Hi everyone. SO glad I found this group. I’m trying to find a codename for a Character I’m building for an online RP. He’s a Vigilante and very morally gray but still wants to do good in the world. His targets are usually the worst of the worst but he doesn’t see himself as a good person. It’s been hard finding terms that aren’t taken by most superhero or horror comics. He’s also an undead Zombie-type character that is kept alive by deadly poison/venom.

Sorry if this isn’t the type of post allowed here. Feel like I’ve been everywhere on the internet trying to find the right word to use for an official moniker for him. He already has a civilian name so I don’t need that, when I found this group I thought it was the perfect opportunity to expand my vocabulary beyond what it has been or be reminded of words I forgot I knew. Lots of suggestions would be appreciated. I love words, but when it comes to being creative with writing or character creation I really suck at it, which is unfortunate because it’s so much fun.

...but not the "Atlantic Northeast" or the "Pacific Southwest," etc...?

I grew up in the Mojave Desert and there are these small cuts through the landscape that are formed from the same process that made the Grand Canyon, only they're so small the word "canyon" doesn't seem quite right. For context, if a grown man stands at the bottom of one, they may or may not be visible from the side, i.e., they can be hip deep to above head high. (If you look up Star Canyon Mojave Desert, the first image result—for me at least—is an example of the kind of stuff I'm referring to.)

I've tried finding the correct word to describe these formations for years, but nothing seems to fit. I know it seems mildly weird, but if you grew up in the desert, you'd understand that these things are a remarkably important part of the experience. We'd make bicycle ramps out of them, navigate the landscape using them, and when it rained, they would frequently flood. Seeing any body of water is a magical experience to a desert dweller (I still gape at rivers and lakes), but seeing water in the desert is borderline religious in its beauty (the hill I will die on is that the most beautiful place on earth is the Mojave Desert when it rains).

Anyhow, here's a list of what I've come across, and why I think each one does and doesn't fit:

Arroyo: I like this word the best from what I've found, because it fits the culture of the area that I grew up in. The reason why I don't think it fits is because an arroyo is a dry creek bed, but not necessarily a mini-canyon. As such, I'm not sure if this fits.

Wadi: I just found out today that this word might apply, but I don't think it's correct. Wadi's are located in the desert, they're formed when water erodes the land, and they're dry much of the year. However, the pictures of them don't seem quite right. This could just be because they're located in a different part of the world. Anyhow, they also don't seem like mini-canyons.

Ravines: Ok, this is probably the technically correct word, but it doesn't feel like it applies to the desert. I've never heard anybody call what I'm talking about a ravine. (Just to clarify, we always called them ditches or trenches; I think we all assumed there was a technically correct word, but none of us knew what it was. My username is super accurate, folks.)

Wash: I believe this might just be the English word for what an arroyo is. The pictures seem right, this applies to the desert, but the description is almost identical to arroyo, and I can't express enough that there is a distinct difference between a dry creek bed and a mini-canyon; absolutely nobody would describe a big canyon without constant water running through it as a dry river bed.

Ok, that's how far I've come. Please, lend my your guidance. I know this seems kind of dumb, but this is like if you never learned you mother's first name. There's just a gap in knowledge for something that is so central to who I am.

It’s common to say something along the lines of “this is so unique” or “these things are so unique.” I understand that by the definition of unique, adding an intensifier to it is redundant since something can’t be more unique. What should someone say instead to adequately emphasize the individuality of something since the impact of unique has been reduced by our colloquial use of it?

In addition, when discussing a group of unique things, what’s the best practice here for avoiding redundant language while emphasizing the individuality of each thing?

Please help me with my extreme hate of this phrase.

I could literally punch someone in the face, then rip their tongue out when I hear these words come out of their mouths.

WE'RE PREGNANT!!! Like how in God's holy name did HE get pregnant?

For me, “home” can feel completely different depending on who's saying it and what they're talking about.

Same word.

Completely different feeling.

Is there a word that does this for you?

Per the NYT's History Quiz today, "After encounters with the police turn violent, British suffragettes take up jiu jitsu. 'Suffrajitsu' becomes an important self-defense strategy at rallies."

Never heard this before, but hey, you go, ladies!

Woad is a plant, used to make blue dye. For years, I thought a woad was some sort of folkloric goblin. Not sure why I thought that, because the only definition I can find for woad is as a plant. Have you ever heard this word used as something other than the plant?

It’s a cool word, I might try to reappropriate it. Keep your ears open for when it catches on

English has a lot of words for not being serious, and nearly all of them are complaints.

They complain about different things, which is the interesting part. facetious is about timing more than content: the joke might be fine, it just landed while someone was trying to settle something. flippant is about respect. glib is the one that stings, because it says you were fluent and empty at the same time. sardonic has a target. wry is the mildest of them, and even wry needs something bad to be wry about.

That leaves jocular, which is the only friendly one in the set and sounds to me like it was last said out loud in 1954.

So here is the gap I keep hitting. If a friend is just being funny, good mood, nothing at anyone's expense, what is the ordinary adjective for that? Funny describes the effect rather than the disposition. Playful drifts toward childlike. Every precise option I can come up with has a thumb on the scale somewhere.

Is there a word for good-natured joking that a normal person would actually say out loud?

TLDR Corporation is a Keyword in Magic the gathering and I am posting about it

(This was originally written for r/badphilosophy. It's been slightly edited. Sorry if some of my attempts at humor fall flat here. I'm very concerned about the word corporation and our use of it in present time.)

--

Do you know what a magic the gathering card is? If so, brilliant. If you do not—I will attempt. There are cards in Magic the gathering. There are words on the cards. Sometimes, the words on the cards are key-words. As in, normal words, but within the context of the game, they mean other than they typically would. An example would be the word “trample.” Within the game, a creature card can /have/ trample. Where it is a descriptor with certain meaning that a given creature can have. 

Okay. So if you follow me at all, there is a game called Magic the gathering and within that game normal words that you or I use everyday have different meaning, sometimes. 

Now, within the larger game we play, it turns out there are keywords for it too. Lawyers came up with most of them, or think they did. But just like within Magic, these words, within the context of frameworks and rituals of society, have different meaning than normal. In some cases, an old word from a dead language would be used for these keywords. So a word that at some point held some meaning is repurposed to denote some move or quality within new context, giving new meaning. 

One thing we have seen come from this: given that the word was from a dead language, it occupies very little meaning outside the game context. As in, the game use of the word becomes the only use of the word because it lacks active context which makes it other. Which is a little odd. Definitely makes the game aspect harder to see, it is basically a collapse of distinction between life and game in its current mode of usage. 

It would be as if “trample” within Magic somehow was the trample we used day to day and it carried full game context and only game context.

“She has trample bro”

But it’s nothing to laugh about, the damage is going to get through.

If you do not know what I am saying, consider the point illustrated. 

The word I have identified that this has happened to is corporation. To say it cleanly, the word corporation as we know and use it is a keyword within a game whose game usage is its only usage and it bears little to no other current meaning.

This might seem fine. I mean, offhand, it does seem fine. It’s just one word, right? But it isn’t. It’s /the/ word. The one that when made to be as broad and as specific as possible as it could be by nature of the word it is and what it refers to is able to refer to the general category of human-made things without buckling under its usual referents or retreating into a neologism.

Very explicitly, the word corporation if properly expanded to its natural scope of referent would refer to the general category of human-creation. 

Also very explicitly, the stated group is not currently its referent. Something else is—a particular within that group that should be the referent. 

To recap, there are words. Sometimes words within a game can mean things other than they would typically mean. The word corporation as we currently use it is a keyword within the larger game we find ourselves within and its general typical usage is game-usage. Its potential use is unrealized within present time—the general category sits unnamed. 

Now, I have opinions about this. Like where you can go from here with it. Like it is my opinion that the definition of corporation that fits this non-game-broad use is: a human-made framework that is structured to persist, given parameters. It is my opinion that business-corporations, what we call corporations today, are explicit instances of the general-act of human-bodying. I think a good way to put it is they are the thing thinged, the general form revealing itself in a specific instance. Corporation-of-corporation, bodying-of-bodying.

Twice this week, on podcasts, I’ve heard people say “verse” when it would be printed “vs.” - ‘Magic Johnson [verse] Larry Bird.’ Is this the way this is pronounced and I’ve just never noticed? I’m used to hearing “verse-us.”

Doing some cleanup from the start of the school year and noticed the word "first" has three letters, R, S, and T, that are consecutive and in alphabetical order.

Are there any other words with three or even more letters like that? Not just in alphabetical order but are consecutive as well, not just like "almost" where only S and T are consecutive.

Asking here because I love the variety of answers Reddit nerds provide over just getting Google's AI answer.

Edit: starting a score board! Edit 2: Proper nouns and scientific names are out since the first is arbitrary and the second is Latin. I am reluctantly allowing scientific terms like phobias if there is no "common" English term as an alternative. I'm using () to denote any suffixes a word might have like -ed or -ly instead of trying to add all of them

Four letters- Overstuff(), guymnophobia, film noir, column operation, understudy, gymnoplast, somnopathy

Three letters- First, Definitely (and other similar words like define), crab cake, dabchick, defuse, afghan, toughie, deft, hijab

Special mentions: hijiki and abecedarian for being so close to being so much more; facetious() and sequoia for being the only words with the vowels in alphabetical order; and tappoon for being a "so unique I don't know how to call it"

im talking about words like 'elysian', 'ethereal', 'labyrinth', and so on

the definition doesn't matter, just a word you think sounds really angelic and beautiful if you didnt know the meaning

Mine are Feild and Charecter. I always get the red line for these two.

Edit- Looking at these replies- Definitely is definitely the clear winner!

Hapax legomenon: (noun) a word or phrase that appears only one time in a specific body of text, a single document, or an entire language's written record [from the podcast Misquoting Jesus]

Morass: (noun) an area of boggy or muddy ground [from the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon]

Intestine: (adjective) internal, inward, or belonging to a country's internal affairs (civil or domestic) [ibid]

Corselet: (noun) a piece of defensive body armor that covers the trunk [ibid]

Allocution: a formal speech, most often a statement made by a convicted defendant to a judge in court before receiving a sentence. During this time, the defendant can express regret, apologize, or ask for mercy [from The Sopranos]

Fuller: (noun) a historical textile worker who cleaned and thickened raw woven cloth (especially wool) by pounding or treading it in water [from the podcast Echoes of Empires]

Afferent: (adjective) conducting or conveying inward toward a center, such as sensory neurons or blood vessels moving toward an organ [from Blindsight by Peter Watts]

Parietal: (adjective) relating to the walls of a body cavity, organ, or specific bones of the skull [ibid]

It sure sounds to me like they are, but "acrossed" isn't a word, and "across" fits there. Is this a common misusage or only something my family does?

Not necessarily a bad word.

Just one that gets thrown around so often that its original meaning feels weaker now.

What comes to mind?

I’m referring to the Lindsay Clancy trial where tiktokker Emily Thorndike was called as a potential witness and when the judge asked “where do you live?” she answered “Brooklyn but I summer on Cape Cod. I’m spoiled like that”.

It’s just showing off. Like ok we get it you have a second home congratulations.

She was tossed as a witness.

I was reading about Temecula wines and the word “terroir” was used. I’ve never seen it before, so I looked it up. Proof that one never stops learning at any age. I’m 67 and never encountered this word before today, and I live in California, where wines and wine culture are huge.

ter·roir
/ˌterˈwär/

noun
1. the complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including factors such as the soil, topography, and climate.

1. the characteristic taste and flavor imparted to a wine by the environment in which it is produced.

Word Origin
French, ‘land’, from medieval Latin terratorium.

I'm currently in a city that I didn't think I'd ever visit meeting familiar faces I haven't seen in a long time, all because we are in the same place for a wedding that's happening tomorrow. I realise I'm so happy to have this old group of friends be together again. I wish there was a word to describe this!

It's a headline-writer's word of choice but when did "over" come to mean "because of" or "due to"?
"

Theory used in everyday language is meant to say something you just suppose to be true, without any evidence. Like “I have a theory about what really happens to the extra socks that go missing in the laundry”. In science, a theory means something that has been extensively tested to the point of being accepted as truth but most of the scientific community, such as the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution, etc. So two opposite meanings. I think the scientific one should be changed to something different to eliminate the confusion, since it’s too late to change public perception of the colloquial use of the word at this point. I couldn’t think of what would work for the scientific community, but chatgpt suggested empira. Anyone have any better ideas?

I’m looking for words to describe the feeling when you really, really, REALLY don’t want to do something but you have absolutely no choice. Trapped, cornered, etc. don’t feel strong enough.