theres always someone that's like "what about the apples?" WE WERENT TALKING ABOUT THE APPLES LIKE

ALSO im aware people have opinions and thats how convos go. im just saying it's noticeable when someone alwaaaays has something to say yk? almost pessimistic, idk

edit: re reading this im actually just gonna use the original thing that sparked this thought

there was a tiktok i saw of someone cosplaying lottie from princess and the frog, that was it. a cosplay. someone commented "i'll be so mad if they cast a poc as lottie because it's part of her character to be white dadadada" like okay, sure. I agree in a sense but WHYYYY was that your first thought? whyyy "i'll be so mad" already forming this imaginary scenario in your head

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, things like the blob fish and goblin shark, which are named a deformed state we found them in after being removed from the deep sea (which where this is most common, given deep sea animals bodies are designed for the pressure of deep waters). But I'm sure it occurs elsewhere even though I'm struggling to find examples off the dome. It seems like common enough occurrence that I'm sure someone's named it something, but nothing I've seen has stuck enough to hit the pop zeitgeist. Does anyone else know about a word like that?

I love the word ‘betwixt’

Hey! Long-time word game lover, first-time word game developer here. Most of the word games I play tend to have very static grids, so I wanted to make something more dynamic. Fusewords is all about finding hidden words in a network of connected letters. There’s a quick, skippable tutorial before the daily challenge.

I’ve been working on this for a few weeks and would love to get some feedback. Please let me know what you think!