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#english

30 posts29 participants3 posts today
Graham Downs

I try not to come across as an old fogey, but one of the things about Internet slang that I really struggle with is "welp" as a synonym for "well". It's another one of those spellings that originally started as a typo (like pwned for owned), and I don't mind those... Except that the first time someone used it in a message to me, I thought it was a misspelling for "whelp". And I thought the person was calling *me* a whelp. Which caused me to instinctively react in a very defensive manner.

And now every time I see the word "welp", I'm reminded of that. It's become a trigger for me. :/ #English #slang

Stefan Ihringer

Translating 🇩🇪 to #English will most of the time end up with shorter text because English just has so many short words. Like "die" or "lie" or... hm... weird... why isn't English making better use of their 3-letter words for verbs? There's a whole cosmos of unused opportunities there! I think you (the royal "400 million" of you) should seize them! Here's a list of available verbs. They can replace existing ones instead of describing new activities: bie, cie, fie, gie, hie, mie, nie........

scy

"Her name is Gretchen. That's a German name, right?"

No.

"Gretchen", while totally archaic, is based on a German name, yes.

But this "Krettshn" thing Americans mutated it into is definitely not.

This is the original German pronunciation:

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia

Also, keep in mind that "-chen" is a diminutive suffix, "Gretchen" literally means "little Greta". It feels very strange for us when the person is an adult.

#German#English#USEnglish
David B. Himself

Has the meaning of the term "underrated" changed while I was not paying attention? I see it used in more and more ridiculous ways, but this one has to be the worst:

"The Wildly Underrated Michelin 3-Star Park You MUST Visit!"

It's been rated 3-star! That's the maximum possible. How is this underrated? Not to mention "wildly underrated."

I just can't with people's stupidity anymore.

#English #EnglishLanguage #Underrated

:blobfoxcheck: Ned Hairston

Trying to find a nonbinary equivalent to incubus/succubus for D&D, I looked up the etymology.

Both prefixes are from Latin: "suc-" meaning "under," "in-" meaning "over," and the Latin root "cubare" meaning "to lie down."

Following that, I'd propose a nonbinary fiend of similar type would be a concubus, as "con-" is a Latin root meaning "beside."

Because you shouldn't have to conform to the gender binary to be a soul-stealing, umm... actually nvm.

:blobcat_thisisfine: :QueerCat_Enby:

#DnD#DnD5e#ADnD
Martin Schäfer

In our series of undervalued #English #homophones:
"sucker" N/V and "succour" N/V ( both British E /ˈsʌkə/, US /ˈsəkər/).
Everybody knows what a sucker is, "succour" V means 'to help/assist', the N "help/aid". The verb "sucker" has the slang meaning 'to trick/to cheat'.

Best (but slightly tragic and sad) BNC find for "succour":

CBJ 685 Any chance of aid or succour from her brother-in-law, William Charles Titford, would have been swept away by his death in 1828; but two years earlier than that, Elizabeth's name appears in the registers of Shoreditch Workhouse.

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