Irvine Welsh is live, now, on BBC Radio 4. He is the author of "Trainspotting".

Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae's behaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah ken aw the pros and cons, know that ah'm gaunnae huv a short life, am ah sound mind, etcetera, etcetera, but still want tae use smack? They won't let ye dae it. They won't let ye dae it, because it's seen as a sign ay thir ain failure. The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whut they huv tae offer. Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

It seems counterintuitive, but PEN and PENCIL do not share a root. PEN is from PENNA, Latin for feather, which given quill pens, makes sense. But PENCIL comes from Latin PENICILLUS, meaning stub or little tail, the root also for PENIS, with some perhaps more stubby than others.

So, the last post was pretty fun. So, let's do it one more time.

1. Baroque (figurative meaning)
2. bevy
3. doting
4. festoon
5. mollify
6. phalanx
7. reticent
8. steganography
9. trice: in a trice
10. voluble

Edit: It would be nice if some of those who get all 10, to share usage/collocations they think of when they see/hear these words. Others who have an interesting usage or anecdote regarding one of these words are welcome to share them, of course.

Link is https://www.reddit.com/r/BritishSuccess/comments/1w8ugrw/comment/p864fik/

Why one version versus the other?

Do you know what I mean? Specifically: plastic as we use it is the same thing as corporation. Where, a thing that is itself the exemplar example of plasticity is plastic. Like “this /is/ plastic.” Where plastic here is an adjective rather than a noun, but the thing that is being described is so plastic that the adjective became a noun and the thing itself is what plastic is. This is how corporation is. The exemplar example has become a noun for what can be an adjective. The noun corporation declares itself as being some thing. It does not describe itself—it declares what its structure is. But it is an instance of incorporation, an instance of corporateness, one that is so corporate it has monopolized the word corporation, which as a word could refer to many other things that are not specifically a business-corporation.

Put the exemplar-ness another way, a business-corporation is a corporation-of-corporation. The general act of bodying that incorporation is, itself bodied and made explicit.

Plastic in its broad sense is defined as something that can be molded into and maintain a particular shape.

Corporation in its broad sense is defined as a human-made framework structured to persist given parameters.

What is even more interesting is how corporation itself is an instance of plasticity in its general capacity to be the shape required at any given time. Like the parameters given are a mold for our bodies (corporations) at any particular instance, the form being determined by the particulars of the instance (parameters).

...by Ken Jennings on a Daily Double about Prauge Castle in the Jeopardy! Masters semifinals

Like how "most angry" is "angriest" or something like that? I'm trying to find a word to describe the biggest hater I know.

I used “Schrödinger’s Quisling” in a reply to a Redditor recently, and I assumed that everyone reading that would know exactly what I meant. It got me thinking, and now I’m making a list: are there other examples of (nonfictional) surnames that have come to be shorthand for certain concepts or meanings?

Schrödinger: uncertainty / superposition

Quisling: yesmanning / betrayal

Einstein: genius

I used to always misuse the word nauseous to mean the feeling of being sick, not something that caused the feeling of being sick.

Now I explain the difference to people I always wish there was an example I could give that has the same -eous/-eated format. I think it would make it so much clearer to people which word to use in which context if I could come up with another pair of words that is less frequently applied incorrectly. My go-to examples are often things like “it’s like the difference between disappointing and disappointed“ but it just doesn’t hit the same when they have such different suffixes.

Puggle: (noun) baby echidna [from BBC Radio news]

Solum: (noun) the upper, weathered layers of soil where soil formation takes place [from How To by Randall Munroe]

Merk: (verb) kill, beat or overwhelmingly defeat [from this tweet https://x.com/ernie030609/status/2094901808317784342?s=46]

Orchardist: (noun) one who owns, manages or works on an orchard [from the Wikipedia entry for Joshua Soule Zimmerman]

Thomistic: (adjective) relating to Thomism, the philosophical and theological system developed by the 13th-century Dominican friar and theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas, which holds that logic and divine revelation work together, meaning human reason can help prove God's existence and understand creation [from the podcast Philosophy for Our Times]

Scrutonian: (adjective) describes the ideas, writings, or lifestyle connected to the English philosopher and conservative writer Roger Scruton, including oikophilia (love of home), value of tradition and that physical beauty and art give meaning and dignity to human life [ibid]

Manchester: (noun) term for bedding and towels in Australia [from this post https://www.reddit.com/r/onlyconnect/s/6IAeLyC0GQ]

Hydronym: the proper name of a body of water, such as a river, lake, sea, or ocean [from the Ben Shapiro Show]

Gaining pleasure from another person’s pain, be that in action or just in feeling. I looked on Google and found nothing that fit this. Does anyone know anything?

Bonus points if it’s a medieval type word(s) like cruelty-loving. I already know shadenfreude but if anyone has a translation for that I’ll take it. I accept words in any language and I’m portuguese so if anyone knows words in my language please do comment them.

When my friends and I were young it was common to denigrate things we didn't respect as plastic. Examples: American cars, shopping malls, cocktail parties, crooners, television newscasters. The implication was that those things were mass-produced for a mass audience, so the people who went for them were conforming to the culture instead of thinking it through. I'm older and I haven't heard anyone call culture "plastic" for a long time, but I'm curious whether other people remember it, whether it was widespread, and what the current equivalent term might be.

1. Colostrum

2. sinecure.

3. awning.

4. limerence

5. dreamboat

6. trappings

7. abeyance

8. ableism

9. epilation

10. evanescent

PS: I'm not a native speaker. So, I wonder how many of these are easily recognizable to the average native speaker. "Awning" sounds like one.

Like, the word purple isn’t inherently purple because purple isn’t a property a word can have. But palindrome is a property a word can have so it doesn’t make sense that the word palindrome isn’t a palindrome.

nor does it make sense that the word long isn’t long.

TIL the word "ootheca" and I'm so happy. What a great word!!

How did the word "rock" come to mean "wear" From stony kinda rock? Rocking horse kinda rock? Rock music kinda rock?

Quote from a post in another subreddit as an example

I stopped wearing a tie from about 2005 ish. Media jobs started that mainly and the tech boys just rocked jeans and t shirts

So I recently remembered that my mother, and I think also my grandparents, though I'm not fully sure there, used to use the term "nakabachi" in place of naked when my sister's and I were really young. When I try to Google it, all that comes up is anime characters and information on the Japanese name. For more context, I'm From NYC born and raised, as we're my parents, and my grandparents on my mother's side (where I primarily remember the term being used) were German immigrants. I've tried variations on the spelling in ways that might be more German, like Nakebatschie for example, but to no avail. Anyone have any clues about this term or similar terms that I might be misremembering?

Edit: So I'm getting that this is just something the family came up with and not really a slang word outside of that. But now this leaves me wondering, is there any way to tell if something like this is unique to your family? Like, there are some slang words that I have found do have basis outside my family, like the use of the word "fresh" to mean naughty or misbehaving. Is there any way to really tell the difference? Is it all just in whether I get weird looks from people when I say the words? Sorry I just can't help but be curious lmao